Margaret Cho on Stand-Up, Queer Comedy, and Mental Health in These Clusterf*ck Times
Margaret Cho is many things: a legend, a queer icon, a tireless activist for the causes she believes in. Over the years, Cho has become an actor, singer, burlesque performer, and advocate for anti-racism, anti-bullying, and queer rights. Her legendary stand up career that has yielded 10-plus comedy tours, television appearances (The Masked Singer, High Maintenance), film roles (Fire Island, Good on Paper) podcasting (“The Margaret Cho”), and beyond. But for so many of us, Cho is simply the funniest, most reliably brilliant and outrageous comedian of all time.
Margaret Cho is back on tour this summer, kicking things off with appearances at the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival in Los Angeles. Cho is headlining a solo show at the Wiltern on May 6 and will be part of Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration alongside Eddie Izzard, Billy Eichner, Sandra Bernhard, Tig Notaro, Wanda Sykes, and many more.
We got the chance to talk to Margaret about her enduring love of stand-up comedy, the queer comedy scene, and her upcoming role in the gay romantic comedy Fire Island. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
THE MARY SUE: You’ve been doing stand-up since you were a teenager. How has your relationship to comedy changed over the years?
MARGARET CHO: Well, it’s really been great, you know. It’s something that I think is the biggest constant in my life, it’s the one thing that I’ve always done and always come back to. I’m just very easy-going with it, it’s like the thing that I feel very excited to do. And after having this break of not being able to tour, really for the last few years during the pandemic, it’s just amazing to go back out and do shows. I think everybody is really excited to go out and see comedy, they’re excited to be out and seeing live shows, so I think live entertainment has been so missed, and I really missed it, so it’s really nice to be back.
TMS: So you’re going to be in Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration, and you’ve been doing queer comedy showcases for years, dating back to the True Colors tours with Cyndi Lauper. How has the queer comedy scene changed over the years?
MC: Well there’s always been queer women in comedy, that’s the one thing that queer women have always had a space in, is comedy. My introduction to comedy and throughout my life in comedy, I just really love it, and all the people performing are old friends of mine, people that I never get to see, whether its Wanda Sykes or Tig Notaro or Sandra Bernhard, all of these amazing people. I’m just thrilled that we all get to be a part of this, so that’s really exciting.
TMS: So next month you’re starring in Hulu’s gay romantic comedy Fire Island. What was it like working with Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster, this generation of queer comedians who grew up inspired by you?
MC: I loved it. They’re amazing, we had such a good time making the movie, and we just laughed and were very excited to be out on the island. We didn’t shoot the entire film on the island, but we were there for quite a lot of it. … there was a lot of traveling, there were two hurricanes, there was, of course, the constant pressure of living and doing this in a pandemic.
But they’re so talented, and outside of my dressing room every day there were full recreations of Real Housewives monologues. It was like “Real Housewives in the Park”, like “Shakespeare in the park”, like complete reenactments of entire Real Housewives episodes, like word for word. There were some pretty incredible dynamic interpretations of Tiffany Pollard’s monologues from I Love New York or pretty much any of the VH1 reality shows of the early 2000s. They’re such great fun people, they’re such hilarious comedians, Bowen and Joel and Matt [Rogers], everybody, and Conrad [Ricamora]. We all came together and we all became very close. I really love them.
TMS: So you’ve dominated so many spaces: comedy, acting, fashion, music. Is there anything you haven’t done yet that you’re dying to do?
MC: You know, I just really love doing stand-up comedy, so to me everything I do is kind of filtered through that. I’m lucky, I’m able to do more, and as I get older, my platform gets to be more diverse, so I just want to keep going.
TMS: You’ve always been so open and honest about mental health in your stand-up. How did you find a way to de-stress and center yourself during this clusterfuck of the past few years?
MC: Well, it’s been interesting because its made me realize how little time I’ve spent at home over this 30+ years of being a comedian. So getting a chance to actually sit and enjoy this home that I never got to spend time in, I built a few gardens. I have a fruit garden, a vegetable garden, a carnivorous plant bog, which I really love. They’re in the area between pet and plant, and it’s very alive and really interesting, so these plants require a lot of observation, so it’s a very different experience in terms of plant parenthood, and I really love that. I have 30 bird feeders outside my house, so it’s like I built a whole sustainable ecosystem with my animals and the birds and the plants. It’s really actually very nice, so I was able to go into the world of the home. I think that mental health for everyone has been so stressful, but when you can figure out a way to nurture yourself I think that’s really positive and really important.
If you’re in the LA area you can catch Margaret Cho this week at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival and on tour across the country this summer.
(image: Albert Sanchez)
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