Mature Talk: Margaret Cho (Asian Comedian)

[oldies8ladies]

Margaret Cho - Asian Comedian -

Margaret Cho was born Dec. 5, 1968 and raised in San Francisco. "It was different than any other place on Earth," she says. "I grew up and went to grammar school on Haight Street during the '70s. There were old hippies, ex-druggies, burnouts from the '60s, drag queens, and Chinese people. To say it was a melting pot - that's the least of it. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time."

Her grandfather was a Methodist minister who ran an orphanage in Seoul during the Korean War. Ignoring the traditions of her patriarchal culture, her mother bravely resisted an arranged marriage in Korea and married Margaret's father who writes joke books - in Korean. "Books like 1001 Jokes for Public Speakers - real corny stuff," Cho says. "I guess we're in the same line of work. But we don't understand each other that way. I don't know why the things he says are funny and the same for him."

Cho started performing stand-up at age 16 in a comedy club called The Rose & Thistle above a bookstore her parents ran. Soon after, she won a comedy contest where first prize was opening for Jerry Seinfeld. She moved to Los Angeles in the early '90s and lived in a house with several other young performers.
I moved out because I wasn't the most famous. If the Manson Family had come, I wouldn't have been Sharon Tate; I would have been one of the supporting victims, and who wants that? Janeane Garofalo moved into my old room. Anyway, 'Cho' written in blood on the wall doesn't look as cool as 'Garofalo.' Still in her early twenties, Cho hit the college circuit, where she immediately became the most booked act in the market and garnered a nomination for Campus Comedian of The Year. Arsenio Hall introduced her to late night audiences, Bob Hope put her on a prime time special and, seemingly overnight, Margaret Cho became a national celebrity.

In 1994, she starred in a short-lived ABC sitcom called All-American Girl. Says Cho:
There were just so many people involved in that show, and so much importance put on the fact that it was an ethnic show. It's hard to pin down what "ethnic" is without appearing to be racist. And then, for fear of being too "ethnic," it got so watered down for television that by the end, it was completely lacking in the essence of what I am and what I do. I learned a lot, though. It was a good experience as far as finding myself, knowing who I was and what direction I wanted to take with my comedy. In 1999, Cho chronicled her experience on the sitcom in an off Broadway one-woman show called I'm The One That I Want. The show was extremely well received (http://margaretcho.net/reviews/concertreviews.htm), toured the U.S, and was made into a concert film and a best-selling book of the same name. The film, which garnered incredible reviews (http://margaretcho.net/reviews/#ITOTIW_movie_reviews), broke the record for the most money grossed per print in movie history. After the success of her first show, Cho launched Notorious C.H.O. in 2001, a smash-hit 37-city national tour that culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. Notorious C.H.O. (http://margaretcho.net/reviews/#notorious_cho) was also recorded and released as a feature film, hailed by the New York Times as "Brilliant!" Both films were acquired by Showtime Cable Networks in 2004 and are currently airing on their channels.

Cho embarked on her third sold-out national tour, Revolution (http://www.margaretcho.com/reviews/reviews.htm#Revolution), in 2003. The tour ultimately grossed 4.4M and was heralded as "Her strongest show yet!" by the Chicago Sun Times. The concert film premiered on the Sundance Channel in 2004 and was released on DVD later that year. The CD of Revolution was nominated for a Grammy for best comedy album of the year for 2003.

In 2004, Cho took her politically charged State of Emergency tour through the swing states of the Presidential election. Lauded as "Murderously funny!" by the New York Times, State of Emergency eventually evolved into her fourth national show, Assassin. Her most political and topical work to date, Assassin (http://www.margaretcho.com/reviews/reviews.htm#Assassin_Film) toured the US, Canada and Australia and was filmed at the Warner Theatre in Washington D.C. The concert film premiered in select theatres and on the gay and lesbian premium channel Here! TV in late 2005. It was recently released on CD by Nettwerk records and on DVD by Koch Entertainment.

Cho has also completed her first narrative feature, Bam Bam and Celeste (http://www.bambamandceleste.com/), which she has described as a fag and fag hag "Dumb and Dumber." Bam Bam and Celeste, directed by Lorene Machado and written by and starring Cho, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in late 2005 and has since played at the AFI Fest, Frameline, Fusion, and the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.
Cho's second book, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, was published in 2005 by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) and is a collection of her essays on all subjects political and pop. A deft mix of her trademark acerbic wit and artful wordplay, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight has been praised as "Raw. Blunt. Passionate. Empathetic, yet no-holds-barred," by the Star-Telegram. Look for it on paperback in October.

