- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by: HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Christine and Philip Dial.

- I'm Evan Smith.

She's a comedian, actress, and activist, and a five-time Grammy and Emmy nominee, named one of the 50 best stand-ups of all time by "Rolling Stone."

She's Margaret Cho.

This is "Overheard."

A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

You really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing, by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

This is "Overheard."

(audience applauding) Margaret Cho, welcome.

It's so nice to see you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for making time to be here.

It's actually kind of weird, because I feel like you've been in my life and all of our lives for so long.

It's incredible to get to meet you in person.

And I am amazed to discover, fact-check this, you have been in comedy in one form or another for 40 years.

- Yes.

It's incredible.

- How is that possible?

You started really early.

I started when I was 14, so it's actually 41 years now.

- 41 years.

It's even more.

- Yes.

- Amazing.

- Yes.

Thank you.

- Let's go back to that time.

So I wanna talk about San Francisco in the '70s, which is so cool.

That's the San Francisco of Harvey Milk, right, that era of San Francisco growing up.

Your parents were not born in this country.

They came over.

So you're first generation.

- Yeah.

Is it first?

I'm always confused by that.

We're first if we're here.

- But you were born here.

- I was born here.

So duh.

- I guess you're first.

Okay.

So talk about your parents.

Your parents are amazing, and they're part of your story.

- They are.

They came to America.

They came in 1964.

And so they landed in San Francisco.

And in the '70s, my dad, he loved books.

He loved an idea of a literary center.

He loved City Lights, which is a very famous bookstore in San Francisco, - Still.

Right, yeah.

- where the Beats, they had readings, and it was Jack Kerouac and all of that stuff happening.

And he wanted a part of that.

So he bought a gay bookstore in San Francisco.

And he also is very handsome and loves male attention.

(audience laughing) So he had an ulterior motive, because male beauty is South Korea's primary export.

And we know this now, but back in the '60s, '70s, they weren't as aware.

But he's very handsome, and he was very popular amongst the male clientele of this bookstore.

- And the bookstore is called Paperback Traffic.

- Paperback Traffic.

- And it was at Polk and California Street in San Francisco.

And so you grew up in an environment in which artists, big thinkers, kind of kooky philosophers, like, sort of the world was right there.

And that San Francisco, that really was drag queens and hippies and kind of everything you could imagine.

- And politics.

And Harvey Milk.

- And Harvey Milk.

- Harvey Milk.

And a lot of the people that were working for my father were also early supporters of Harvey Milk.

And so his assassination was one of the most traumatic things.

- And you probably do remember, 'cause you were born in '68 and he was assassinated in '78.

So you were just probably not quite 10 when this happened.

- Right, but it left such an impression on me, where it was like the whole city fell apart with grief, just because we had this amazing chance to break into politics in the city.

It never happened before, an openly gay politician doing that.

And that he was just shot down in his prime, it was so shocking.

And as a child, just taking that in, you know, thinking, what's gonna happen now?

And then right after that, AIDS.

AIDS was the other thing that completely destroyed our business and that community.

So to see the gay community now in its incredible resilience is so powerful.

So I'm glad I had that upbringing to know that these victories are hard-won, but we can lose them very quickly.

And so I got to see so much.

- I love that.

That's amazing.

Talk about comedy and why comedy, as opposed to any number of other things.

I mean, you've gone on to do a lot of things, and we'll get to that, but comedy was the thing at that age: why that?

- I just knew that was what I did for a living.

Oddly, I knew that was what my job was gonna be.

And then I decided to be a comedian after I realized I couldn't be Wonder Woman.

So I was like eight.

- That was the choice you put in front of yourself.

- I was like, "I'm gonna be Wonder Woman."

I was like eight years old.

And then I realized I couldn't do it.

I don't think I could do it.

I didn't think I could pull off the costume.

There was a lot of things that stood in my way.

So then I realized: Oh, I'm gonna be a comedian.

