How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Margaret Cho - They Told Me I Was Too Fat To Play Myself

Starting point is 00:00:00 This month, we are partnering with Pink Lady Apples. When I was a kid, I was around gay men and lesbians and drag queens and people transitioning, people getting full-body tattoos. This is in the 70s. That's why it was so upsetting when I started to kidnap people off of the street, people who look like me, people who are just like me, who are also all-American. And it was so disturbing. I started taking Fenn Fenn, which was like a 90s diet drug that was like a speed.

Starting point is 00:00:34 But you're being told that you don't look right to play yourself. What do you even say about that? You know, like you're too fat to be you. If anyone listening or watching this is going through some of the things that you've described, addiction, disordered eating, and they feel like there is no hope, what would you say to them? Margaret Cho is a pioneering comedian, actor, musician and advocate who describes herself as the patron saint of outsiders. Her parents were Korean immigrants who moved to America from Seoul in 1964.

Starting point is 00:01:13 They opened a bookshop in San Francisco where Cho says she was raised by drag queens. It was a childhood punctuated by both enlightenment and trauma, and both have gone on to shape Cho's stand-up career. which she started with typical precocity at the age of 14. She won a comedy contest to open for Jerry Seinfeld, moved to L.A. in her 20s, and soon garnered a large and loyal following. Earlier this year, Vogue named Cho

Starting point is 00:01:43 as one of their nine best female comedians of all time. Cho's comedy is famed for its blistering humour, fearlessness and acerbic political insight, qualities much in evidence on her latest tour, Cho Ligarchy. Alongside comedy Cho has starred in TV sitcoms, appeared in films such as Fire Island and Face Off, and guested on everything from Sex and the City to 30 Rock. The latter earned her an Emmy nomination for her impersonation of Kim Jong-il. She's also a five-time Grammy-nominated musician, and her latest album, Lucky Gift, is, as one reviewer put it, a power pop

Starting point is 00:02:23 romp. Offstage, Cho is a leading voice in the anti-racism movement stop Asian hate. She was bullied as a child and remembers wanting to look white. Despite her incredible success, these early experiences of shame have stayed with her. Shame is such an electric emotion, Cho says. It really ignites your history and gets to the core of who you are. I think that's vital as an artist and also it improves your art if you can somehow rise above it. Margaret Cho, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. What a great introduction.

Starting point is 00:03:04 Thank you. And I should really say Margaret Cho and Lucia. Lucia Katerina Cho. Oh, she's beautiful. Thank you. She is beautiful. For anyone listening to this rather than watching, Lucia is a stunning chihuahua, who's looking at me with such intelligence and compassion, and I love her. Yes. She's amazing.

Starting point is 00:03:22 She's a really amazing girl. Can she sense people's energies? I think so. Are there certain people that she doesn't like? No, I don't think she dislikes people. She'll just not pay any attention to them. Okay. If she senses something, she just kind of ignores them but moves on to people that she does like, which she obviously likes you.

Starting point is 00:03:43 I feel very flattered. Wonderful. It's very wonderful. I found that quote that you gave on shame riveting. Oh, thank you. It's so interesting to look at shame in that way as a kind of fuel to drive creativity and art. Are there things that still cause you shame today? Yeah, I mean, what I think might be shameful is not picking up dog poo.

Starting point is 00:04:08 That's your first failure. I know. The other day I didn't have a bag and I was really, really upset. And I went back to go pick up her poo and somebody had taken it. somebody had actually cleaned it up for me I thought there are angels but it's it's like that kind of stuff I find deeply shameful when you're unable to do something society really needs you to do also I hate it when people leave dog shit out in the street like it really bothers me and I will clean it up even if it's not hers so maybe somebody was also doing me a good turn because I've done it for so many

Starting point is 00:04:47 others. But yeah, something like that that I hate to see in life when I do it, that's something that would cause me shame. I'm fascinated by your childhood and I know you're asked about it a lot, but this connection and tension, I imagine, between the enlightenment of San Francisco and also your Korean parents and the kind of cultural sense of who you were and maybe there was a sense of wanting to be the quote unquote model minority and how those two things connected. Can you speak to us a little bit about that? Well, I think there were a lot of really opposing things

Starting point is 00:05:24 about my family and my family going into business with the gay community in San Francisco in the 70s because Korean culture is incredibly homophobic and patriarchal and it's so odd that they decided to have a business in the middle of the most bustling gay neighborhood at that time in San Francisco. So I think it has to do with vanity. My father's extremely handsome and was not acknowledged as that when he came to America in 1964 because he was just an immigrant

Starting point is 00:05:57 and they didn't look at immigrants as being handsome. And he was so crestfallen by the loss of that power until he went into the gay community where he got so much attention. Because the plain fact is that even though he was an immigrant, he was a beautiful man, which everybody took notice of. And I think these guys, they flattered him and, you know, wanted to sell their business anyway and flirted with him. And he was just totally seduced by it, loved it, and went into business with them, and kind of let go of all of the homophobia and kind of patriarchal nature that I think

