Blame the universe.
When Out asked Gina Yashere how the London native, former New Yorker, and Altadena resident wound up in in Costa Rica, why she married the love of her life there, and why she's still there while her college professor wife is teaching in Manhattan, all her answers came down to, "That's just the way the universe had it."
The 52-year-old standup comic and television star wed Dr. Nina Rose Fischer — an associate professor at John Jay College College of Criminal Justice — in early April, and shared the news on her Instagram on her birthday, April 6.
The brides each wore outfits befitting a Caribbean destination wedding: a custom green linen trouser suit for the actress, while Dr. Fischer wore a strapless gold gown and a tiara. And the only rule for their guests was no uncomfortable shoes allowed: Sneakers, sandals, or bare feet only.
Yashere recently spoke with Out via Zoom from the oceanfront home she built in the rugged, rainforest-covered Central American nation that abuts both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean between Nicaragua and Panama.
It was clear from our conversation Yashere was still burning up over the cancellation of her new Paramount+ streaming series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, just two weeks after its first season finale.
Yashere and the cast completed production of season 2 earlier this year, and it's expected to air in 2027. Fans were divided over the show's unexpected end: Many praised the show's character diversity and queer representation. But critics blasted the first season episodes for being "too woke," attacking Yashere for playing an alien lesbian in a relationship with Tig Notaro's character, and out actor Karim Diané for playing a gay Klingon who wears a skirt.
But all that is in the past, and Yashere was delighted to talk about her quest to find an affordable dentist, and how that led her to paradise.
From Affordable Dental Care to Dream Home
"I originally discovered Costa Rica because I needed dental care. I needed two implants," said Yashere. "This was before I had my TV show and got health insurance. So I didn't have health insurance. I was on Nina's, and even with health insurance for one implant, they still wanted $13,000. And I was like, 'This is ridiculous! That's insane! It's fucking insane.'"
Yashere mentioned that medical tourism is popular in the U.K., and it's considered a common practice to travel to Turkey or Bulgaria for low-cost, high-quality health care.
"So I started researching and going, 'Well, where is America's Turkey? Where's America's Bulgaria?' And Mexico and Costa Rica kept coming up. And I thought, 'Well, I've already been in Mexico. So, let me try Costa Rica.'"
Yashere found a dentist in San Jose and got two implants and a couple of crowns, and enjoyed a yoga retreat with Fischer there, all "for the cost of about half of what it would have cost for one implant in the United States," she said.
"This place is really nice," the actress told Fischer, following their yoga retreat. "And I kind of fell in love with it." She revealed that she's very impulsive, especially with money.
"When I get a chunk of money, I need to put it down on something like real estate or something, because I will spend it on jewelry, gadgets, and sneakers. And that's how I've ended up with a condo in Thailand and a condo in Antigua, because I'm like, 'I can't keep this money in my bank account because I will blow it.'"
Fortunately, she said Fischer was on board from the get-go.
"That's the beautiful thing about her and that we complement each other that way," said Yashere. "She's just easy and fun and open. And she's an adventurer like I am. And...there's no 'no.' She's like, 'I'll go, let's try this.'"
So when Yashere asked Fischer about buying land in Costa Rica, she recalled her girlfriend said, "Well, that sounds fun. Let's go! Let's check it out!"
Wildfires, Trump, and The Universe
Fast-forward to 2019, and Yashere is a co-creator and costar of the CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola. President Donald Trump is in the third year of his first term, and the actress is worried about the future, even before the pandemic erupts.
"If he wins again in the future, I don't think America is going to be a safe place to be," Yashere said, describing her thoughts at that time. "So, I bought two plots of land in Costa Rica and started building a backup plan. And the first plot of land, I built some rental properties. And the second plot of land, I had it earmarked for a retirement home for myself and Nina. And I wasn't planning to build it for a few years. But then Trump won the second time, and I was like, 'Oh, this is not looking good.' And then I had a house, we had a house in Altadena. We split our time between New York and L.A. because obviously my TV show was in L.A. and Nina teaches at John Jay College in New York."
Their long-distance romance was interrupted by the January 2025 wildfires, she said.
