Sook-Yin Lee

Sook-Yin Lee is a Canadian broadcaster, musician, filmmaker, and actress. She is a former MuchMusicVJ and, since 2002, has been a host on CBC Radio. 

Lee has a small part in John Cameron Mitchell’s film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Kwahng-Yi, a guitarist in Hedwig’s rock band made up of Korean-born Army wives.

In 2003, she became the center of controversy when John Cameron Mitchell first announced that he was casting Lee in his film Shortbus (released 2006). Due to Mitchell’s announcement that the film was to be sexually explicit in nature— Lee and other cast members perform non-simulated intercourse and masturbation on screen— the CBC initially threatened to fire her.

In making Shortbus, Mitchell sought to make a film about love and sex without censoring itself. Celebrities such as director Francis Ford Coppola, R.E.M’s Michael Stipe (#Bi2), actress Julianne Moore, and artist Yoko Ono, as well as the CBC’s listening audience, rallied behind her, and the CBC ultimately relented. ^[1]

Lee is openly bi.^[2]