Starting point is 00:06:40 he had been born in and around and kind of took to, kind of rejected all of that. So when I was a kid, I was around gay men and lesbians and drag queens and people transitioning, people getting full body tattoos. And this is in the 70s. So this is a very different kind of time. And it was really enriching, I guess. I mean, that's probably the word for it. It made me see a few things that gay is normal, tattoos are just like skin, and everybody is going to be okay. Hearing you talk about that childhood and now with your show Choligarchy, addressing what America is in 2025, that must be a cause of personal anguish for you. It's very hard because, you know, I was raised with a lot of the values that Harvey Milk was

Starting point is 00:07:38 talking about, Harvey Milk was the first openly elected gay official anywhere. And the people that work for my father were early supporters of his to be there for his assassination and to watch the rise after that of people overcoming that incredible, incredible tragedy. And then to then see gay marriage be legalized by the Supreme Court in 2015. It was just this incredible rise that you saw we did that. We actually made that happen. And then to see America now where they're covering up the rainbow flag, they're actually trying to classify the rainbow flag as a hate symbol. Not the swastika. The swastika is apparently not a hate symbol, according to Christenome. But the rainbow flag is. It's really painful. So the show that I'm doing now is really trying to put the administration, on um on i guess on notice like we're we're not we're not going to take this for for much longer and i feel like comedy actually had a lot to do with getting us into the situation with um a lot of comedians signing off on what trump was doing and applauding him just because they thought it was

Starting point is 00:08:59 funny or a laugh i don't think that any of them really seriously knew what would happen if he became president. I don't think any of them envisioned what's happening now or wanted what's happening now. But so I think that comedy got us into this. So comedy should get us out. I think that's such a sophisticated point. It might beware of the politician dressed as a joke. Right. Because it's not funny. It's like people's lives are not funny. You know, when you're starving children, and that's a joke to you, 42 million people going without food, and that's a joke to you. Like, that's not funny. You know, when you're separating families, when you're putting people in concentration camps and people are dying there, it's not a joke.

Starting point is 00:09:44 It's not, it's not about America first. There is no America first. This is not America. This is something entirely different. And whatever your industry is, you have to apply whatever part of it to resistance that you can. So it's like a war effort. So I think all comedians were now going and working towards a greater good, which I think is really, patriotic. There's this wonderful quote that you gave about the importance of humor. We are being

Starting point is 00:10:12 taken over by the richest people in the world, but the only thing they cannot afford is jokes at their expense. Yeah, that's true. Oh, so good. When was the first time you realized you were funny? You know what? I still don't know if I am. I kind of just am stabbing in the dark at whatever. I don't really know. But I do know that I do think differently. And I think that is appealing to some people sometimes. So I don't know if it's funny, but I know that I have a mind that will work in a circuitous way that can be amusing. But I don't know if that's actually funny. It's hard to define what funny actually is. Let's get into your failures because I want to give them enough time because they're so good. And one of the things I really appreciated was the lack of context. There was just a single

Starting point is 00:10:57 phrase. And I can't wait to get into the story. The first failure is getting your sitcom council. Yes. Is this the sitcom All-American? Yes. Okay. So tell us about how this sitcom came about. So I was lucky enough to be very, you know, very popular at a time in comedy where television

Starting point is 00:11:18 was really getting very successful in making television shows around comedians, whether that was like Jerry Seinfeld is the ultimate, but also Roseanne and Tim Allen and lots of different people like that. And so I was swept up in that. And because I was so different, because I was a young Asian American woman, it was really important for a studio to kind of get with me and develop a TV show. So I had a kind of an easy ride up to that point in getting the television show because they are all competing with each other. And the networks all wanted to see who would be different. And what's more different than somebody that's racially different, that somebody who's young, somebody who had a success as a comedian,

Starting point is 00:12:03 that they couldn't quite define, but they'd never seen it before. So they wanted to be a part of it. So I got this TV show. And then I realized, though, a lot of the thing, the way that I define failure is a personal mismanagement. I don't think that this is actually for me a failure because a lot of the things that happened that resulted in the cancellation of the show

Starting point is 00:12:25 were totally out of my hands. I was trying to do a television show in a space of, you know, other kind of TV-friendly families. I was never a TV-friendly comedian. They'd never shown my comedy a prime time. I was relegated to cable. I was a really foul-mouthed, very crass nightclub comedian.

Starting point is 00:12:47 So they couldn't show any of that on television. So they had to do their own interpretation of whatever that is. And also saddled with the idea of interpreting race in interpreting the other for such an inclusive format, which is sitcoms. Sitcoms are often about pairing the other with the familiar, and now you're totally going with the other. So how do we explain the life of the other? And the truth is we're not that other.

