Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, filed January 17 2015
Fresh off her appearance as a fake North Korean journalist on the Golden Globes this past Sunday, Margaret Cho is on a roll.
The day before, she debuted a new weekly show on TLC "All About Sex," a subject she is quite intimate.
And in December, the New York Times wrote a lovely piece about the veteran stand-up comic's efforts to raise funds for homeless people in San Francisco in honor of the late Robin Williams.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Cho, who spent large chunks of time in Atlanta from 2009 to 2014 shooting Lifetime's "Drop Dead Diva," said she's not sure when she'll be back in town but given how many acting opportunities are now available here, she figures she'll return at some point. And surely, she could always do a stand-up show here if she wants.
She's plenty busy as it is. Once a week, she is now getting to gab about one of her favorite subjects: sex. Her sexual predilections with both men and women have been a staple of stand-up act for two decades. As a result, she has become a darling of the gay and lesbian crowd. She was also in a polyamorous marriage with a man for 16 years.
Cho, 46, is the host with three others who provide different perspectives on the subject: 44-year-old comic Heather McDonald, who is married with three kids but didn't have sex until she was 27; 41-year-old Marissa Jaret Winokur, an actress who is married with a son but seldom has sex; and Dr. Tiffany Davis Henry, an Atlanta-based sex therapist and wife with a baby girl.
The first episode on January 10 featured subjects such as sex with co-workers, whether wives barter chores for sex with their husbands (yes!) and a wife who tried to have sex with her husband every day for a month.
Marissa was not excited by the prospect. For her, once a month was enough.
"I'm not grossed out about sex. I just don't care," Marissa said.
"You're grossed out," Cho said.
Since this is basic cable, there are potentially some restrictions but Cho said, besides Carlin's seven words, she isn't sure. "We're an educational show giving advice," she said. "We're not necessarily showing it. We're talking about it. We'll have to wait and see."
Cho said like many children of immigrant Korean parents, sex was never brought up when she was a child. At the same time, "I was never taught to avoid the subject either. I was raised around a lot of different kinds of sexuality. My father owned a gay bookstore. All the employees were gay and lesbian. I was raised by a lot of different types of people. It was Koreans, gay punk rockers and lesbians."
She began doing stand-up as a teen-ager but said she didn't really begin addressing sexual subjects until her early 20s.
"Its a humanizing and grounding topic," she said. "There's something very earthy about someone talking about it naturally. That's what I wanted to cultivate about myself as an adult and performer. I always wanted to be every close to the bone the way I speak and live."
I talked to her on Tuesday, less than 48 hours after her Golden Globes appearance. "I think it was a good message on free speech," she said. "And Meryl Streep kissed me!"
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
She said Golden Globes co-host Tina Fey (who had Cho play Kim Jong II on "30 Rock") invited her to come up with a different character. "I wrote all the jokes," Cho said. "It was very. It was a real hit [in the room.]"
Cho received a fair amount of negative feedback in the Twitter-verse, with some folks accusing her of being racist.
"There is so much stuff that is so anti-Asian out there in comedy," she said. "So when I do anything, it's weird and creepy and racist. They don't acknowledge that I am Korean. My family is from North and South Korea. That's my true heritage. My Korean name is the same one that King Jong-il's production company. I have a very North Korean name. My family has been in labor camps, people we haven't seen or hear from in decades. I actually have a personal stake in all this."
She is used to getting blow back. She said she got a lot crap when she got divorced- and even when she fed the homeless.
Cho was a fan of "The Interview," especially Randall Park, who played Kim Jong-Un in the comedy. "That made the movie for me," she said.
Park also stars in an upcoming ABC sitcom "Fresh Off the Boat," the first scripted program featuring a largely Asian-American cast since Cho's "All American Girl" two decades ago.
She has seen the pilot and thought it was great. "The dream is realized," she said. "I'm so proud. I feel like I did it -when I didn't."
TV preview
"All About Sex," 11 p.m., Saturdays, TLC
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