In addition to her busy touring schedule, Cho also maintains an award-winning blog (http://www.margaretcho.com/blog/blog.htm), has taken up bellydancing, and in the spring of 2006 started hosting her own monthly burlesque, comedy and bellydance showcase called "The Sensuous Woman (http://www.myspace.com/thesensuouswoman)." Featuring an ever-changing lineup of comedians, bellydancers and burlesque superstars, "The Sensuous Woman" is currently playing monthly in Los Angeles, and will soon be seen in New York and San Francisco. Says Cho, "There's a lot of gender swapping and gender play. It's the gayest show you could have with women stripping in it."


Margaret was recently the recipient of the First Amendment Award from the ACLU of Southern California, and the Intrepid Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW). She has also been honored by GLAAD, American Women in Radio and Television, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), and PFLAG for "making a significant difference in promoting equal rights for all, regardless of race, sexual orientation or gender identity."

I didn't mean to be a role model. I just speak my truth. I guess speaking from your heart really creates a huge impact, and if I can encourage people to do that, then I would love to be a role model. If I could encourage people to use their voices loudly, then that's my reward. I don't care about winning an academy award; I don't care about mainstream acceptance, because it's never going to be what I want it to be. I just want to do my work and love it.
Margaret is not currently on tour, but will be putting on a limited number of shows where she develops new material in combination with fan favorites from previous shows. Check out her tour page at www.margaretcho.com (http://www.margaretcho.com/) for new dates as they are added throughout the year.




Source Material: www.margaretcho.com

[oldies8ladies]

Los Angeles Times
She’s a Stand-Up Academic for a Day

Comedian Margaret Cho brings her one-woman act to a UCLA class on race relations.

Lisa Richardson, March 19, 2001

The UCLA professor’s words were suitably highbrow: The 120 students in his interracial dynamics class were about to hear a speaker who would explore the complex tensions of social demands and individual ability to react to constraints, race and identity, sexuality and gender, body and image. Furthermore, professor Jeffrey Decker told the class, today’s speaker would examine how the media enable or limit an artist’s self-expression because of these identity strictures.

Today’s speaker, however, was at a loss. “What is he talking about?” blurted out comedian Margaret Cho, 32, as she moved to the front of the room and faced the freshmen last Thursday. “This is really weird for me; I’m really uneducated and I don’t have a high school diploma and there were a lot of big words I didn’t understand.”

Everyone laughed, even if what she was saying wasn’t exactly true.
Yes, Cho set her mind to flunking out of high school as a way of rebelling, but since her one-woman-show-turned-critically-praised-film, “I’m the One That I Want,” was released last year, she has emerged as a raucous authority on social tensions and race and gender taboos.

So far, the students have covered 400 years of American racial history—reading slave narratives, texts on immigration and famous court cases, as well as books on contemporary Los Angeles such as Mike Davis’ “City of Quartz.”

“Margaret Cho fits into this course because she is a real example, the embodiment of the topics they’re studying,” Decker said.

The students had seen her film the night before, and Cho, who has been a professional comedian since age 16, invited them to ask her about anything—and they did.
A young man with spiky brown hair raised his hand: “Um, in your movie you talk about experimenting with a woman . . . “ he began.

“Experimenting?” she interrupted, cupping her hands in the air. “I can just see me standing there with two beakers.”

He tried again: “OK, you said you had sex with a woman. How did your parents take that?”

“I disappointed my parents so early in life that they didn’t expect anything from me,” she replied.

Her parents, who owned a bookstore in San Francisco, are lovingly lampooned in Cho’s stand-up work. They steered her through the rocky shoals of childhood with one unshakable, but ultimately stultifying, mantra: “Koreans don’t do that.” Whether performing stand-up comedy or talking about sex, the same solid, steady refrain applied to just about everything she wanted to do. Yet how to handle a Korean girl who wants to be Flip Wilson—or maybe even Richard Pryor—when she grows up?

“They did not see any evidence of anyone like me succeeding, and they didn’t want the world to disappoint me,” Cho said. “Asians put a high emphasis on education and conservative careers because of fear; then we, their children, wind up not pursuing our dreams because of our parents’ racial vision.”

