Margaret Cho

Comedian. Actor. Musician. Advocate. Entrepreneur. Artist. Margaret Cho is smart, she’s funny, she’s courageous, she’s outrageous, she’s charming, she’s provocative, she’s fearless, she’s raw, she’s honest, she roots for the underdog. She is the underdog.

 

Margaret was born and raised in San Francisco, an experience that helped to shape her worldview. She knew she was funny enough to try stand-up at age 14. Soon after, Margaret won a contest to open for Jerry Seinfeld, prompting a move to Los Angeles and work on the college comedy circuit. She performed over 300 concerts within two years. Arsenio Hall introduced her to late night audiences, Bob Hope put her on a prime time special and justlikethat, Margaret Cho became a household name.

 

Like other comedians of the time, she was soon offered a network show. Her groundbreaking ABC sitcom, All-American Girl premiered in 1994, and while producers said they wanted to work with her because she was a non-conformist Korean American woman with liberal views, they also wanted her to tone it down for television. “For fear of being too “ethnic,” the show got so watered down that by the end, it was completely lacking in the essence of what I wanted to accomplish.”

 

In 1999, her groundbreaking Off-Broadway one-woman show, I’m The One That I Want, toured to national acclaim and was turned into both a best-selling book and feature film of the same name. After her experience with All-American Girl, Margaret made sure she would only have to answer to herself, staying in charge of the distribution and sales of her film, an unusual move at the time. In 2001, Margaret launched Notorious C.H.O., a smash-hit 37-city national tour that culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. 

 

In 2003, Margaret began her third sold-out national tour, Revolution, heralded as “Her strongest show yet” by Chicago Sun Times and earning her a Grammy nomination for Comedy Album of the Year. In 2005, she released the live comedy film Assassin, which premiered in select theatres and on the then trailblazing LGBT premium channel, Here! TV.

 

Margaret returned to television in 2008 with the VH1 series, The Cho Show. Describing it as a ‘reality sitcom,’ Margaret said at the time, “It’s the closest I’ve been able to come to what I do as a comic on TV.” The aptly titled Beautiful tour followed, exploring the good, bad and ugly in the world of beauty and the marketers who try to shape our world-view. 

 

In 2009, Margaret nabbed a co-starring role in the dramedy series Drop Dead Diva, which aired for six seasons on Lifetime. Margaret memorably participated in 2010’s Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars, performing a dance number in a gay-pride-supporting rainbow dress during a time when there was a rise in suicides among gay youth due to bullying. 

 

2010 culminated in another high, a second Comedy Album of the Year Grammy Award nomination for Cho Dependent, her incredibly funny music album. Featuring collaborations with Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird, Grant Lee Phillips, Tegan & Sara, Ben Lee and more, the album received critical acclaim, not only for the topics tackled, but also for Margaret’s musicianship. In 2011, Margaret released the live concert film of Cho Dependent, shot at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, GA.

 

Margaret spent whatever free time she had crafting a new stand-up show, MOTHER, which she took across America and Europe in 2012. According to Margaret, “MOTHER offered an untraditional look at motherhood and how we view maternal figures and strong women in queer culture.”

 

Margaret’s creative side moved full speed ahead with an Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy nomination for playing Kim Jong II on 30 Rock. 2015 also brought Margaret back to the stand-up stage, where she filmed PSYCHO at the historic Gramercy Theatre in New York City. 

Margaret put out her second studio album, American Myth, in 2016 on her Clownery label, earning her a third Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine named her one of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics, calling her “the sort of funny, sex-positive feminist and LGBT activist younger comics continue to look up to.” 

 

Her 2018 Fresh off the Bloat tour was shuttered by Covid, but as soon as she was able to get back out on stage, she did. Margaret kicked off 2019 as the Poodle on the first season of The Masked Singer on FOX, appeared in an episode Law & Order: SVU and was in an episode of HBO’s critically acclaimed series High Maintenance. In 2020, Margaret appeared in three films –Faith Based, also starring Seinfeldalum Jason Alexander, Friendsgiving, with Kat Dennings and Malin Akerman, and in Netflix’s first major animated film, the acclaimed Over the Moon.

 

In June of 2021, Netflix released the hit rom-com Good on Paper, starring Iliza Shlesinger with Margaret co-starring as her best friend. Her 2022 appearances included guest starring roles on Season 2 of The Flight Attendant (HBO Max), Season 2 of Hacks (HBO Max) and two Netflix is a Joke comedy specials: Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration and Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlin: Ladies Night Live. Probably the biggest splash of that year was her role as “Erin” in HULU’s smash Fire Island alongside Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster.

 

2023/24 has found Margaret, well, everywhere. She guested on Amy Schumer’s Life with Beth as well as the Ryan Murphy hit Doctor Odyssey and was part of the ensemble cast of the Netflix doc Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution. A who’s who of incredible comedians, the documentary shares the history of LGBTQ+ stand-up and its importance as an instrument for social change over the past five decades.

 

Margaret’s latest film, All That We Love, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, with Margaret earning rave reviews. The Hollywood Reporter called the film “poignant and lovely.”  Margaret was also named the Vanguard Artist-in-Residence for Manhattan’s famed Joe’s Pub. This prestigious recognition singles out “an iconic artist who has significantly influenced the artistic community of Joeʼs Pub and American culture at large.” 

 

Remarkably, she also managed to film a series and another movie. Margaret stars as “Wasp,” one of the “Gray Sisters” (alongside Sandra Bernhard and Kristen Schaal) in Season 2 of Disney’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians as well as in Gregg Araki’s thriller I Want Your Sex, also starring Olivia Wilde and Charli XCX.

 

Margaret has also developed a new solo show, Mommy, A One Woman Cho, which is noted for being her first work of fiction. “My new show, Mommy, is a completely fictional autobiography of my mother I have written for the stage. You can lie in plays but not standup comedy, so I’m super excited for my Mommy fan fiction era.” The play debuted in July 2024 to a sold-out audience at Marist College. 

 

If that wasn’t enough, the end of 2024 brings new music from Margaret. The first single, Lucky Gift – also the album’s title - gives a taste of things to come before the February 14, 2025, release on her Clownery Records label. Of the single she says, “This is my power pop anthem and the first song I wrote on my mandotar (a double neck mandolin-guitar). It is giving gay pop in the best way and it’s my favorite song I’ve ever written.”

 

Margaret continues to staunchly supports the causes that are important to her: anti-racism, anti-bullying and gay rights. 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 (NOW). Margaret 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(NGLTF), the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), PFLAG, She Rocks Awards and LA Pride. 

 

Oh yeah, one more adjective. 

 

Margaret Cho is unstoppable.