SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Aug. 21, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Comedian. Actor. Advocate. Entrepreneur. Artist.
These are just a few of the adjectives that describe the five-time Grammy and Emmy nominated Margaret Cho, a jack of all trades, master of many. When hasn’t Cho and her voice been a part of our consciousness? It seems like she’s always been here, lighting the path for other women, other members of underrepresented groups, and other performers to follow.
Cho was born and raised in San Francisco, and right as she was starting her stand-up career at age 14, she won a comedy contest to open for Jerry Seinfeld in the early 1990s. She soon moved to Los Angeles and, still in her 20s, hit the college circuit, where she became the most booked act in the market and garnered a nomination for Campus Comedian of The Year. She performed more than 300 concerts within two years. Arsenio Hall introduced her to late night audiences, Bob Hope put her on a prime time special and, seemingly overnight, Margaret Cho became a household name.
Her groundbreaking, controversial ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl” soon followed in 1994. In 1999, her Off-Broadway one-woman show, “I’m The One That I Want,” toured to national acclaim and was made into both a best-selling book and feature film. Two years later, she launched “Notorious C.H.O.,” a national tour that culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall; it was also released as a feature film. In 2003, Cho embarked on her third successful national tour, “Revolution.”
In 2007, Cho hit the road with Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry and Erasure to host the “True Colors” tour, benefiting the Human Rights Campaign. She also created and starred in “The Sensuous Woman,” a live variety show featuring vaudevillian burlesque and comedy, which had an extended Off-Broadway run. She returned to television in 2008 with the VH1 reality sitcom series, “The Cho Show.” The “Beautiful” tour came next, exploring the good, bad and ugly in beauty and the marketers who try to shape our world-view. In 2009, Cho appeared in a starring role in the comedy/drama series “Drop Dead Diva,” which aired for six seasons on Lifetime.
She then participated in Season 11 of “Dancing with the Stars” in 2010. The same year, she toured with the comedy show “Cho Dependent.” In 2012, Cho crafted her all new stand-up show, “MOTHER,” which kicked off with both a U.S. and European tour. The same year, she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress on “30 Rock.” 2015 brought Cho back to the stand-up stage with “PSYCHO.”
In 2017, “Rolling Stone” magazine named her one of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics. Her 2017 and 2018 “Fresh off the Bloat” tour was followed by an appearance as the Poodle on the first season of “The Masked Singer” in 2019. She also appeared in a 2019 episode of “Law & Order: SVU” and an episode of HBO’s critically-acclaimed series “High Maintenance.”
In 2020, Cho appeared in three films; “Faith Based,” “Friendsgiving,” and Netflix’s first major animated film, “Over the Moon.” She also launched her own podcast, “The Margaret Cho.” More recently, she starred in Hulu’s Emmy nominated rom-com movie “Fire Island,” in Awkwafina’s “Nora From Queens” on Comedy Central and in Netflix’s “Good on Paper.” Her recent appearances include guest starring roles on season two of “The Flight Attendant” and season two of “Hacks,” both on HBO Max, the Disney+ “Prom Pact” movie, and numerous Netflix comedy specials. And, the cherry on the cake may be her inclusion in “Vogue” magazine’s Nine Best Female Comedians of All Time alongside other comedic icons including Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner and Wanda Sykes.
This week, Cho, who has been touring North America since the start of 2023, will be bringing her highly successful “Live and LIVID!” tour to Wiseguys Comedy Club at the Gateway on Friday, Aug. 23 and Saturday, Aug. 24, with shows at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. each night. Tickets are available here.
We chatted to Cho over the phone about subjects including the “Live and LIVID!” tour, the one-woman theater show she’s currently working on, the album she’s releasing soon, and what’s still on her bucket list.
She talked to us from the set of “Hollywood Squares,” the game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. CBS recently announced that they had greenlit a new version of the show that will premiere in January 2025. I asked Cho to tell me a little more about this reboot of “Hollywood Squares,” since we didn’t have the program in England when I grew up.
“It’s a game show that was always very queer-coded, in the ’60s and ’70s, or early ’70s, and you know, beyond, and it’s still that, but now this version is headed by Drew Barrymore, a lot of fun people here today; RuPaul, and just amazing folks,” she said. “So I’m excited to be here.”
We asked her about what audiences can expect from the “Live and LIVID!” tour.
“Well, it’s about protecting drag queens from all of the homophobia and just crazy like laws against it, like laws against drag, laws against trans people,” she said. “We’re in America experiencing a huge homophobic wave, which is really disturbing. So the show is really about celebrating queerness as a defense mechanism, you know, like looking to Pride as a way to combat all of the hatred coming our way, and people who really sort of wave their transphobia, whether that’s J.K. Rowling or lawmakers that are trying to ban us out of existence. It’s really shocking, so that’s a big part of it. It’s really intense. It’s also very strange. I’ve always felt that Utah is very gay. It’s like the most gay, but there is this creepy homophobia that exists around religion that is nonsensical but also really hypocritical. So it’s about sort of calling out hypocrisy and looking towards Pride being our solution.”
We also asked her if she enjoys the practice of touring still.