- Do You remember seeing other comedians at that time, people who influenced you or made you think, "You know what?

That looks great.

I wanna do that.

They're cool.

I'd like to be like that."

- Yes.

It was Joan Rivers.

- Specifically, it was Joan Rivers?

Talk about that.

- Specifically, Joan Rivers.

I saw her on "Saturday Night Live," and this is like, you know, late '70s.

And she was performing.

Back then they would have comedians do sets.

- Right.

It was very early in the life of that show.

- Right.

- Right.

- You would see Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman and Joan Rivers.

And it was the simplest thing where it just seemed like she had friends.

So I didn't have friends as a kid.

I was a really lonely kid.

And so she would say to the audience: "Can we talk?"

And I was like, "Oh, she has friends.

I'm gonna be a comedian like her, and I'll have a friend."

And much later she did become my friend.

- You knew her later in her career.

- Yes.

We were very close.

- That's amazing.

Well, she must have admired you, you know?

She didn't take any crap from anybody, and neither have you over your entire time as a comedian, right?

So you had that in common.

- We had a lot in common.

And she really loved to laugh and have a good time.

And she was really crass, and I would get embarrassed.

I'm crass, but she was really crass.

- If she embarrassed you, that's something.

- And she would party.

Like, we would do her show, "Fashion Police," and we would do it at like 5:00 in the morning because we had to cover all of the award shows to have it ready for the news that day.

So she would take her big coffee cup and empty it out and pour in Chardonnay and drink that all morning.

And it was so inspiring.

It was just unbelievable.

(audience laughing) - Well, that's one word for it.

- It was amazing.

- So you I understand started to get into comedy when you were in high school, right?

And this was the San Francisco... - I was at- - School of the Arts?

- School of the Arts.

But I didn't start as a solo act.

I started as a duo.

And so my comedy partner was Sam Rockwell, who's a very famous actor.

- The famous actor: Academy Award-nominated actor.

- He's won.

- Yeah, he won.

- He's a brilliant actor.

And he and I were classmates.

- Amazing.

- And we did a comedy double act, and our teacher signed us up for shows at the local comedy club.

So we would do these little double acts.

And he ended up going on to be an actor.

And we should revive it.

You could see tape of it on YouTube now.

- You probably see him still, occasionally, right?

- Yeah.

- See him around.

That'd be amazing.

- And I'll keep asking.

- You should keep asking.

- We should revive it.

- Now, there was a contest that you entered, I think it was later, where you and two other people were vying to be an opening act for Jerry Seinfeld.

- Yes.

- Is this correct?

Tell that story.

I love that.

This is early in your career, right?

- It was early in my career.

I was still in high school and I lied my way into a college comedy competition.

- You were not yet in college?

- I was not yet in college.

And I won my section.

So we had the East Coast, the West Coast, Midwest winners.

So the West Coast winner was John DiMaggio, who does all these voices: amazing voice actor from "Futurama."

And Jon Glaser, he won the Midwest.

And so we all went and opened for Jerry Seinfeld.

And then Jerry told me that I should consider dropping out of college and going into stand-up comedy full-time.

- Oh, is that right?

God, what an endorsement.

So this is what?

This is like 1980.

- This was '80, probably '87.

- '87.

- Yeah.

- Amazing.

- Really amazing.

And it was such a vote of confidence.

like, that somebody that was really at the height of his career and mastery was so supportive.

- I wanna ask you about what it was like in the early days as you were out trying to make a name for yourself and break into stand-up in these clubs.

I don't know if you've seen this, the documentary, two parts, about Steve Martin that's on Apple TV.

The first part is about his early career as a stand-up.

And he's actually really revealing in his voiceovers about this, about how hard it was and how he doubted himself and how much he hated the experience.

And he took notes, which he went back over in the course of this and talked about how difficult it was and how there were many times he thought about getting out of the business.

Did you have a similar experience, or was it all joy for you from the very beginning?