Starting point is 00:13:22 We're not that different, but it was the approach that I think the network took. We had special consultants from the university come to make sure that we were doing Asian right, which was because they saw consultants from NASA work on the television show, Third Rock from the Sun, which is a very popular sitcom at the time about aliens. So extraterrestrials equal immigrants.

Starting point is 00:13:49 That's what they thought. We want to get this right. This is 1994. Yes. This is right. Okay, okay, carry on. So they wanted to get it right. And so there was all these things that were miscalculations.

Starting point is 00:13:59 I wouldn't say they were miscalculations. mistakes or failures, but it was just a number of miscalculations and also an inherent need to want to explain Asian people to white people. That's kind of what it is. But the truth is you don't really have to explain. You could just have to show. So that's where I think the problem was. And you were in your 20s at this? I was 24. Okay. Was the title yours, All American Girl? I like the title because I still like the title because it was something that I've always felt and something that my parents would always say to me that you're you're all-American and you know it's why we came here it's why we endured what we did to come here it's so that you could be born here and you

Starting point is 00:14:50 could be all American and that's all we wanted for you and never having fit in in Korean culture never feeling like I belonged when I went back there to visit, I always hung on that truth. I am American. That's why it was so upsetting when I started to kidnap people off of the street, people who look like me, people who are just like me, who are also all-American. And it was so disturbing to witness that and realize this is a threat to the identity that I hold most. steer that I know is the essential truth of me. Tell me more about kidnapping people off the street. Well, ICE is, you know, taking people who look like immigrants right out of their places

Starting point is 00:15:38 of work, right out of their cars when they're waiting to pick up their children at school. They're taking them out of the Hyundai factory as they're advising people on how to do their jobs. You know, we're taking trained people who have emigrated specifically to, educate Americans on electric cars and they're being incarcerated, made to drink water off the floor, you know, and these are people who deserve to be here. They're legal immigrants. So when I see that, it's really scary to me because I'm like, well, what does then all-American mean at all? Yeah. Before we get back to the sitcom, I'd like to talk a little bit about that notion of,

Starting point is 00:16:27 of being American, but also being made to feel other at school. So I mentioned briefly in the introduction that you were bullied at school and that you wanted to be as white as the American actress, Laurie Lachlan. Yes, I mean, poor thing. Talk about how to fail. I know. What an awful experience she went through. Yes.

Starting point is 00:16:46 But what was that experience like for you at school? Do you think you still carry that pain? Yes, definitely. You carry the otherness with you as a kind of, it's a kind it's it's residual suffering that's still there and it existed out of you know kind of raised by television and never seeing a reflection of yourself and TV so then there's always a feeling of not belonging like there's always a feeling like I'm I wasn't meant to be here even if it's subtle even if it's unconscious you know you go around the world feeling invisible so you know for

Starting point is 00:17:24 me it was like learning to do comedy and learning to tell my story was a process of when, um, you know, Claude reigns in the movie, The Invisible Man, he actually, to see himself, he wraps bandages around himself so that he can be seen. So that was sort of me like learning to develop a comedy act so that I can learn how to be seen because I'd never seen anybody like me doing what I was doing. So I had to literally create the possibility of it in my mind. And, you know, that, that's what it is, like wrapping something around my invisible form to take shape. What a metaphor.

Starting point is 00:18:01 Is it true that your school bullies turned up once in the front row? Yes. Yes, it happened a few times. And they bought like special meet and greet tickets. And it's happened over the years. Because I've had quite a few bullies and I've had quite a few experiences. Or people who reach out on social media and want to say hi. And do you remember me?

Starting point is 00:18:22 And I never answer. I always say, no. I'm so sorry. I don't want to acknowledge them, even though they've lived in my memories in a horrifying way. I also don't want to validate that. Well, they made you feel invisible, so you're giving them invisibility back in a way. Right. Totally. So it's kind of a fair exchange, but it's also funny. Let's go back to All-American Girl. So you make this sitcom, it airs. What happens? Well, it was really not very well received by a critic. Also, I got a lot of criticism for being too fat, which was not something that I had really thought about, even.

Starting point is 00:19:05 I mean, I had always been fat. Like, I just was, and I kind of accepted that. But being a comedian, I thought it didn't matter. You know, you could just sort of be fat, and it wouldn't make a difference. And I was shocked to realize suddenly it did make a difference and that I had to lose a lot of weight. And so I became very focused on that. And I started taking Fen, which was like a 90s diet drug that was like a speed and a downer at the same time. So it was like, it's outlawed now because it killed people.