Cho has found tremendous freedom by rejecting boundaries and labels. In her work, she dives into the culture of weight-shame afflicting American women, mocks Korean American hyper-conservatism, outs a slimy producer who glommed onto one of her breasts and exhorts gay men to cherish “fag hags” like her. (“We went to the prom with you!”)

For an hour and a half, Cho, clad in a black shirt, jeans with the word “slave” delicately embroidered over one pocket and a ghetto-fabulous gold dollar sign dangling in front of her crotch (it was supposed to hang to the side but had slid to the front), guided the class through the textbook of her life.

“I don’t identify as gay or straight, as lesbian—these labels are a way for the straight world to organize who we are and they don’t serve anybody well.”
Do her parents ask her to marry a Korean man?

“They’d be happy if I was just with a man at all—any man,” Cho said. They are, however, deliriously proud of her achievements.

Is she torn between being Korean American and just American?

“No, I can vacation in both,” Cho said. “I was doing a shoot on the set of ‘Sex and the City’—which I love—and it was a great time. But also there was a Filipino actor there and we could go off and joke about how we don’t really trust white people.”

The heart of her film, “I’m the One That I Want,” centers on Cho’s experience with her ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl.” It was the first American TV comedy to focus on an Asian American family. The short-lived sitcom, which ran during the 1994-95 season, almost shortened her life.

The network required her to lose weight to play herself, and she did--30 pounds in two weeks—and ultimately suffered kidney failure. (“I was starving,” she said.) Then, after the show was canceled in 1995, drugs and alcohol helped sate her. Cho eventually regained sobriety, though alcohol and drugs were never really her worst addictions anyway, she told the students. Food was. Like the network, her family and other Korean Americans were scathing about her size.

As for the abundance of gaunt, famished-looking actresses on the screen, Cho said: “I have a lot of actress friends who don’t eat anything, but the actresses aren’t the problem—it’s the mind-set of the producers. This tyranny of slenderness is another way to keep women in their place. Look at when it came up: In the ‘60s, when women were really making strides.”

In another surrealistic twist, Cho was deemed to be “not Asian enough,” she said, for ABC. The network hired a consultant to help her be “more Korean” on the set.
“They wanted an authentic Korean family, and I was like, what is that? As if there is only one type of Korean family. The white world gets to speak to all ranges of experience. What is the authentic Caucasian experience? ‘Authenticity’ is another way of limiting who we can be, and it’s completely racist.”

It was a sympathetic, if low-key, audience. No one challenged or criticized Cho—but then it is difficult to find areas of Margaret Cho’s life that she has not already challenged and critiqued herself. A print version of “I’m the One That I Want” (Ballantine) is due out April 24, and she’s planning a national book tour. After that, Cho, who lives in Hollywood, will begin a concert tour with new material. She is calling it “The Notorious C.H.O.”

“She is not just dealing with the issues but slaps you in the face while you’re laughing,” said Decker, one of four professors team-teaching the elective course.
After the session, students said they agreed with Cho’s take on immigrant parents pressuring their children, acceptable roles for women and stereotypes.

“In a Hispanic family it’s a big step that I’m at a major university and that I live here on campus,” said Sandra Hernandez, who is Cuban American. “If you go to school, there is an assumption that you’re going to live at home.”

“And a lot of parents are like, ‘Be a doctor or be a lawyer,’ “ added Teresa Chen, who is Taiwanese American. “They do try to steer you toward a certain field.”

Regardless of whether they agreed with everything Cho said, she did sound “authentic,” the students agreed. “The reason she’s so powerful is that she does what good comedians do,” said Stephanie Boarden. “Good comedians tell you the truth.”

Source Material: http://www.margaretcho.com/articles/individual_articles/los_angeles_times_march2001_article.htm

[oldies8ladies]

Nature of material

Cho's comedy routines are often explicit. She has covered substance abuse, eating disorders, her bisexuality and fondness for GAY men, and Asian-American stereotypes, among other subjects, in her stand up.

The poster for her first one-woman show (and film), I'm the One That I Want, featured her holding her arms out as if gripping a steering wheel but with her index finger extended, an allusion to a long joke she tells involving the rides home after using digital rectal stimulation as a means to expeditiously complete oral favors for men.