- No, it's a very humbling profession, because you can fail at any time.

It's the one kind of area of entertainment where you have to continually prove that you belong there.

'Cause, you know, I think a comedian's legacy, like their fame or whatever, their notoriety, will only buy them about 15 seconds of an audience's attention.

And then you really have to be funny, or else the people are like, "What's going on?"

Like, it's really... - Well, silence in an audience when you're a stand-up is probably the worst thing in the world, right?

- The worst.

The worst.

And so you wanna keep on making sure that you can be funny.

And I think we're always kind of trying to figure it out.

It is the one art form that you're constantly trying to figure out what is happening.

Why is this working?

How is this working?

Right, were there places in those early days that you remember?

The Indigo Girls were here earlier this season, and they were talking about a club in Little Five Points out in Atlanta that was instrumental to them as they got started.

It was the place where they figured out, in a literal sense and in an existential sense, we found our voice in this place, right?

So was there a similar place for you as you were out doing comedy?

- Yes, it was a nightclub called the Holy City Zoo, which was in San Francisco.

And it was owned by Robin Williams, secretly, 'cause he used to be the doorman in the '70s.

- Oh, wow.

- So he owned the club.

And then he would come and perform.

And he had this thing: He always wanted to perform before me.

So I would always have to like follow him.

And it was the worst.

I mean, could you imagine?

I mean, to follow Robin Williams?

Like, horrible.

I always bombed.

But I realized he was kind of trying to teach me like a lesson of like, "You gotta try to do this.

If you can build on this, you're really gonna go somewhere."

But it was very challenging.

- Did you understand at the time that that was what was going on?

- No, I was like crying about it.

Like, "Why is this my bad luck?"

But I realized he was just trying to make me tougher.

But it's it's really wonderful, actually, a wonderful lesson.

- Do you remember the moment when the switch flipped?

When you thought to yourself, go out and do a show, audience gets it, you think, "I've got this now."

Like, was there that inflection point for you?

- Yes.

You kind of figure it out.

And like I think the first time I had it was in the '80s; they would make a lot of jokes in comedy clubs about Asian drivers.

And that was like the main thing: It was like comedies talking about Asian drivers.

And so I would have to go up after these people talking about Asian drivers.

And I would just say, "My name is Margaret Cho, and I drive very well."

(audience laughing) And that was the first time.

I was like, "Oh, I think this is gonna work."

So that was the moment where I realized: Oh, I can actually refer to what happened before and talk about how that feels.

You know, feeling an outsider, feeling not belonging.

All those things fit there.

- It's interesting that you bring that up about the joke, what was a joke at the time, they thought, about Asians' driving.

So much was different back then.

Like, if you watch movies from the '70s now, the things that people, even from the '80s, the things that people said and didn't even think twice about, you kind of think, you could never actually do that.

You'd get killed now for saying that.

So much of comedy has changed in that way also, in that it was very unrepresentative at that time, right?

There were not terribly many people from the AAPI community who were in comedy.

I suspect there were some number of women.

There are many more now who are doing it.

People in the LGBTQ community were not necessarily as visible in comedy at that time as they are now.

That's one of the progressions in the right direction, probably, that comedy is more representative.

- Yeah.

- Have you felt that?

Do you see that when you're out on the road now?

- Yeah, I love it.

It's one of the things that really makes me interested and to keep going, 'cause there's so much diversity, so many different kinds of comedy, so many different kinds of comedians.

And so I'm really, really excited about it.

- Yeah, and do you put yourself in the position of mentoring younger, I mean, I'm sure that you were mentored; as you say, Robin Williams gave you good advice and Jerry Seinfeld, you know, was encouraging to you.

So you're now on the other side of that.

- Yes.

- And now it's people coming up.

So how willing are you to be that open and giving with younger comedians?

- Oh, I'm just so elated that they're doing it, you know?

