Sherry Cola doesn’t hesitate when it comes to her song of the summer. Before hitting the stage as a keynote speaker at Her Conference 2025, Cola grabs her phone and pulls up Spotify. The 2002 hit “If I Could Go” by Angie Martinez starts blaring through her iPhone speaker, and Cola immediately starts bopping.
Ten minutes earlier, the actress, comedian, and cultural changemaker spoke to me with that same infectious energy about the successes she’s had over her decade in the entertainment industry. Born in Shanghai and raised in California, Cola opened up about her journey to living what she calls the American dream — but not in the traditional sense. “I’ve surpassed what my ancestors could’ve ever imagined,” she says. As a Chinese American, immigrant, and bisexual woman, she’s not just checking boxes — she’s rewriting them. “These are things that society didn’t root for, and now I’m embracing them as superpowers, because we deserve to take up space.”
That journey wasn’t always smooth for Cola. She says her parents — whom she emigrated to America with from China when she was 4 — weren’t on board with her career path from the jump. “My mom just wanted me to be comfortable,” Cola says. “I think it’s the immigrant mentality of settling for the bare minimum and keeping your head down.” Meanwhile, her dad “was very much a dreamer” and embraced pop culture — “he was listening to Ricky Martin when I was a kid,” she tells me — and always encouraged her creativity. Once opportunities started knocking on Cola’s door, Cola says, “I feel like it didn’t sink in for [my mom]. I don’t even know if it’s sunk in for me right now.”
From getting her start as an on-air host on 97.1 AMP and finding a mentor in Carson Daly to starring in major series like Good Trouble and Nobody Wants This, Cola makes it clear that resilience and authenticity are what fuel her. “I think society has tricked us into thinking that we should silence parts of ourselves,” she says. “So when you finally own all of those layers, I think people really respond to it.”
Cola’s breakout role in Good Trouble sparked bigger conversations around queerness, intersectionality, and Asian American visibility — both on-screen and in real life. “The show just had all of these voices going through real sh*t,” she says. “That show changed my life. It taught me a lot about who I want to be.”
Cola couldn’t talk about representation without honoring “trailblazers like Michelle Yeoh, Margaret Cho, Sandra Oh, and Lucy Liu” — women whose success made her own feel possible. “It’s not lost on me that I am in the industry at a time where there is a little more opportunity for women. There’s a lot more work to be done. But because of them, I’m over here preaching in New York City, loud and proud.”
Cultural influences have always shaped Cola’s artistry, too. She lit up talking about Romeo Must Die, early 2000s hip-hop, MTV, and even Wild ‘N Out — a show she auditioned for in 2017 and didn’t get (“I was devastated”), only to return in 2022 as a celebrity team captain. “That was a full circle moment,” she tells me.
Cola’s whole career feels full circle so far (besides a Joy Luck Club sequel, to which she says, “Put me in, coach”), but she’s still got a dream role on her vision board. “I want to step into the action space,” she says. “I’ve been showing up everywhere looking like a boss ass b*tch for a reason. I want them to know I’m capable of kicking ass. Marvel, I’m available.”