Margaret powers through adversity one joke and song at a time

Margaret Cho has racked up five Grammy Award nominations and performed stand-up for more than four decades, but there’s still one stage on her wish list. “I would like to do something high-stakes like a show that takes place before they sent gladiators to fight at The Colosseum,” she joked when asked what epoch she’d pick to perform in during a phone interview.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be the best for my health, but I would ask for a guarantee that I could leave before getting eaten by an animal.” Cho may have missed her shot to perform for Roman emperors by a millennium or two, but she will be on stage for the Belly Laughs Comedy and Food Festival. She’ll be joined by more than 30 stand-up Asian comedians, including Hasan Minhaj, Kumail Nanjiani, a surprise guest and two recent additions: Bobby Lee and Vickie Wang.

The event, billed as a celebration of Asian-American culture, will take place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on July 12 and 13. In addition to laughs, the fest will also showcase more than 20 of LA’s Asian restaurants at Peacock Place and Chick Hearn Plaza — the newly renovated space that connects Crypto.com Arena to LA Live. “I think the festival is a special idea,” she said.

“I love all of the different Asian food options, especially those we have in Los Angeles. We’re fortunate to have so many great Asian restaurants. There are also so many great Asian comedians that are going to be there, and it’s all my favorites and friends, so we’re going to have a great time.”

Cho has long championed the representation of Asian and Pacific Islanders in media dating back to the beginning of her career. The comedian and actor starred in “All American Girl” in the mid-’90s, a sitcom that centered on an Asian-American family for the first time in network television history and was loosely based on Cho’s own experiences. While the series was ambitious, it also drew criticism from the East Asian community for concerns about stereotyping, and show producers often made remarks about Cho’s character, either being too Asian or not Asian enough. After its 21-episode run, poor reviews and low ratings, the show was canceled. However, Cho’s ambitious vision for a sitcom centered on Asian-Americans inspired other TV shows, such as “Fresh off the Boat” and “Kim’s Convenience.”

“It’s so different now because we had no representation at all back then,” Cho said. “There was this misunderstanding or fallacy that we somehow didn’t want to be seen, or didn’t have any interest in being portrayed in television or movies,” she said, adding that it was bizarre that society mistook the lack of visibility as a decision the Asian American community was making, rather than the other way around.

“I’m grateful that we now have a little more representation. It’s not a lot, but it’s more, which is really good, but we still need more. We’re really represented in comedy, which is really exciting because it’s my industry. I’m really proud that I was able to inspire so many people to do this, too.”

Cho added that she’s seen more aspects of Asian cultures, from music and food, become more widely accepted. She recalled pulling out her packed lunch at a mostly white school, where she’d had foods like squid that drew side-eye from her classmates for being outside the norm.

“It’s so weird how much society now really embraces Asian food as exciting, delicious and sought-after because back then, it was just weird and something that others didn’t want a part of,” she said.

The comedian grew up near the Ocean Beach neighbourhood in San Francisco, which she described as a racially diverse neighbourhood. She credits her parents for teaching her that no matter how different people are, they are stronger when united. It was among the reasons she and her family sought to live alongside Black, Latino and other Asian minorities wherever they moved. “There is an idea that a minority is somehow less than, and we have to conquer those myths, even when they reside within ourselves,” Cho said.

Tribune News Service