I mean, I'm so excited to see it, and I wanna support them.

And I also wanna ask them for jobs.

I'm always asking- - So say more about that.

- Oh yeah, like, people who are in comedy because of me, people like Bowen Yang and Awkwafina and Joel Kim Booster and Ellie Wong, I'm constantly hitting them up for jobs.

- You have to remind them: "Hey, buddy boy, you would not be here if it were not for me."

- You put in that.

I could be like your mom: come on.

Like, you know, I'm always trying to hit them up.

- But then "Fire Island."

Yes.

that's an example.

- In a literal case of Bowen Yang, right, that movie, you played a role that was effectively the role you just described.

- Because I bothered them.

When the movie was being made, I reached out and I said, "You know, I'm in this.

I don't know if you know, but I'm in this movie."

And they actually made it happen, which was so exciting.

- Maybe you were in the movie the whole time and you just figured it out.

- But I love them.

They're my children.

Like, I don't have children, so they're my children.

- So two of them in particular, Bowen Yang and Awkwafina, are really extraordinary talents, right?

Like, it's amazing to see, finally, in a way that I would describe kind of boringly as mainstream.

Like, they're in everything.

They're around all.

And it's just great that we've gotten to a point now where that's just the case, right?

Yeah.

I love it.

- It's terrific.

So how else, in your mind, over these years, has comedy changed?

I suspect that performing has changed, venues have changed, audiences have changed, and the process of being on the road, how happens is probably different.

- Well, there's a lot of it that remains the same though.

- Okay, so talk about that.

- The relationship that you have with the audience when you perform is actually the same.

The one thing that is markedly different is that we all consume news and current events the same way.

So that's the thing that's different, is that we can make jokes of things that happened that day and everybody's gonna know.

- Everybody gets it.

Right.

Like, everybody today, we're working on O.J.

material.

We're all trying, like, what do we do?

What do we do?

I don't know.

- Do you have a good O.J.

joke for your show tonight?

- I'm just happy.

- Well, apparently you do have a good joke: there it is.

- I don't really know what's, you know, I'm not sure what's gonna come from that, but I'm just thrilled.

(audience laughing) - I wanna ask you about what, I wanna ask you about, that's funny, I'm sorry, I wanna ask you about what the streaming services have meant to comedy.

It seems to me that, in a way that was not obvious to me at least on the front end of this, that comedy has been an essential or the essential part of the streaming-service experience.

Now, when I learn about a comedian, it's almost because, Netflix special or the equivalent of it.

This is a good thing for you, in the sense that it's a terrific method of distributing your work.

- Yes, because you have a longer relationship with an audience, that they can get to know you better.

Because the way that we used to consume comedy before was in five-minute pieces.

Like in "The Tonight Show" or any of the late-night talk shows.

Or even like the big "Evening at the Improv."

You'd see five minutes of like 10 comedians.

That was like a long time ago.

But similarly, like we just had five minutes of people, and now you have an hour of people, which is great.

- And so now someone like John Mulaney or someone like Jerrod Carmichael, just to name two people who have been fixtures on the streaming services, they now become big stars almost instantly, as a result of this mechanism for us seeing them, that just didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago, right?

It's completely transformed everything.

- It's wonderful.

- So you've done a lot of things over your time in show business.

You've been a comedian, obviously, and you still are, you're performing.

How many nights a year are you on the road performing?

Oh, probably, about a couple of times a week.

So I don't know how many- - So more than 100?

- Yeah.

More than 100, for sure.

- And is that down from before?

- No, it's always remained about the same.

- Yeah.

And that's a good number for you.

- It's a good number.

- You're not tiring of this yet.

- No, because if I don't perform, it's really like you're an athlete.

If you don't perform, if you don't do it, you really get out of shape.

You get really off your game, and you don't wanna do that.

It's too risky.

So you have to keep going.

And I'm also in menopause, so I don't remember things.

I'm like real bad.

Like, what am I doing?

