Interview With Margaret Cho

AE: Much of your fan base is in the gay community. Were they supportive of you from the start?
MC: Even before I did comedy, I've always had this wonderful connection with gay men. They really saved my life when I was a little girl. My gay friends got me through everything. Then when I started performing, I started working at gay clubs. I built my work, my whole act, through working at gay bars and gay comedy nights. The gay community has been so important in my evolution as a person and as a performer.

AE: Who were influences when you started getting into comedy? You mentioned performing in gay clubs like Bette Midler. Was she someone you looked up to?
MC: She's somebody I look up to still. She's a wonderful performer and I love her story, how she did come up through the bath houses. And she would do these shows with all of these guys in towels. She's definitely somebody that was a big role model.

Whoopi Goldberg. Rosie O'Donnell helped me a lot when I was starting. She gave me a lot of stage time and helped me figure out what I was doing. Brett Butler was very influential and helpful. Roseanne — tremendous influence — Sandra Bernhard and Richard Pryor. I have a lot of influences

AE: In one of your upcoming episodes, you perform gay marriages in San Francisco. What was the experience like?
MC: It was incredible. … I was deputized in the mayor's office and became a deputy marriage commissioner. I was able to marry gay couples. It was so beautiful. I married two men and two women.

It was really amazing because normally, when we talk about gay marriage, it's always about like, "Why don't we have this right?" It's always [about] anger. So much anger goes into it because we're so angry that we don't have this right. We're so angry that we're not being acknowledged as equal citizens by the government. It's so infuriating.

But when you actually go down and perform the ceremonies, and you say "spouses for life," which is what they say [instead of husband and wife], it's beautiful. You know, the whole time everybody was crying. I even start tearing up about that now. It was so profound what the right of marriage can really do for a couple. The fact that we have this now in California is such a beautiful blessing. The gift of being able to preside over these ceremonies is huge, and I am so proud to be able to do that and I hope to be able to do lots more couples in the future.

AE: As we're sitting here, I noticed you're a lot more demure in person, but on stage you're notoriously very loud and outspoken. Where is the dividing line? When is it you being you?
MC: I developed that persona because as a standup comic, when I would go onstage, people would not listen. So I had to really combat people's expectations of what somebody who looked like me would talk about. I had to be super strong and super outrageous and loud and really get 'em.

My natural personality is not really like that, although I can be like that in a social setting. But that's sort of how I developed my stage persona, because I had to really change people's opinions about what the show was.

AE: What's your take on young Asian Americans referring to themselves as "bananas" [Asian on the outside, but white on the inside].
MC: I think it's in the head. I don't know, it might be a real thing. I mean I know quite a few self-proclaimed bananas. I think it's an interesting thing to identify as. I feel like being Asian American is sort of a new identity, because this is almost like the first generation of being Asian American in this country right now. We sort of try to struggle with defining who we are exactly. So these definitions like banana to me [are] interesting because it's like, why take it as a negative thing? I think it's a positive thing.