"Our house in L.A. burned down," she said. "So we lost our home in Los Angeles, and so then the plan to build the retirement home fast-forwarded. So, I immediately started building a home in Costa Rica and literally knocked it out in like eight months."
But it wasn't just the loss of their home, she said; actions by the Trump administration convinced Yashere it was time to flee the U.S.
"America is not safe for me now as a Black gay immigrant woman, and the universe almost kind of pushed us out of America by going, 'I'm going to burn your shit down because you need to go. And you won't go because you love it here in Altadena too much. I'm going to burn your shit down.' So basically, I felt the universe kind of pushed, pushed me out of America."
The Wedding and The Universe
Yashere said the couple actually married in Costa Rica in November 2025 so that they could become legal residents of that country, but decided they also wanted a small celebration for friends and family. Then the universe intervened again.
"It was meant to be a tiny little thing. I said, 'Just friends and family.' But I kind of fucked up. I've got a WhatsApp group of all my good friends in London. And it's called the G Squad," she said. "I'd just forgotten how many people are on that group."
To her surprise, 45 people in her text group immediately booked flights. "And I was like, 'Oh, shit, we're gonna need a bigger boat!'"
Despite the guest list growing exponentially, Yashere insisted on a dress code: "It's casual. Everybody has to wear white, but no shoes, no heels. Sneakers and flip flops or barefoot only!"
"Then another 20 came from the States for Nina, Nina's family and our friends," she said, making it 65 guests for the ceremony. "Then there was another 30 people who we've made friends with locally in Costa Rica, who came to the party afterwards. So we had a beautiful little ceremony in a restaurant, an Italian restaurant on the beach in Cahuita, Limon. And then we went back to our house."
Her wife, Nina Fischer, called it "a Best Day of My Life moment," she said in an email to Out. "I felt like the Queen of the Fairies."
Yashere described herself as a "pickleball maniac," and when she built her dream house, she added a pickleball court, which her friends turned into a reception area for the wedding. "They decked it out and turned it into a beautiful dance area and lounge space and put a tent over the top of it with beautiful lights. You would not have known that was the pickleball court when you went up there. It looked like I had a custom-built venue. It was fantastic. And so the weather was beautiful. It was pissing down with rain in the morning. And I was like, 'Oh my God!' By 11 a.m., the sun was out, and it was a beautiful, glorious day. Blue skies. It was nothing. It was just the perfect day. They said a bit of rain on your wedding day is luck. I took it as a bit of luck."
Luck is also how the couple first met.
Meet Cute at Michfest
"We met at Michigan Womyn's Festival in 2013. Nina was there with her best friend, Gloria Bigelow, who's also a stand-up and writer. I was booked to perform there, but I'm not a camper. I do not do camping! I'm very bougie. I need a hotel room. I need a bed. I need an indoor shower," she said. Michfest provided a bus to get her to and from, and that's how she met Fischer. And by the way, it turns out Bigelow officiated at their wedding!
"The first day I arrived, I got off the minibus from the hotel, and Nina was standing there with her friend, Gloria. And Nina turned to me. She was like, 'Oh, I know you, you're very funny. I saw your stand-up special on Showtime. Let me show you around.' And she kind of just grabbed my hand. And I was like, oh, OK. And she just pulled me out, and she showed me around. And we just hit it off immediately. And people just thought we'd known each other forever."
Yashere had been living in L.A. for six years at this point but said she hadn't found enough work to support her standup career.
"In June 2013, I'd made a pact with myself and told all my friends, 'By June 2014, I'm going to be living in New York because New York is much better for my career as a stand-up comic. That's where I need to be." After long-distance dating, Yashere moved in with Fischer in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, and once again attributes that to the universe.
"It's like the universe was like, Oh, you're going to New York. This is how we're going to make it happen. And you're going to meet the love of your life and move to New York anyway. And that's what happened."
Michfest ended in 2015 following the controversy that erupted before that 2013 event, during which organizers banned openly transgender women from attending, as The Advocate reported. There were cancellations and boycotts: Indigo Girls vowed they'd no longer perform there, HRC condemned the trans-exclusionary policy, and actor Lea DeLaria of Orange Is The New Black pulled out of performing. Out asked Yashere for her thoughts on transgender inclusion.
