Korean-American Margaret Cho Stands Up for Her Brand of Comedy

Comedy club audiences never know what to expect when, after a succession of male performers, Margaret Cho takes the stage. After all, there just aren’t that many Korean-American women stand-up comics.

This first-generation San Franciscan is a second generation comic. Her father Seung Hoon Cho is an San Francisco-based joke writer for the Korean market. Cho, 24, doesn’t think she learned her trade at his knee, however. “We never laugh at each other’s jokes,� Cho said of the generational and cultural barriers between them. “I just don’t understand them.�

Cho first tried acting but switched to stand-up four years ago when she saw the few roles offered Asian women. “So here I study drama for 10 years and audition for a movie. My only speaking line was “Rambo! No!� she quipped on Christmas Bob Hope television special “Ladies of Comedy.�

She realized she could only find an audience for her comedy if she found her own venues and made her own show. That led her to try stand-up.

Cho’s dad was horrified when she started appearing in nightclubs. He wasn’t upset by the nightclub atmosphere, she noted. “He just wanted me to be a writer because it’s much more respectable.� With her recent appearance on Lifetime’s “Six Comics in Search of a Generation� and a just-taped Showtime “Pair of Jokers,� Cho was right to follow her instincts.

Even her Dad was won over to her stand-up work when Cho was made an honorary member of that old show-biz fraternity The Friars Club. She and her father feel a real connection to “the show business of yore,� Cho said. “All those guys from ‘Playboy After Dark’ are heroes at my house. And I was sitting at the same table with them!�

Cho may yet fulfill her father’s dream of her becoming a writer. She’s working on a sitcom pilot based on her stand-up. “I see 1993 as the year to be as unapologetically me as possible,� she said. “That’s were the real comedy comes from.