The Cho Must Go On

Margaret Cho was nervous. Sitting in a private room near the cafeteria at VH1’s Midtown headquarters, the comic was fretting over an afternoon meet-and-greet with the staff of the cable channel, which will broadcast her new series, The Cho Show, beginning Aug. 21.

“I’m embarrassed,” she said, tugging on a chain around her neck. “I’m wearing this necklace in the big picture on the poster out there, and I’m wearing it today. Everybody will think I only have one necklace!”

It’s a problem that the Margaret Cho fans know and love—the one who rants about racism, her eating disorders, drug use and accidental maritime lesbianism—might never consider. That day, though, the 39-year-old star seemed a bit more glamorous, a bit less approachable and, well, like an actual celebrity. She tucked her legs, with boots up to her knees, beneath her and spoke softly, laughing often. She pointed out her Tarina Tarantino handbag. Had Cho, the Courtney Love of the comic scene, gone soft? Maybe the chance to star in a reality show on VH1—where Diddy, among others, will also offer a series this season—had tamed her. Listening closely, though, it became clear: It wasn’t the product that had changed; it was the way she was selling it.

“I always wanted to do another sitcom, and I wanted to do another Asian-American family show, but with my first experience, I didn’t know how it would work,” she said. “Why would I get a whole bunch of old white men to write my story? They can’t. That’s what happened the first time around, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it myself.’”

Rounding up her family and friends, Cho decided to create a show where the situations were planned in advance, based on stories from her stand-up routine, but all of the lines were ad-libbed a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. “I wanted to do a reality-based show because the people we’re focusing on are so funny,” Cho said, pointing out the comic talents of her parents, her little-person assistant Selene Luna and her flaming hair-and-makeup squad. “We’re all kind of freaky. We’re like The Hills—with eyes!”

There’s no shortage of stars peddling reality shows these days. And for every misfit deposited into a Los Angeles mansion isn’t there a set of dopey parents following along? After all, everyone from the sparkly, vapid Kim Kardashin to the dopey and drug-addled Sean Stewart has dragged his famous name through the mud. Cho avoids that fate by following a formula that another outspoken comic, Kathy Griffin, used to reinvigorate her own career. They’re not entirely similar, though.

“Kathy’s different because she’s white,” deadpanned Cho. “We’re really good friends, and its funny because we’ve grown up together in a lot of ways and have similar themes. We do alternative comedy—what we do is feminist and queer and fun. It’s seriously hardcore stand-up. We really are the best.”

And if that’s the case, the crowds lining up outside stadiums to see spiky-haired, frat-boy comics are simply souls waiting to be saved. “I don’t really understand why anybody would go see that,” said Cho. “I’ve never seen Dane Cook, so I can’t speak to him, but I know that comics get mad and really hate him. There have been hacks since the beginning of time, why get pissed now?”

Maybe because, having been in the public eye since starring in All-American Girl in 1994, Cho has paid serious dues. After well-documented battles with network executives over her weight and the portrayal of Asian Americans in the show, Cho went down a path—paved with anorexia, bulimia and drugs—that had sidelined other starlets for good. In 1999, however, Cho took her sitcom experiences and turned them into an Off-Broadway show called I’m The One That I Want, which spawned a movie and book and gave the girls, gays and weirdoes who normally ignored comedy a brassy, bawdy heroine to root for. Cho followed with a number of equally foul-mouthed, sidesplitting shows, including Notorious C.H.O. and Assassin, cementing her role as poster girl for the subculture set, but keeping Hollywood at arm’s length.

After venting about her television turmoil for so long, though, Cho has finally made peace with being in the spotlight.

“I want us to be part of the television landscape because we’ve been missing for so long. The show’s importance to me goes beyond my work as a comedian, it’s not just a reality show, it’s the statement that Asian Americans are Americans and that our stories should be told. It’s much bigger than just my career.”

However, that’s on the upswing as well. In September Cho will start filming Drop-Dead Diva, a new sitcom on the Lifetime network, and soon after will go on tour with her new stand-up routine, Beautiful—“It’s really raunchy. It’s a lot about beauty and body image and cock and pussy and holes.”—that will stop at Radio City Music Hall on Oct. 4. But it’s The Cho Show that will reveal the sides of Cho she’s most anxious for America to see.

“In my first show the network was concerned because they thought I was too fat to play the role of myself,” she said. “I was mortified by that, so now, in my new show, I’m naked in almost every episode. You see my hole a couple of times. I’m not normally a naked person because it’s inconvenient and cold, but I make a point of getting naked in the show and on stage a lot. It’s important for people to see what a normal 39-year-old body looks like; a woman who drinks liquor and eats bacon and doesn’t care.”

While she’s still charmingly opinionated about pop culture—“I wasn’t necessarily a fan of Lindsay Lohan until she was a lesbo with leggings”—it’s her own background that she’s feeling less hostility toward. 

“It’s hard, but I think [the Korean community] does want to accept me now,” said Cho, who received the “Korean of the Year” award from KoreAM Journal, a magazine for Korean Americans, in the first episode of The Cho Show and, despite initial hesitance—and the passing thought of wearing a painted-on dress—was obviously touched by the experience.

“I was really moved by that. Those things happen a lot to me, and it’s not because I’m so talented and great. It’s because I’m Asian American, queer and a woman. When they see me they feel like they exist. I make people of color feel like they exist. It has nothing to do with me, it’s about the fact that we live in a racist country, and the way racism plays out is through making us invisible. The acceptance of me is from the younger generation and people who’ve grown up with me. They’re behind me and I’m fighting for them.”