Why am I doing this?

Like, you know, you have to keep on it.

Yeah, so performing that many nights or shows, it helps.

So so you're doing that.

Also, you have been a consequential actress.

Like, that's another part of this.

And people assume, well, that's just a natural outgrowth of being... No, you're really good.

Like, where have you been?

- Thank you.

- I actually remember one of the hardest times I laughed at "30 Rock."

- Oh yes.

- Was when you were first Kim Jong-il and then Kim Jong Un later.

(audience laughing) And you got an Emmy nomination for that, right?

And I remember staring at Kim Jong-il the first time going, "That's Margaret Cho.

You have to be kidding me."

God, that was brilliant.

- Thank you.

- How did that happen?

Tina Fey just asked me to do it.

And it just made sense, you know?

And it was a really exciting thing to do.

And, you know, I really love her and I really love that show, so it was great to be on it.

- I mean, that was a really great show.

It holds up actually too.

- It holds up.

But the weird thing about that show is 'cause everybody's such a big star, that nobody does your scenes with you.

So you're doing it with their double.

So if it's Alec Baldwin, you just see the double.

- Because, in fact, those characters were, I have to believe, with Alec Baldwin at least, in some scenes, right?

Was there not, but it was the double.

- The guest star, you're working with a double.

They're in it, and you're in it with them.

But then when they shoot your coverage, they're gone.

- Amazing.

- It's so amazing.

So all of it is done, you know, with Tracy Morgan It was all done with the double.

And so it was weird to see it come together, 'cause I'm like, "Oh, who did this?"

- And could you have imagined, going into it, that it was gonna have this much...

I mean that performance, that portrayal, still years later people are talking about how great it was.

It's kind of great.

- Yeah, it's great, 'cause it was also only 90 seconds of screen time (laughs).

- Right, an Emmy nomination for 90 seconds of screen time.

Very efficient, Margaret.

- I mean, really.

- Excellent work.

- Excellent.

- Amazing.

So I mentioned "Fire Island," which was a great movie, and you've done other things like that as well.

Do you enjoy acting as much as you enjoy comedy?

Is it different muscles that you're exercising?

What is it?

- Yes.

Yes, and it's also similar.

But it's something that I really love, and I love to go back and discover it.

And it's, again, a very mysterious art form.

I'm still constantly learning about it.

And I really love it.

- So I wanna talk about the third thing you've done, for our time together, now the rest of our time, maybe we'll come back to comedy at the very end, and that is you have been very active out in the world, speaking your mind.

No surprise, right?

Anybody who's watched you over time, you don't hold back.

The world to me right now seems to be in one of those 'the cruelty is the point' modes.

And I just wonder how you process all this.

Because you've been, again, very outspoken on behalf of the various communities you belong to, AAPI community.

You've been absolutely an advocate for women in all ways and in all levels.

The LGBTQ community, you have been on the forefront of the rights for gays and lesbians, transgender Americans.

We're in a pretty bad spot right now, in my opinion.

I want you to talk about what you see out there and how you keep going at this.

- Well, I think like what's really amazing is to see like how the queer community in particular has been able to rise above our own pandemic, to rise above our own leaders being assassinated, to rise above so much.

So we've seen the bad things, and so we've been able to rise above it.

And I think, again, now we have another challenge of coming together to protect gay kids, trans kids, nonbinary kids.

We're here to like protect our youth, which I think is really a new challenge.

And it's also a call to action for us to step into our role as elders.

So I'm looking to all of the gay community.

It's like we gotta own the fact that we are the elders, and that's what my goal is now.

But we're combating a lot of hate: hatred towards all sorts of minorities.

- You know, we had the horrible killings of people in the AAPI community a couple of years ago.

It feels like it just skated past.

And I know that the news environment these days, you know, is like a fire hose turned up to the highest setting.

Like, it's possible something horrible happens, and then five minutes later something else horrible happens and it pushes it away.

