Jesus: Racism is a topic I feel like I've always shied away from, and unfortunately, I did tackle it early on, and I say unfortunately because I wasn't mature enough to do it right.

Is that something you tackle?

Sierra: I have in a few jokes, but I feel like the last couple of years it's started to become way more mainstream to, like, be open and talking about experiences.

It can be scary because I think audiences automatically, no matter who you are, it's a taboo topic, so there's a little bit of that tightening of the body.

The boss, uh, who I worked kind of closely with called me Wendy.

Wendy happened to be the name of the, like, one other Asian woman in the building, so... Sierra, voice-over: Sometimes, people maybe focus too much on me talking about the racism rather than the funny joke that I've crafted and I want them to enjoy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I didn't take it personally, because the real Wendy was way hotter than me, so I was like, "What, me Wendy?

Stop it!"

It was less racist, more sexual harassment really.

I don't think the role of a lot of jokes that I would make about racism are to, like, dunk on the racists.

We get it, the racists bad, bad.

-Right.

-But, you know, let's add some humor to this.

At some point, I would like to kind of tackle that now that I'm more mature as a writer, but what am I gonna contribute to this premise?

So it's like if I'm gonna do it, it has to be something original and something where there's a legitimate, honest, cool payout at the end.

Sierra: Sometimes with those serious things, like, because it gets so far from the funny, like, the payoff can be very big.

-Sure.

-That's a device that I will use sometimes.

It's like, "Oh, yeah, you can kind of really scare everybody," and it's like a gamble.

A couple of years ago as we were coming out of lockdown, there was a lot of anti-Asian sentiment.

During that time, my grandma, she was actually punched.

Um, yeah.

I mean, I--I punched her.

I did.

You guys freaked out on me there.

I did it, OK, because come on.

When the real racists come, right, they're not gonna pull their punches like your granddaughter.

I haven't taken a karate class.

[Laughter] Sierra, voice-over: It doesn't always work, and if I'm telling something that is gonna make the audience feel bad for me, right, like, I think that's a lot of things we try to avoid as a comedian because ultimately, you don't want "Aw"s. You want laughs.

Like, I want it to be funny, I don't want to just be, like, a PSA...