Cho also became well known for portraying her relationship with her mother in her work, particularly in imitating her mother's heavily accented speech. Her depictions of "Mommy" became a popular part of her routine.

Political advocacy

Cho's material often features commentary on politics and contemporary culture. In addition to her shows, Cho also developed an additional outlet for her advocacy with the advent of http://www.margaretcho.com (http://www.margaretcho.com/) and her daily weblog.

A substantial segment of her material and advocacy addressed gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues. When San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom directed that San Francisco's city hall issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in San Francisco in 2004 (until stopped by the state supreme court), Cho started Love is Love is Love, a website promoting the legalization of "Gay Marriage" in the United States.

Cho has also been outspoken about her dislike of current president Bush. She began to draw intense fire from conservatives over her fiercely anti-Bush commentary; a live performance in Houston, Texas, was threatened with picketing.

Although protesters never showed up, she held a counter protest outside the club until security told her she had to go inside.

In 2004, Cho was performing at a corporate gig in a hotel when, after ten minutes, her microphone was cut off and a band was instructed to begin playing. Cho claims this was because the manager of the hotel was offended by anti-Bush-administration comments. Cho's payment, which was issued by way of check directly to a non-profit organization, West Memphis, initially bounced but was eventually honored.

In July 2004 during the Democratic National Convention, Cho was un-invited to speak at a Human Rights Campaign / National Stonewall Democrats fundraiser out of the fear that her comments might cause controversy.

Other activities and projects

In 2006 Cho took up bellydancing and started her own line of bellydancing accessories (sold through her website). She also had extensive tattooing done to cover the majority of her back.
She co-wrote and starred in a sitcom pilot based around the "Mommy" character of her stand-up, but it was not picked up.
She began releasing comedic rap animated videos on her website under the moniker "M.C. M.C." (MC Margaret Cho) including the tracks "Finger" and "Roofies".
In April 2006 Cho started "The Sensuous Woman," a monthly burlesque /comedy/bellydancing show at a restaurant in California.
In July 2006 she directed the music video for the song "Former Miss Ontario" by The Music Lovers.
In October 2006 she appeared as a dominatrix in the Liam Kyle Sullivan music video for the song Text Message Breakup.
In November 2006, Cho joined the board of Good Vibrations. She co-wrote a rap song entitled "My Puss", which was recorded by a duo called "Maureen and Angela"; she then appeared in and directed the music video for the song.
In 2002, Cho founded a clothing line with friend and fashion designer Ava Stander called High Class Cho. The company eventually went defunct due to lack of consumer interest ; however, in 2006, Cho introduced her own line of belly dancing belts called HIP WEAR
In December 2006, Cho co-starred on the Sci Fi Channel (USA)'s miniseries The Lost Room as Suzie Kang, a tough, chain-smoking independent operator who will sell information to anyone about the motel room's Objects — for the right price. Personal life

Cho’s legal name is Mo Ran Cho (Cho Mo Ran). The anglicized version is Margaret. Cho cannot speak Korean, but does understand some simple conversation.

Cho has dated Quentin Tarantino (who appeared on an episode of her sitcom), Chris Isaak, and Garrett Wang.

Cho has also spoken about her relationships and sexual experiences with women, and identifies as bisexual.

In 2003, she married Al Ridenour, an artist involved in the creation of Cacophony Society and the Art of Bleeding; she was featured in an Art of Bleeding performance in March 2006

Source Material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Cho

[HongKongDr]

Margaret Cho's not laughing about Gwen's Harajuku Girls

Do the Harajuku Girls who accompany Gwen Stefani in her videos and public appearances cross a line into offensive territory? Margaret Cho thinks so. Well, sort of. ''I want to like them, and I want to think they are great, but I am not sure if I can,'' the comedian. In Cho's mind, ''a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface,'' but on the other hand, given how few high-profile Asian Americans there are in mainstream pop culture, she argues ''at least it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility.''

Lest Cho lose heart, however, today's TV Tattle links to an article in Asianweek.com that cites a surge of Korean American actors on network TV, including roles on Lost, Kitchen Confidential, Grey's Anatomy, and several midseason series. With such an encouraging trend emerging, perhaps the always hilarious Cho won't have to ''settle for following any white person around with an umbrella just so I could say I was there.''

What do you think?

Does Cho have a valid argument?