But we have to remember that these things are happening around the country all the time, and we have to be focused, pay attention.

- Yes.

- That really the thing.

- Yes, the thing about the violence towards Asians happened because of the nature of jokes around COVID.

So it's also the power of when you're using jokes to hurt people or dehumanize people.

And so that's where I think, that's where it becomes very tricky.

So, you know, you wanna be really conscious of comedy as a power that can be used negatively.

- You know, the intentional dehumanization of people through that is one thing, but worse to me is the careless and thoughtless dehumanization.

Like, there are some people who make those jokes knowing exactly what they're doing, and there are other people who just don't even give it a second thought.

- Well, because it's casual.

And that's where that's really dangerous.

- Yeah, so just in the couple of minutes we have left, let us indeed come back to comedy.

So who's funny now?

- There's so many amazing people.

Sabrina Wu is my child.

They are a amazing nonbinary Asian American comedian who really is just amazing.

They're described as the Asian Jack Black.

- Okay, let me think about that for a second, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

(audience laughing) - Like the real Kung Fu Panda.

(audience laughing) The joy that- - By the way, probably not the first time that you've made that joke, but that was good.

But that was good.

I like that.

- But they're really great.

- Well, Ali Wong I think is- - Right, so let's talk about "Beef" and let's talk about, you know, it's Ali Wong's world; we're just living in it at the moment, right?

- I mean, she's somebody that I am continually impressed by.

And for the longest time, I was the only Asian woman who had a comedy special.

It took 20 years for me to see another Asian woman doing it, and it was Ali Wong.

So finally could sit back and be an audience member.

And it was so empowering for me.

I love her.

I love "Beef."

I got very stressed out when Steven's eating the Burger King.

It's so scary.

It just gave me so much pride to see them win the awards and just do so well.

It's amazing.

- Anybody else, you think?

I mean, I'm just curious about what you see, because your taste is so specific and so good, that if you recommend something, I'm gonna like write it down and go off- - Oh yeah, well, Joel Kim Booster, who was also in "Fire Island," is a really just incredible, funny comedian/writer.

He's just so brilliant.

I'm always trying to get him to write more installments of "Fire Island."

We need a prequel, we need a sequel, we need a multiverse.

- Well, the thing is, it was successful.

I mean, it is something that you could see could spawn a franchise.

- Yes.

- And the world we're living in these days, we don't like anything as much as we like a franchise.

- Yes, it's a perfect franchise.

So I think a gay summer movie is what everybody needs.

- Okay.

So that's great.

What are you gonna do next?

What's the big thing on your radar screen next?

- Next is I'm actually doing some acting.

I have some movies that are about to come out.

So everything's been sort of held up and everything's kind of waiting 'cause of the strike.

- Writers' strike kind of was a 'hold, please' moment, right, for a lot of stuff.

- So we were all sort of waiting.

But I have a couple movies that are coming out.

I have a Broadway play that I wrote.

I spent 10 years writing it.

- It's called?

- It's called "Mommy."

It's a show about my mother, which I wrote.

And I play her and I play her two sisters.

And it's a show that's about her story coming to America.

- Amazing.

- And so it's a big project for me.

It's kind of like when Hal Holbrook plays Abraham Lincoln; it's like my Abraham Lincoln, but it's my mom.

So it's gonna be a very historical event.

- I Love that.

Well, we started with your parents and we end with your mom.

This feels like a good time to stop.

Margaret, congratulations on everything you've done, and it's been a treat to get to talk to you.

- Thank you.

- Margaret Cho.

(audience applauding) Thank you all.

We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- Bill Hicks is like the best comedian that we always look to and say, "Oh, that's the best comedian."

He would say your material is what you fall back on.

You gotta go out there and have no script, have nothing.

You have to just work and trust that it's going to be there.

So that's what we're aspiring to.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" is provided in part by: HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Christine and Philip Dial.

(gentle music)