All week, Philadelphia Improv Theater’s first-annual QComedy Festival has featured a slew of local comedic acts, but on Saturday it wraps up with a funny little visitor from L.A. Gay comedian Alec Mapa, who’s acted in LGBTQ-adoring sitcoms like Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty, sat down to chat with me about his rough-and-tumble beginnings, how being a dad has changed his comedy and what his co-star Vanessa Williams is really like behind the scenes …

City Paper: How did you get your start as an entertainer?

Alec Mapa: I grew up in San Francisco and was kind of a bad kid. I was a big stoner in high school:  drama and cutting class were the only things I paid attention to. But I had a teacher who [encouraged me to pursue theater]. After graduation, I applied to NYU and got in. The first job I got was in M. Butterfly. Then I didn’t work for three years, because no one knew what to do with me. So I started doing standup and that got me sitcom work.

CP: Do you always play gay characters?

AM: Not always. I played a director in a Disney Channel movie that aired this summer. I wasn’t really anything, but my energy was definitely gay.

CP: What are some of the topics you like to cover in your standup act?

AM: My husband and I went from being two gay guys with no responsibility to being full-time parents to a five-year-old. So that’s a lot of material. There’s no kind of parenting manual that will prepare you for how much these things poop and pee. We used to have this beautiful gay guy’s bathroom — it was like a spa at the Four Seasons. But now it’s like a Porta-Potty at Mardi Gras. But I also talk about gay stuff — dick jokes and fart jokes. There’s a lot of gay people who don’t like kids, but they can come to my show and laugh, too. I’m here to make you laugh not make you pregnant.

CP: What’s the comedy circuit like for a gay Asian man?

AM: Here’s the thing. The LGBT audience is really under-served. There are a lot of gay audiences who want to see themselves on stage and hear their stories told. I’m a gay Asian man raising an African-American son. My husband’s white. We look like the last two minutes of It’s A Small World.

CP: Will you be appearing on the last season of Desperate Housewives?

AM: I don’t know. I saw [the show’s creator] Marc Cherry on Monday but we didn’t get a chance to talk about it. But there was talk that he wanted me to have a run-in with Vanessa Williams.

CP: You’ve worked with Vanessa Williams on two shows. Is she a huge diva? 

AM: She’s fabulous. FA-BU-LOUS. She’s an ex-beauty queen, so she’s been groomed and appreciated by gay men from the beginning. When she was dethroned as the first black Miss America, [gay guys were the] first people buying her music. It’s been a mutual love affair from the beginning. She’s fantastic.

CP: You don’t have any good dirt from the Desperate Housewives set? Who’s the biggest bitch?

AM: Those girls are all happy to be working, because nobody writes [TV roles] for women in their 40s. It was just printed that Eva Longoria was the highest paid actress in television. She makes like 13 million a year. No one’s a bitch at that price.

CP: Where would you like to see yourself in ten years?

AM: My son’s going to be 11. I want the house to be paid off. I’m gonna be on a sitcom that’s really successful. And my husband and I will have a vacation condo in Barcelona.

CP: Are you excited to come to Philly?

AM: I love Philadelphia. Oh my God, [the Reading Terminal] is my favorite place. I like to just go in there, walk around and eat everything. I like Philly because it’s not like L.A. Everyone looks like themselves. I think that’s sexy.

Sat., Oct. 15, 9:45 p.m., $30-$40, Voyeur Nightclub, 1221 St. James St., 215-735-5772, nightlifegay.com.

(josh.middleton@citypaper.net)