Starting point is 00:19:39 But I loved it. I lost a lot of weight really quickly. But I became totally focused on losing weight. I just, that became my goal rather than writing, rather than working on helping the writers. I actually wasn't even allowed in the writer's room. So it was more like, I couldn't write on the show, but I could help them or try to guide them. But we also were in such different genres because I'm a stand-up comedian and they were trying to write family sitcom comedy. So it was really difficult.

Starting point is 00:20:09 Was it the studio who was making you lose the weight? I think it was a combination of the, you know, comments that had been made in the press, also the tabloids, which was. were making up stories and writing up, like, articles about the chow-like-cho diet, which they had, like, an Asian-themed diet that I had gone on supposedly to lose weight because it was imperative, and it had, like, lots of rice. But it was very, yeah, it was very distressing. You know, I didn't realize that my fat was going to be such a, a huge problem.

Starting point is 00:20:54 And I imagine there's another layer as well, which is that you are playing yourself. Yeah. It's a sitcom based on your experiences, but you're being told that you don't look right to play yourself. Right. That's a huge, like, mind fuck.

Starting point is 00:21:10 Like, you can't, like, I don't even know what do you even say about that. You know, like, you're too fat to be you. But then their show is canceled and replaced by Drew Carey, because he's so thin but he actually is very much allowed to be himself

Starting point is 00:21:26 because he's a man and comedian and I feel like I have a lot in common with him in terms of just like well why couldn't this be a sitcom star I belong there just as much looking back on the 90s and that experience I listened to the podcast interview you did with Monica Lewinsky

Starting point is 00:21:45 and I thought it was so fascinating these two women two powerful women with these incredibly toxic experiences of body image in the 90s and how you have overcome that decade. How do you feel about your body now and how do you feel about the culture as it was then? Well, the culture as it was then was incredibly toxic.

Starting point is 00:22:07 You couldn't even live as a woman, as any kind of woman. I mean, it was just so restrictive. The way the beauty standard was, I mean, And it wasn't just like about being white. It was about being so thin, not even a healthy kind of thin. It was like you were encouraged to be just something that couldn't be, was impossible. And didn't feel good when you got there. I did get there a couple of times using drugs and starvation and it didn't feel good.

Starting point is 00:22:41 But yeah, Monica is incredible. I think she's undergone far more than I could even imagine. Still, even now, she has to go through it. Again, now, especially with Donald Trump sucking Bill Clinton's dick, you have a whole resurgence of bullying towards Monica, which is unfortunate because she, it shows the misogyny in society, but also it's allowed me to witness her strength, which is empowering to see. It's her resilience that is magnificent. She is amazing. She's been on how to fail before, and she taught me this thing that has changed how I think about life, that you can feel regret for something and it still be the right choice. Yeah. But your weight loss was so extreme that you went into kidney failure, is that right? Yeah, it was really awful and it was really damaging. And I still have some residual effects from it now, you know, more than 30 years on. You can really damage your body with starvation. Anorexia. That's what it is. It's anorexia. You can really.

Starting point is 00:23:45 damage your body. I didn't understand that. My fear now, having also lived through the 90s, albeit luckily not in the public eye, so I take my hat off to people like you who manage to survive it. We are all increasingly being taught to look like each other as women who are under constant scrutiny, whether it's through early facelifts or lots of injectables. We are now being encouraged to make ourselves thin again through the ready availability of weight loss jabs. And we all sound like each other because we're using chat GPT to write stuff. And it feels like the power in being human is in imperfection. It's in our flaws. That's our uniqueness. Right. And I feel like there's some conspiracy afoot to make us all powerless, ensuring that we lose that

Starting point is 00:24:34 uniqueness. Yeah. And we all just become this amoebic mass of sameness. Right. And I think you stand in direct opposition to all of that and I'm so grateful that you exist. Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's wonderful. But I think you're right. I think there is a kind of a homogenization of women. They want us to sort of all be the same so we can be easily controlled. Exactly. Because they've already

Starting point is 00:24:56 taken away our bodily autonomy with the overturn of Rovi Wade. So now if we could be somehow you know, homogenize where we sort of level all of our, you know, intense

Starting point is 00:25:12 desires and wants and individuality, then it's easier to also market to that kind of person. You know, it's all in a way to, you know, keep these billionaires' pockets lined. Yes. And the more we shrink ourselves, spoiler alert, the less physically powerful we become as this failure evidences. Of course. So just to draw this particular episode of your life to a close, it got, did the sitcom get cancelled? Yes. And are you, in a way, grateful for that?

Starting point is 00:25:44 Well, I think that what would have happened is if it had been a success, I probably would have fizzled out. Maybe I would have made a couple of movies at the end of the 90s, and then I would probably be living in Santa Barbara on a huge estate at this point. I might make a cookbook or so once a decade, and I would not have continued with my career as a comedian. I don't think. I don't think I would have done all the activism that I would have done. I would have led a different life, maybe one that would be perceived as metricly, the metrics of it would be more successful, but I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much. Fascinating answer.