And if Stefani sang about her desire to have enough money to possess, dress, and name four adult black women, or Jewish women, or lesbians, would she be facing a greater public outcry?

[HongKongDr]

Synopsis:

The incomparable Margaret Cho roars back with her latest concert, Assassin, recorded live in May of 2005 at the Warner Theater in Washington D.C. Uproariously funny, poignant and scathing, this is one event movie you won't want to miss!

Assassin features fresh doses of Cho's ground-breaking, controversial and hilarious brand of humor. "It's a raw interpretation of what's happening daily in our ever-evolving or devolving state of the union." said Cho. The show will include some of the crowd pleasing routines from her critically acclaimed, Fall 2004, State of Emergency Tour, that kicked off at The Apollo Theatre then visited swing states prior to the election.

Reviews:

"'Margaret Cho: The Assassin Tour,' a deft filming of the corrosive comedian's latest concert performance, finds Cho angrier and funnier than ever. She may be a blowtorch to the extreme Christian right, but for many she's a breath of fresh air. That she's standing in front of a mike, speaking her mind to packed houses, is in itself a ray of hope in dark times."

"Equal parts inspired clown, committed advocate and ferocious Republican-baiter, the comedian Margaret Cho explains why she chose "Assassin" as the title of her latest tour. "I wanted a name that would drive the right crazy," chortles the Korean-American, whose very existence - she is also outspokenly liberal, feminist and bisexual - is probably sufficient to accomplish that particular goal."

Source Material: http://www.heretv.com/AOriginalsDetailPage.php?programKey=264

[OldiesLover]

Margaret Cho's not laughing about Gwen's Harajuku Girls

Do the Harajuku Girls who accompany Gwen Stefani in her videos and public appearances cross a line into offensive territory? Margaret Cho thinks so.

What do you think?

Does Cho have a valid argument?

And if Stefani sang about her desire to have enough money to possess, dress, and name four adult black women, or Jewish women, or lesbians, would she be facing a greater public outcry?

I kinda like the Harajuku Girls. I've never seen them as being Politically Incorrect. Of course if I did... I would like them even more.

Let me also say, I think Margaret is great. I love her comedy, which by the way, is often... Politically Incorrect. She intentionally acts like she could care less about being Politically Correct, even though she was raised in the Birthplace of Politically Correct.

Now she wants to turn around and say the Harajuku Girls are Politically Incorrect? She is probably being her usual sarcastic wild woman, and isn't serious about this.

Would Gwen Stefani receive a greater outcry if the Harajuki Girls were Black, Jewish or Lesbian?

How would I know? I didn't know the Harajuki Girls were gettin' a public outcry.
:surprised:

[oldies8ladies]

Margaret Cho on Top

Margaret Cho has strutted into summer with a new CD, a new comedy concert film and a new attitude. Her latest work, Notorious C.H.O., is the smart and sassy follow-up to her well-received 2000 film, I’m the One That I Want.

With I’m the One, Cho created a coming-of-age story, hit on her favorite topics (including sex with men, sex with women, gay drama and her Asian-American family), and gave herself a chance to vent — and purge some bitterness — after her bid for sitcom stardom failed. In 1994, ABC’s All-American Girl was the first television show to star an Asian-American woman, but the series didn’t survive past its second season.

Though Cho once appealed primarily to a gay male audience, her fan base came to include more women and lesbians as she expanded her material to include discussions of lesbian sex and women’s issues, including weight and self-esteem. Now she’s courting that female audience again, and taking those issues even further in Notorious.

We sit down to talk about Cho’s latest show in her 1920s-era home, where she’s lived less than two months. Workmen are still painting and landscaping, and the first-floor furniture is piled under protective plastic. The second floor, which includes the kitchen, dining room and living room, is nearly finished. The bold colors, metallic trim and Asian- and spiritual-influenced art and décor reflect Cho’s likes and personality.

But it’s not a party house and it’s not in Hollywood, or any place affiliated with the entertainment industry. The comedian, who made a living talking about growing up among San Francisco’s gays and her wild days drinking, doing drugs and doing anything that moved, has bought a home in the conservative suburb of Glendale, just north of Los Angeles.

“I lived in Hollywood for nine years and I’m just kind of done,” she says from the comfort of an oversized, garnet-colored sofa in her living room. “I’m glad to live here. It’s the suburbs, but everything is so accessible and it has a great feeling to it. I’m just really happy.”