Support for Trans Women
"At the end of the day, we are all human beings," she said. "By separating us off into different [groups], you know, 'Get lesbians against bisexual women, against trans women,' all it does is cause more division for us, and it makes us less powerful as a group against those that are coming against all of us. I think we should all fight together. We are all in one group. We should all fight together against injustice and against discrimination and against the fact that we're being murdered on the streets and being vilified for who we are."
She added, "As human beings, we're not different. And as part of this umbrella of people that are outside what they, you know, the far right Christians consider the norm, we've got to fight together as one."
Online Activist
Yashere isn't one to hide her feelings, about anything. Whether it's taking on Elon Musk for fat-shaming her body on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, or taking on the powers that be at Paramount Skydance.
"I know I should be the bigger person...." Yashere posted on Facebook in January with a laugh-cry emoji. "All this from a guy who has all the money in the world, yet his face still looks like a sock full of wet sand. He looks like someone tried to make a human out of a melted candle. He looks like someone stretched the rubber skin too tight over a mannequin. He looks like someone filled a condom full of mashed potato & cut eyes into it. All this money & influence & this is what he chooses to do with it. Pathetic."
As for Star Trek, Yashere didn't mince words on Instagram or in our conversation.
"I was absolutely furious and angry and upset when Starfleet Academy was canceled," she said. "And personally, deep down in my heart, I know it was nothing to do with ratings and the show because the show was excellent. The writing was excellent. And it just wasn't given a chance to flourish. And I just think that is indicative of the political times we're living in. That's all I'm going to say on the subject. Take from that what you will. But it's pretty obvious what I'm trying to say. So, I can't wait for season 2 to come out so you can see the amazing work we've done and see that the horrible mistake that has been made by canceling us. And I'm like, 'You guys are a bunch of idiots. It's nothing to do with you. If this was seven years ago, we would have definitely gone four, five seasons easy. It's nothing to do with you.' It's all to do with the world we're living in, the country we're living in, and the leadership we have right now."
Hope for the Future
"I still have hope that people will come to their senses and come together and fight the craziness and fight the hatred. I feel like a Pandora's box of hatred has been opened, and it will be difficult to close that back up. But I still have hope for the human race," she said. "And this is how I know I have hope: I went on a Star Trek cruise recently, and I met three thousand of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. And it restored my faith in humanity. And so I still have hope that people will come to their senses... realizing that those people who are directing them to hate are fucking them from above... we need to come together and fight the one percent."
Quiet Moments
Out asked Yashere if she's always so outspoken and brash, or if she has found peace and quiet in Costa Rica.
"Oh, I am very quiet. And that's the joy of being with someone like Nina, that sometimes we can sit next to each other and not say a word for hours, for hours," said Yashere. "I have moments where I just, you know, I give out a lot of energy and people take a lot of energy... So, I need a lot of time of just quiet and peace, which is why I moved to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica."
"My blood pressure has come down," she added. "But it was a good thing I got out of America because I do think a lot, and then I get super angry, and then I get super worried about the state of the world and my blood pressure goes up and my health starts to suffer."
Gina and Nina and Gina's Mom
In her standup act, Yashere has a hilarious bit about introducing her white American Jewish girlfriend to her Nigerian-born mother, and the fact that their first names rhyme, and Out asked her about that.
"It was ridiculous. I was like, 'One of us is going to have to change our name because this is ridiculous. And mine's pretty established because I'm a famous standup now. So it's going to have to be you!'"
"Whenever we introduce ourselves to people, I have to go, 'Yeah, Nina and Gina, it's fucking ridiculous, but that's just the way the universe had it. And love has no boundaries. Love has no nationalities. Love is love.
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See more photos from Gina Yashere and Dr. Nina Rose Fischer's wedding here.
Gina Yashere and Nina Rose Fischer hold hands during their beachfront wedding ceremony in Costa Rica.Ocean Morisset
The couple shared laughs and heartfelt moments during speeches at their relaxed, barefoot-friendly wedding reception in Cahuita, Costa RicaOcean Morisset
Nina Rose Fischer poses on a rocky beach in Costa Rica wearing a gold strapless wedding gownOcean Morisset