Starting point is 00:26:23 No. Yes. It probably wouldn't have been as fulfilling. Right. And you've used this anger as a kind of fuel that has paved the way for future generation. Yes. And, you know, I know Bo and Yang, Ali Wong, they all pay tribute to you as they rightly should. They're my babies.

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Starting point is 00:29:23 Hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side. Your second failure, there's now a tone shift, is shitting your pants on stage. Right. So this is direct result of Fun Fun Fun. So I was taking a combination. of, even after the television show was canceled, I still thought, it's because of my weight.

Starting point is 00:29:46 You know, it's because my weight and I've got to figure out how to get down. And then they, you know, had outlawed Ben,

Starting point is 00:29:55 because it was killing people. And then so I had to find another drug because I can't possibly do it with diet and exercise. That's too hard. That sort of mentality was, you know,

Starting point is 00:30:03 in my head totally. So I started taking all these weird drugs. There was also foods that would move food through your body quickly, like Olestra or O'Lean, these somehow like weird, chemically produced fats that they could fry potatoes in that didn't leave any caloric dead. So you had like just the potato. Like it was a very, it's a very weird thing, but they would like, it's all these sweeteners that would make you just have diarrhea constantly.

Starting point is 00:30:37 like I just started eating only that and then taking these drugs that would remove the fat from the food that you ate because we thought I think in the late 90s and early 2000s fat was a problem I think like the weight also anorexic and diet culture this happened in the early 2000s so anorexic and diet culture worsened in the during Y2K there was something about it I don't know if it was the emergence of juicy tractsuits I don't want to blame that item of clothing thing, but I think it's like that mindset of girls with little chihuahuas and. Yes, big bags. Big bags and tiny bodies. Yes. Low slung jeans, very, very low cut jeans that somehow brought out a beast. You know, I don't want to blame people, but, you know, like Victoria Beckham and, you know, sort of the icons of the era, whether that's Paris Hilton or whoever, you know, they put forth a pretty impossible ideal. I mean, they probably naturally that thin, but, you know, I think a lot of people trying to get there. I was trying to get there and I was not. So I was taking all these weird drugs that would just make you shit.

Starting point is 00:31:45 And also, I wore a lot of white. And there was one time I was wearing all white at a show. And I was killing. I was doing really well. And I was almost at the end. And I started to shit out. And it was, I couldn't control it. it was starting to come out.

Starting point is 00:32:06 It was like, because it was all oil, it was just grease. Oh, my God. Because it was fat. You remove the fat from your, your food. You, all, all it comes out is this, and it looked like pepperoni grease that you blot on top of a pizza. It was orange. And think the pills that you took were orange. So it would sort of dye the oil, fat, and cling to it and push it out of your body.

Starting point is 00:32:27 So it started to stain, I know it was staining the back of my dress. I was wearing a dress and pants combination. Obviously, Y2K, classic combination. Very Y2K. It was also white. It was kind, I don't know, maybe, it wasn't goop because that wasn't around yet, but it probably would have been an outfit. Gwyneth Paltrow would have approved him.

Starting point is 00:32:46 Yeah. Kind of goop ready outfit. And, yeah, I just started spurting orange grease out of my asshole. While I'm on stage and I'm, I ended the show while the shit is coming out, I got a standing ovation. They wanted an encore. All I could do was back up. out of view

Starting point is 00:33:06 and just back up through the curtains I was in a theater I'm very fortunate about this there was nobody backstage because the area was so small everybody was in the front of the house so there was not even one person back there

Starting point is 00:33:18 so I squatted on the ground and I let the rest of the oil out of my assail just to alleviate the cramping and did you take the trousers off to do that this bit okay I did because it was easy to just sort of pull them down There were like a loose, you know, drawstring pant. I got up and my car was right outside the stage door.

Starting point is 00:33:39 So there was nobody backstage. There was nobody in the parking lot. It was just a single space for one car. I got in the car. I could still hear the audience applauding, like demanding an encore as I drove away. And I had a huge orange oil stain in the front seat of my car that I could not get out. I had to just get a new car. So somewhere, someone discovered backstage,

Starting point is 00:34:07 Margaret chose abandoned drawstring white pants. I had that, no, I put the pants back on. You put them back on? Okay, good. I didn't think to actually leave the pants because that was too much evidence. Because also, it didn't look like shit. No.