Cho speaks thoughtfully about the not-so-happy time that followed All-American Girl, a period in her life that led to a lot of personal growth — and inspired much of the material in Notorious. In our hour-long chat, there are no dramatic outbursts like those that infuse her stage show, no facial contortions or funny impressions or nasty vernacular. Out from under the spotlight, Margaret Cho appears to be more Glendale than Hollywood. At least for now.

She admits to partying too hard in her past. She no longer drinks; instead, she practices yoga and is involved in a Sangha, a “group of friends that gather for spiritual intent.” She will love whomever she happens to love — male or female — although she’s been in a “solid” relationship with a man for about a year. She prefers staying home when she’s not on the road working, but occasionally goes to a club to hear music. She loves Björk and Madonna and the writing of Gloria Steinem.

She is not concerned with getting married, though she would like to be a mom someday. “When I bought the house, that really sort of solved everything,” she says. “I felt like I married myself and I didn’t have to marry anything else after that.”

She also credits her recent connection to her audiences with her newfound sense of purpose and responsibility. It was her painful sitcom experience that caused her to reevaluate the person she was and the one she wanted to be. Network television tried to reinvent her, told her she needed to lose weight and transform her character into someone even she didn’t recognize. After All-American Girl failed, she went into a downward spiral that could have eventually killed her but instead became fodder for her comedy.

She says she started talking about her struggles with alcohol, weight and self-esteem — and it was about that time that her female audience began to grow.

“I was also talking about my experiences with women, in a sexual context,” she says. In Notorious, Cho discusses an encounter with a femme in a sex club, but explains that her preference is women who look like John Goodman. Her point, she says in our chat, is “freedom of sexuality, that we can choose what attracts us without being informed by society what we should be attracted to.

“To me, the lesbian butch is the sexiest thing imaginable,” she continues, “because she is so defiant of culture and so defiant of the world in her sexuality and in her strength and to me, that’s really healing. So when I make a joke about ‘I want a woman who looks like John Goodman,’ the audience is so taken aback, because it’s such an off image of what a [sexy] woman should look like, but to me, that’s extraordinarily sexy.”

Cho believes her new material sends a positive message. When her television show was canceled, it was “such a miserable thing to fail,” she says. “I felt like, ‘What now? What could there possibly be beyond that?’” But as she toured the country working out her material, which was rife with profound opinions about the importance of being who you are and not what society wants, she made a discovery.

“I always kind of felt like, well, this is all so I can maintain my lifestyle. That was the whole point of being a comedian: so I could be this sort of pseudo-celebrity onstage,” she says, laughing.

But her audience, made up mostly of minorities, from gays and lesbians to people of color, showed her the power a performer has.

“I did speaking engagements last weekend, one in Louisville, Ky., and one in Charlotte, N.C. These were mostly young gay teens … these kids are saying things like, ‘I decided not to kill myself because if I died I wouldn’t get to see you again.’ And, ‘I’m at this school in the middle of nowhere where everybody hates gays and I feel so isolated. When I watch you, I just feel like you’re my friend and you’re there and if you say that it’s OK, then it’s OK. If you say I’m OK, then I’m OK.’”

At first, Cho couldn’t imagine having that kind of effect on anyone. Then she thought about the artists she admires and how they’ve helped her. “Then I get it,” she says. Now that she’s “discovered the ability to do that, it makes me want to use it more and more.” That’s why some of the comedy in Notorious C.H.O. has serious undertones.
But don’t expect to hear blatant touchy-feely rants about gay pride. Cho’s material is much more subtle than that. Her message is often buried in comedy bits about drag queens, bottoms and fisting.

Today, Cho can look back on her sitcom and all the pain that followed and say it was a learning experience. From that, she was able to “figure out who I wanted to be as a performer, and figure out how I was going to work this kind of combination of storytelling and politics.

“I’m really happy. All that happened the way it did; now I just feel really free to do what I want.”

What she wants is to continue writing and performing. She’s on the road about 35 weeks a year, and loves to travel. She saw Joan Rivers, a friend, perform in Scotland last year, and envies how the veteran comedian still wows crowds in concert halls.

“I’d love to do these big theaters for the rest of my career, and do it well into my old age,” she says. “I think that would be great, to be this real sassy old broad.”

Source Material: curve magazine