Richie Jackson and BD Wong: Their Relationship, Family, Marriage, and Life Together

Here’s the thing that doesn’t get said when people talk about this story. Following Foo — BD Wong’s 2003 memoir about twin sons, a surrogate, a NICU, and an infant death — wasn’t just a parenting book or a grief memoir or a document of pioneering gay parenthood. It was his public coming out. In 2003. After twenty-three years in the public eye, after winning a Tony Award, after M. Butterfly, after Jurassic Park, after years of being in a relationship that people around him knew about.

He came out by writing about his dead son.

That’s not a rhetorical point. That’s the actual sequence: a man who had been gay his entire professional life, who had been in a relationship with Richie Jackson since 1988, used the vehicle of grief and parental love to finally say explicitly and publicly what his life already contained. The book is heartbreaking and funny and real. It’s also, structurally, a coming-out narrative wearing the costume of a birth story.

I find that it’s worth sitting for longer than most coverage does.

Quick Bio

Item	What’s verified	What’s murky
BD Wong	Born October 24, 1960, San Francisco	Solid
Richie Jackson	Talent manager, executive producer, author	Birth date not confirmed in any source I found
Relationship	1988–2004 — approximately 16 years	Some sources say “almost 20 years”; one erroneously says relationship started 1998
Twin sons	Born May 28, 2000, via surrogate	Surrogate’s name was Shauna per early accounts
Biological origin	BD Wong’s sperm; Richie Jackson’s sister’s egg	Confirmed — gives Jackson Foo both families’ DNA
Boaz Dov	Died 90 minutes after birth — donor twin, TTTS	“Hours” in some sources; Wikipedia says 90 minutes
Jackson Foo	Survived after months in NICU; born 2 lbs 13 oz	Solid
Split	2004 — all sources agree	Reasons not publicly specified
Richie remarried	Married theater producer Jordan Roth, 2012	Confirmed by multiple sources
BD remarried	Married Richert John Frederickson Schnorr, October 2018, Brooklyn	Confirmed by Queerty and others
Jackson Foo now	Openly gay (came out at 15); attended/attending NYU; lives with Roth and Richie Jackson	Solid

Before All the Loss: What They Built

Richie Jackson was, at the time he and BD Wong got together in 1988, a talent manager. He would go on to be an executive producer, an author, the husband of Jordan Roth — a major theater producer. He’s someone who built a real career and life. But in 1988, he was twenty-something in the entertainment industry, and BD Wong was a twenty-seven-year-old actor who had just won a Tony Award for M. Butterfly — the only actor ever to win the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World Award, and Clarence Derwent Award for the same role.

That’s an exceptional beginning for a relationship. Two people, both working in theater, both gay, in 1988. The middle of the AIDS crisis. The year the FDA first approved AZT for general use. A moment when gay men in New York were watching their friends die, when coming out professionally meant losing everything, when the idea of having children as a gay couple was so far outside mainstream possibility it wasn’t even a full dream yet.

They were together for sixteen years. They weren’t married — they couldn’t be, not legally, not then. But they built what you build: a shared life, a shared apartment, a shared professional world. BD was Richie’s client. That’s something that gets mentioned in passing everywhere and never fully examined.

The Client-Agent Romance and the Problem Nobody Names

Let’s be honest about something. Richie Jackson was BD Wong’s agent. They were in a romantic and professional partnership simultaneously for most of their sixteen years together.

I’m not suggesting anything improper. But that dynamic is complicated, and nobody has unpacked it in coverage I found. An agent has a financial stake in a client’s career decisions. A romantic partner has an emotional stake in the same decisions. Those two sets of stakes don’t always point in the same direction. When the relationship ended in 2004, what happened to the professional arrangement? Who found a new representation? What were the terms?

The coverage doesn’t say. The memoir doesn’t address it. It sits in the biography as a footnote — “Richie Jackson, who is also his agent” — and then the story moves on to the surrogacy.

The Decision That Changed Everything

By the late 1990s they decided to have children. The specifics of how that decision happened aren’t in the public record. What is: they found a surrogate named Shauna. Richie’s sister donated the egg. BD’s sperm fertilized it. What this means genetically is remarkable and worth stating: Jackson Foo Wong carries BD Wong’s biological DNA and Richie Jackson’s family’s DNA through his aunt’s egg. He is biologically connected to both men’s families.

That was intentional. That was the structure they chose. It’s one of the more quietly poignant design decisions in a story full of them.

The twins were born May 28, 2000. Both were premature — severely so, at 28 weeks. Boaz Dov was the donor twin in a twin-to-twin transfusion situation, which means blood from his body had been transferring to Jackson Foo through shared placental vessels throughout the pregnancy. He was born fatally anemic. He died 90 minutes after birth.

Jackson Foo weighed 2 pounds, 13 ounces and spent months in the NICU in San Francisco.

The Book as Coming Out

Here’s the thing that the Windy City Times interview confirmed directly. Following Foo served as BD Wong’s “official coming-out.” That’s a quote from coverage of the book’s release in 2003.

Think about what that means. He had been in a relationship with a man for fifteen years. He had twin sons via gay surrogacy. He was a Tony Award winner who had been publicly known within industry circles for years. And the coming out happened in 2003, in a book about the death of his infant son and the survival of the other.

This is not a criticism. Coming out is a deeply personal act and the timing belongs to the person doing it. But the structural choice — to make the parenting memoir the vehicle for the professional disclosure — says something real about the time, about the industry, about what it cost to be openly gay and what surrogacy visibility allowed him to say that other vehicles might not have.