Starting point is 00:34:22 It just looked like orange oil. It might have smelled like shit. But it was just orange grease. So I want to go back to your mom. mindset when you're in the car driving away. And I know that there is like a humorous element to this story. I was, I was crying. I bet. I was really upset. I was really upset. I was really like disgusted. I was also concerned because I knew I was standing the seat in my car and I was not sure how it was good because it wasn't like leather seats. There were like fabric seats that would absorb it. They're so

Starting point is 00:34:54 orange and it smelled. And I was also laughing because this is like really funny too. But it's horrible and I had done it to myself. Yeah. Like, and I stopped taking the drugs at that point. That was when I, but I went to other different methods of trying to lose weight after that. Can I ask why your parents were in all of this? Did they know what was happening? Could they see what kind of trouble you were in? Well, my mother has always had a weight issue and had pushed me into dieting as a young person and she was always on a different kind of a diet, you know, all throughout the 70s. exercising. I think she's an exercise addict. I think she's sort of, you know, passed it on to me. So they put a lot of both of my father and my mother put a lot of value in my weight loss, you know, and they were very encouraging when I was on the lower side of the scale. But when I got up there, they would get worried. They would really like try to limit my eating, try to really police my eating. So they were not helpful. And it's not, I think, to the point of being abusive, you know, it's more like health concerns. But also when you already feel so concerned about your way, anybody who says anything, it's a huge thing. Like, anybody who says anything, it's just, you're so sensitive about it. How did you get help? Did you get any help?

Starting point is 00:36:23 I went to therapy. I did a couple of things. I did actually go to some 12-step recovery around my eating, which was enormously helpful. But also, you know, therapy helped a lot. And I think I developed other problems, which actually much outshadowed any kind of eating problem. Like, I solved it, but not in a good way. Well, come on to that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:36:56 I wonder if I could ask you something, and please tell me if this is too intrusive or you don't want to answer, or too inelegant in terms of the leap that I'm making. But I know that you are a survivor of childhood abuse. And I wonder if there was part of how you felt about yourself turned you into your own abuser because that felt familiar in some way. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's really valid because that's what happens. because when you are raised in an environment of abuse, you bind that familiar and actually comforting. That's actually your normal.

Starting point is 00:37:32 So then you end up seeking it for the rest of your life. Even though you vow that you're not going to, it's insidious and it'll come in in areas that you don't expect. And for me, it's eating a lot. I don't know if it's so direct as a lot of survivors say that they had put on weight in order to put off abusers. I don't know if it's as well thought. out for me as that. I don't know if I consciously put on weight in order to become unattractive

Starting point is 00:37:59 to my abusers. I'm not sure if I thought that through all the way. For me, food was just always a comfort and a kind of escape. I don't know if I was escaping the damage of abuse, maybe. It didn't feel like that at the time. But that's all kind of mysterious. All I know is that I definitely always abused food, but it never got to the levels that it got until I started working in television and then became under this kind of scrutiny that nobody can withstand.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Looking back now at the abuse that you suffered in your childhood, but also I would argue at the network with your sitcom, how do you feel towards the abusers? Because the way you speak about it is so calm and enlightened and eloquent. Do you feel forgiveness or is there rage? I feel a lot of forgiveness because a lot of it is, well, towards like sexual abusers in my childhood, I don't feel really anything. I don't feel, I'm pretty neutral about that. Like,

Starting point is 00:39:07 I don't feel like I need revenge or anything like that because I think being an abuser in itself is a revenge. It's like your own hell. I don't know what causes. them to want to do that and I don't care to make excuses for them and I don't care to revisit why they did what they did but I'm I'm pretty neutralized over them I mean if I do feel anger and had felt anger for a long time about that but I've been through so much I think therapy and also you know just personal work to get to a place of neutrality just because that anger so corrosive, towards things like the network. I don't feel anger because they were ultimately just trying to do what the culture wanted. They were ultimately trying to actually better

Starting point is 00:39:56 themselves by including Asian American voices in their chorus. They wanted to have an Asian American family. They just didn't know how to present a young woman who was different. And they were trying to make me more palatable for their audience. It's not with malice. They weren't doing any of this with intention to hurt me. It's just that I took it and ran with it and hurt myself with it. Thank you so much for sharing that. Of course. Your final failure is abusing drugs and alcohol. That's the thing that I sort of got over my eating disorder with. It just is not the way to do it, you know, with drugs and alcohol. I learned from another very famous actress that if you did a couple shots of tequila on an empty stomach, it would kind of upset your

Starting point is 00:40:54 stomach and then you wouldn't need to eat for the rest of the day. So that kind of set me off on a little adventure of like, oh, okay, well, why don't I just try this? And then that sort of mix included kind of different combinations of drugs. And in that, things got really bad. And it wasn't all bad all the time. Like I had like quite long periods of sobriety in there. But then when things were really bad, I really, I got to a place where I didn't know if I was going to survive and kind of didn't care. So it was really, it was really bad. There's this thing you said that The thing about opiates is that it's not really a high. It's a removal of caring. Yeah. You just don't care. Like it's, it's a pain reliever, I guess, or a pain killer.