“Yes, and I do it a little bit less, and I do it in different capacities. I think what happened was after the pandemic, it really took a shift,” she said. “You know, there were a couple of years where we didn’t tour at all, and so now, with that being full force, it’s a really exciting thing. It’s just a little bit different. And I really love it, like I really enjoy doing this tour I’m on, and I’m really engaged with this career that I’ve known for so long, but I’ve known intimately as a comedian, like that’s something that I do the most. And I think I’ve just gotten so excited by the way that we can tell jokes now that comedy is immediate, because everybody knows what’s happening in the news all the time, so there’s less exposition that you have to do as a comedian. People know where you’re coming from, whether you’re talking about the ‘hop to it’ girl [on TikTok], everybody knows, kind of coming from that or coming from any number of references about what’s happening in political sphere.
“You know, like, right now, I’m also doing a lot of campaigning for Kamala Harris. I’m devoted to making this the first female president, and this is gonna happen, America having its first female president, so I’m very focused on that. And so it’s great to have the shorthand where people know what’s happening.”
We also touched upon something that Cho has spoken about previously in interviews, which is the need for comedians to constantly reinvent themselves.
“Yes, because it’s a constant, like, you don’t get to play the hits, you don’t get to do that as a comedian,” she said. “You have to keep on coming back with new material, new ideas and new energy, and figure out how that is going to apply to a new world. I’ve been doing comedy for so long, where technology has totally changed, the way that we understand comedy has totally changed, and the way that we love comedians has changed. And so comedians are great because we’re really adaptable.”
Cho is also working on a one-woman theater show about her mother, a character who will be familiar to her stand-up fans. Last month, she performed the show, entitled “Mommy, A One Woman Cho,”at New York Stage and Film, an incubator for new theatrical works. Described in press notes as “a work of fiction,” the piece will see Cho sharing all of the things she wishes her mother had actually said.
She told us more about the project.
“So it’s my first time as a playwright, which is totally different, but yeah, I play my mother and I also play sisters,” she said. “It’s sort of a tale of coming to America and through her perspective, and it’s a comedy, but also there’s a lot of very intense elements to it, and dealing with family trauma and a generational trauma, but I’m excited to present it. So yes, we’re going to bring that to Broadway. It’s really exciting. I’ve worked on the show for 10 years. It’s like the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything. So it’s really exciting to share with people.”
In addition to writing a play, Cho is preparing to release an album of music, a project she has also been working on for a decade.
“It’s music that I’ve been writing and working on for the last 10 years,” she said. “It’s like a 10-year cycle, of things that I’ve been wanting to put out. There’s just songs all about different things; I have just really got to sort of figure myself out as a musician, and like, play some different instruments and figure some things out about composing, which is really great. So I’m really pleased to put that out. It’s called ‘Lucky Gift,’ and I think we’re going to come out in November.”
We asked Cho how she likes to spend her downtime. She said her three cats, Sacre Coeur, Sarang and Uju and Chihuahua Lucia keep her busy.
“It’s like a full-time job,” she said. “And I cut 72 nails a week; I mean, my time off is really playing with cats, putting together cat trees, cleaning, walking my dog. And that, to me, is the best. I mean, I really enjoy taking care of my animals. And to me, that’s just the best downtime.”
Cho is a hero to many; she’s incredibly active in anti-racism, anti-bullying, and gay rights campaigns. She was the recipient of the Victory Fund’s Leadership Award, the first-ever Best Comedy Performance Award at the Asian Excellence Awards, the First Amendment Award from the ACLU of Southern California, and the Intrepid Award from the National Organization for Women. She has been honored by GLAAD, American Women in Radio and Television, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, PFLAG and LA Pride, which gave Cho a Lifetime Achievement Award for leaving a lasting imprint on the LGBTQ+ community.
We asked who her personal heroes are.
“Well, absolutely, Joan Rivers was my ultimate. She was my friend and also my mentor,” she said. “And somebody who would probably be very at home here with me today at ‘Hollywood Squares.’ Yeah, I loved her, and I love that she did so many different things, you know, and that’s what I try to do, so many different things, and have every day be really different, and I’m able to do that, I think, because of her example. And people who I also really admire are like Ali Wong; I absolutely love her, and will be working with her at some point soon, but I just absolutely adore her. And you know, like it’s somebody that was inspired by me, and now she inspires me, so I am coming full circle with her.”
We asked Cho what is still on her bucket list that she hasn’t achieved yet.
“I mean, I think that it’s just like the everyday; you know, for me, it’s just about having every day be different, and it’s always a challenge, but it’s always rewarding,” she explained. “And approaching art in all sorts of different directions, and still working on my comedy, because that’s the art form that you never quite figure out. You’re always having to go back and work on it to make it better.”
We asked her whether she ever feels like she’s really made it, or whether her work is a constant quest.
“No it’s really a constant quest, because comedy is like, the most humbling profession, like you could be so lauded and totally bomb on the same day,” she said. “So there’s no way of knowing, or getting a big head about what you’re doing, because it’s always different, and you’re always kind of, like the workhorse of entertainment really, because we have to put in so much; it’s an important job, it’s always required. It’s not always appreciated, but, you know, you get the job done.”
For more information about Cho, click here. For tickets to this weekend’s shows at Wiseguys, click here.