The Advocate called it “hilarious” and “moving” and noted it as the public acknowledgment event. His fifteen-year relationship was, in the Advocate’s words, “extremely solid” — but also not publicly claimed in anything like the same way before the book appeared.

What the Librarything Reviewer Noticed and Didn’t Know What to Do With

There’s a LibraryThing review from an Italian reader that contains a detail that caught my attention. The reviewer says: “Richie was absent a good deal of the time when the drama played out at UCSF, he in New York City and BD in San Francisco.” And then the reviewer adds: “I can only guess that Richie felt left out, so to speak. Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about and have no inside knowledge of the BD-Richie relationship.”

That reviewer is doing something honest and rare — speculating and saying so. But the underlying fact they note is real. During the weeks when Jackson Foo was in the NICU in San Francisco and Boaz Dov had just died, BD and Richie were physically separated. BD was on the west coast. Richie was in New York.

Did that separation shape what happened next? Did the grief play out differently for two people who were, of necessity, processing it in different cities, in the early days of email and before smartphones? We don’t know. Neither of them has said, and the book is BD’s perspective alone.

What we know is that they stayed together through 2004, and then they didn’t anymore.

After the Split: The Architecture of How It Ended Up

Richie Jackson met Jordan Roth at an event — the story has been written up, though not in extensive detail. Roth is a major theater producer, someone who has run Broadway venues, someone with his own significant cultural footprint. They married in September 2012.

The co-parenting arrangement that developed is genuinely unusual and, as far as I can tell from sources, genuinely functional. Jackson Foo Wong grew up splitting time between BD Wong’s home and Richie Jackson and Jordan Roth’s home. He came out at fifteen. His parents received that news with what every available account describes as acceptance and joy.

Richie Jackson wrote a memoir — Gay Like Me — in response to his son’s coming out. A gay man writing a book for his gay son about being gay in America. The ebar.com piece describes it clearly: “His goal was to be a father, so when his oldest son, Jackson Foo, whose biological father is Jackson’s ex-partner, actor BD Wong, came out to him at the age of fifteen, he was thrilled and shocked.

Elated. That word.

BD married Richert John Frederickson Schnorr in October 2018, in Brooklyn. A creative director at the New York Public Library. Quieter than the previous partner’s profile, in different ways.

My Verdict

BD Wong and Richie Jackson built something in 1988 that didn’t have a template. They were together for sixteen years at a time when that relationship couldn’t be named legally. They had twin sons through a method that was genuinely pioneering, using the egg of Richie’s own sister to bind both families together in the DNA of their children. They lost one of those children ninety minutes after he was born. They wrote about it publicly in 2003, which happened to be the moment BD stopped being professionally closeted.

They split in 2004, and then did what parents who split are supposed to do, which is keep showing up for the child they share. The child grew up and is gay and goes to NYU. Jackson Foo’s other father married Jordan Roth. BD married Richert Schnorr.

There’s no tragedy arc here that requires resolution. There’s also no clean inspirational ending. What’s here is a sixteen-year relationship that did what it did, produced a child who lived and a child who didn’t, ended, and left both people going forward.

The book is real. The loss is real. The kid is real and grown and out in the world. The rest of it is as private as they’ve kept it, and that’s their right.

FAQs

1. Who is Richie Jackson?

A talent manager, executive producer, and author who was BD Wong’s partner from 1988 to 2004. He co-parented Jackson Foo Wong with BD after their split and later married theater producer Jordan Roth in 2012. He wrote Gay Like Me in response to his son Jackson Foo coming out at 15.

2. Who is BD Wong?

Bradley Darryl Wong, born October 24, 1960, in San Francisco. Tony Award-winning actor (M. Butterfly), known for Jurassic Park, Law & Order: SVU, Mr. Robot. Wrote Following Foo (2003) about his experience with surrogacy and infant loss.

3. How did BD Wong and Richie Jackson have children?

Via surrogate in 2000. BD Wong’s sperm fertilized an egg donated by Richie Jackson’s sister. This means their son Jackson Foo carries BD’s biological DNA and Richie’s family’s DNA through his aunt’s egg.

4. What happened to their twin sons?

Boaz Dov was the donor twin in a twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome situation and died 90 minutes after birth. Jackson Foo survived after months in the NICU. BD Wong wrote about the experience in Following Foo (2003).

5. When did BD Wong and Richie Jackson break up?

In 2004. They had been together since 1988, approximately sixteen years. The reasons for the split have not been publicly stated by either man.

6. What is Following Foo?

BD Wong’s 2003 memoir, published by HarperCollins, about the experience of having twin sons via surrogate, losing Boaz Dov, and Jackson Foo’s NICU survival. The memoir also served as BD Wong’s public coming out.

7. How do they co-parent now?

BD Wong, Richie Jackson, and Jordan Roth (Richie’s husband) co-parent Jackson Foo Wong. Jackson grew up splitting time between his fathers’ homes in New York City.

8. Is Jackson Foo Wong gay?

Yes. He came out at fifteen. His parents — including Richie Jackson, who wrote Gay Like Me about the experience — received the news with acceptance and joy.

9. Did BD Wong come out before writing Following Foo?

Technically, within industry circles his relationship with Richie was known. But Following Foo (2003) is described in contemporaneous coverage as his “official coming-out” — the first explicit public acknowledgment.

10. Who is BD Wong married to now?

Richert John Frederickson Schnorr, a creative director at the New York Public Library. They married in Brooklyn in October 2018.

11. Who is Jordan Roth?

A major theater producer and Richie Jackson’s husband since 2012. He is the co-parent of Jackson Foo Wong alongside Richie Jackson and BD Wong.

Uncover something new with every read at The Hidden Magazine.