Starting point is 00:41:44 But it doesn't kill the pain. It kills your impetus to remove the pain. So you're just able to live with it. You know, that's that's kind of what it is. It's not anything that deadens your sensations. It's it just gives you the ability to carry on with them. And I think that's the big. lie of what opiates are. It's such a, it's such a terrible thing to put in your system over and over it. So much of it, you know, of course people need it and of course people need it to survive, but I was never using it to live. I was using it to die. Are you still in your 20s at this point? I was in my 30s to 40s to like, I became, I got really serious about my sobriety when I was about 45.

Starting point is 00:42:37 Okay. So, yeah, I've been sober since then. So, yeah, off and on from the 20s, I've always been interested in drugs. Yes. But I never had a beast on my back. I never had a monkey in my back until I was in my 30s. Can you tell us the shower curtain story? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:58 So I had taken all these drugs and I was super like just out of it. and I don't know what had happened like it was a hotel room and I woke up hanging from my shower curtain rod and I was hanging by my neck from I was like I had hung myself I wasn't even upset about anything I like hung myself in the middle of the night and I woke up hanging like oh oh oh like hanging and I was like hanging there and then the shower curtains started bending so I'm like oh shit I'm too fat to kill myself. I should get down. I'll try again when I reach my goal weight. But it's like what I don't even consider that a suicide attempt because like what is that? That's not, I didn't even know I did it. And I was because I was high. I didn't know. That's so weird.

Starting point is 00:43:46 And I, uh, I still don't know why. But after that happened, I didn't tell anybody that happened. I didn't even tell myself that happened because I was like, no, that. Not that, that, no, that. No. I didn't tell anybody that happened for years because if they find out they're going to make me stop drinking and doing drugs. And that's something that I cannot do. That's the one thing. Nobody's taken away from me. Nobody's taking that away from me. Because if you take away my ability to drink and do drugs, you're taking away my ability to breathe and eat and sleep and live. I cannot. You cannot take away the one thing in my life that makes it worth living, which it wasn't even worth living. It was like I just was trying to. just stay afloat in. But yeah, I didn't tell anybody for a long time until much later, after I had gotten sober and was trying to explain to people, you know, this is probably bad. And people were really shocked. Like, what?

Starting point is 00:44:47 What? Like, who would do that? I don't know. I've never heard a story like that. You didn't even tell yourself. I think it was such an extraordinary phrase. Yeah, because you don't want to know. Because if I know, I know, I know.

Starting point is 00:45:00 I'm going to really stop. There's a part of me that will try to stop myself. Because I, you know, I want my best interest. I have my best interest in hurt. But you can't even tell yourself when stuff like that happens. This is where I'd like to read another quote of yours, which I think is so profound. Humor is really hope. Humor and laughter is the intake of breath, which is the preservation of the body for the next moment.

Starting point is 00:45:24 At your darkest moments, it's actually the thing that shines the brightest. I'm really grateful for it. and I'm really grateful I got to live. And the reason I wanted to say that is because that's such a devastating time in your life and you can find the humor in it because it gives you the agency for the next breath. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:43 It's a beautiful thing. Thank you. It's so moving. Thank you. It really is. I think it's true because it's almost like yoga. It's like that breath you didn't expect. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:51 That you take in that, okay, well, I guess I'm going to live for the next moment because I just breathe. Yeah. So it's like a very, I mean, laughter is that. It's like the breath you didn't expect. And that's a comedian, is that they think something that you didn't realize they were going to think. They think in a circuitous fashion that nobody else does.

Starting point is 00:46:07 So, yeah. So how did you get clean? I think your friends did an intervention, is that right? My friends did an intervention also because I was living with a man who was incredibly abusive and, like, you know, it was like very destructive and it was a terrible situation. You know, I would go on, if I ever tried to leave him, he would, I like went to go. do a film and he sent me a photograph of a bunch of pills in his hand and then turned off his phone. And, you know, we lived in a couple of different cities. So I wasn't sure what city to call emergency services too. I'm like on the set of a film and trying to remember my lines and

Starting point is 00:46:44 do stuff. But I was like, oh, okay, this guy's dead. And Corinne Bailey Ray's husband had just died. And I thought, oh, no, because then I'll be defined by this man. death. And I will never be able to participate in public life again, as I sort of perceived that's what happened to her. I was just so scared that was going to happen to me. And so he would hold me hostage by threatening suicide and all the stuff. And so I was just doing drugs and drinking. You know, I'm trying to break up with him by dying. That's my solution. And my friends who were so loving, so amazing, who basically just kidnapped me and took me to a house and everybody was sitting there crying with letters and I knew the jig was up and they took

Starting point is 00:47:36 me to a facility and I stayed in an institution for a couple of years also to hide from this guy. They were able to finally get rid of him. He had barricaded himself in my house and they'd cut off the electricity and the water trying to get him out. He wouldn't leave and finally the police came in guns drawn and they like go into my bedroom and there was a mannequin of me with my clothes and my hair like my wig laying there and they thought is this a dead body did he kill her or is this him laying in wait like a serial killer is serial killer shit what and then was that mannequin his it wasn't one that you'd left behind or like it was just something that was like there that's so it's serial killer it's a very it's a very serial killer so um and he was gone and he hasn't seen since. Oh, he actually has shown up at a show a couple of times, but he's been ushered out. I haven't seen him since. But it's like a very, yeah, it's a very disturbing thing. But when you're impaired, when you're drinking and using drugs, you allow people in your life that have no business being there. And so, yeah, part of the intervention had to do with getting me to a safe

Starting point is 00:48:53 place where I wasn't going to be abusing alcohol and drugs, but also so I would be out of reach of this person. What was that experience like for you being in the facility? How hard was it to get? It was great. No, I really thrive in an institution. I meant to be hospitalized. I really love it. Like, I think it's so fun. I think it's just beautiful. And I was in there with a lot of like famous people who died. The most beautiful, talented, wealthy people in the world who had everything to live for. Didn't make it. And so I'm like, oh, well, I guess I should take this opportunity and live. You know, that was really tragic, but also shows the severity of the disease of alcohol and addiction. You don't care about what you have to offer the world. You just care about

Starting point is 00:49:45 doing this one thing. And how do you keep on doing that one thing day to day? Well, I really enjoy my life. Like I have a good time. I love my animals. I have many cats. I have a beautiful home. I love my work. I do lots of different things every single day. You know, all different aspects of my life are satisfied. Just like I use different aspects of my personality and my body and my mind to work. And it's really fun. So I don't have any of the difficulties that I did. And also, like, I realize this time in my life, like, I'm just meant to be happy because it's, it's like, I work so hard and I should just feel good now. So I do have a good time most of the time. You're in your 50s now. I'm 56. I could not believe it when I found out your age. I honestly thought you were in your 30s. Oh, that's nice. Like visually, even though I know you live like, yeah. So how are your 50s?

Starting point is 00:50:43 Really good, really good. I have a really good time. I just enjoy my friends. I'm like in a very big recovery. community, that's really important. So I spend a lot of time there and I talk to a lot of people every day. That sort of serves as my social life and kind of to some extent my therapy. I've been through a lot of therapy, but I'm not currently in it right now just because I've had a lot. I've had a ton. So I, you know, spend a lot of time on my spiritual life. I have a meditation practice that's very strong and many, many friends and, you know, just a lot of work that I do on myself. Tell me about your animals. So Lucia, who has just been looking at me with such perception throughout the city.

Starting point is 00:51:26 She's so loving. She's so loving. I have three cats. Sakrakur, who is a deaf sphinx. So she's pink panther. And I have another pink panther. Her name is Sorong, which is love in Korean. And I have a Lai Koi who's like a werewolf.

Starting point is 00:51:44 He's a werewolf cat. His name is Uju. That's a universe in Korean. And they're in my whole world. If anyone listening or watching this is going through some of the things that you've described, addiction, disordered eating, and they feel like there is no hope, what would you say to them? Oh, there's so much hope. There's so much hope. First of all, get rid of the most difficult thing, whether that's disorder eating, whether it's under-eating, overeating, try to get some clarity on food. That's a really important thing. We need food to live. but it can be abused and both over and under, you know, there's, it's, it's really hard. It's about healing your relationship with food.

Starting point is 00:52:27 It's very powerful, very important. And with drugs and alcohol, you have to just remove that thing, remove what is killing you and then find out why you want to drink and use drugs in the first place. And then you'll solve a lot of problems. It's not, it's not easy, but it's simple. you know if you just remove the one thing that's really really making your life hard and then kind of oversee what's going on don't be too overwhelmed by the problem just try to remove that one thing and then it'll make things clear and you can move on it's really it's really important

Starting point is 00:53:05 because now I see all of the stuff that I've been through as a gift because it's allowed me so much variety and like when I talk to people about my life and people are very interested but also So I love to draw from my, from my life, my work, like my writing, my comedy, my music, all of this comes from my experience. And so the more deep work that you do, the more pain you've endured, the more you can share with the world. It's like with the kinsugi, when they break a pot and they mend it with gold. Now I'm like all veined with gold because I'm put together so magnificently with gold. I cannot think of a more beautiful note to end on. Wonderful.

Starting point is 00:53:50 You are threaded through with gold and we are so grateful for you. Margaret Cho, thank you for coming on How to Fail. Thank you. And thank you, Lucia. He loves you. Oh my gosh, I love her. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land. On Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts,

Starting point is 00:54:09 please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you. so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening and watching. All episodes in January are brought to you by Pink Lady Apples.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Margaret Cho - They Told Me I Was Too Fat To Play Myself

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