She spent years smashing the patriarchy
and has also been pushing for representation onscreen.
Plus her recent movie, "Over the Moon,"
has been nominated for an Oscar.
Please welcome Margaret Cho!
What up!
[both laugh]
- Hi.
- I'm great. How are you?
Good, thanks so much for being on the show.
- Thank you.
- So Margaret, right off the bat,
I'm gonna have to dive into
some Internet fact checking here
because I've read some pretty crazy things.
The first one being, is it actually true
that Mark Ruffalo--AKA, like, A-list celebrity Mark Ruffalo--
back in the day, helped you assemble an antique bed?
I don't even know how to go about this sentence.
Is that true?
- Yeah, it's true.
Mark Ruffalo, before he was beloved A-list actor,
used to be the delivery guy
for an antique store on Melrose.
And I bought a, um-- I guess it was, like,
a 125-year-old Chinese bed there,
and I needed to assemble it.
It was like a puzzle.
So he brought it over to my home,
and he assembled it, and he was the only person
who knew how to put it together.
Like, this puzzle.
And then when I moved, many years later,
he had become famous.
So I ran into him at an event, and I said,
"Could you put that bed together again?
'Cause I have to move."
You know, you don't think about these people,
like, becoming hugely famous,
but there's so many people like that.
I mean, everybody comes from somewhere.
- Right.
- So I was lucky enough
to know him when.
- So Mark Ruffalo, I know
you watch this show regularly,
so Margaret's waiting for you to help with her bed.
Get on it.
I need to move it.
- Now, Margaret, I wanna ask you about your podcast.
It's called "Mortal Minority,"
and you're starting season two of it,
but it's a lot different than season one, is that right?
- Well, season one was a lot of different--
my friends and different celebrities
and different artists and activists and actors
and all sorts of comedians,
and in this season,
we're focusing on Asian-American hate crimes,
both the modern ones and also historical ones
because they have a lot of historical context.
You know, Asian-Americans have been a part of this country
since the gold rush in 1849.
And yet we've always received a lot--
and sort of a disproportionate amount of hate
in terms of hate crimes and violence,
yet it's not particularly documented.
You know, you don't learn about it that much
in history, in American history, in school,
so I just wanted to, like, make a space for that.
The podcast is all about that,
and so I think it's really important.
- I agree. It's so important.
And I wanna ask you this-- you know,
you're talking a lot about educating people,
and you're someone who does a lot of the work.
I imagine you also, you know, as everyone else,
you're hearing all this news about the increase
in violence against Asian-Americans.
How are you coping, mentally?
Like, how are you doing?
I don't know if that's a silly, shallow question,
but genuinely, like, how are you coping?
- No, it's not a shallow question.
It's a very important thing
because we need to deal with all the stuff
in a way that is sane.
You know, you deal with the craziness with sanity,
and so what I do is I eat huge bags of sour candy.
That's a Haribo, that's a Trolli,
that's a gummy snake worm, any kind of gummy--
it's the basis of my healthy diet.
- Okay, good, amazing, amazing.
For someone who, you know, maybe is not
as informed like you are--
to anyone watching at home, what do you think people can do
on a daily basis to get informed
and also to help against these hate crimes?
- You know, there's such an important way
to do that, and it's truly to follow it on social media,
whether it's "stop Asian hate," "stop AAPI hate,"
which are both really big hashtags,
and then also just listen to what's happening.
It's all over the news, it's every day,
it's multiple times a day.
And also to understand that these events are hate crimes,
whether it's the Asian women being killed in Atlanta,
whether it's, you know, these Asian women
being attacked, and it's usually women too.
It's usually older women.
- So I mean, I'm nervous about it
because this is my-- this is my identity.
These are my people, my real--
like, everything about the people
that are being attacked is who I am.
They are all my age group, they're all Asian,
they're all Asian-American, and it's really troubling.
- Right, no, absolutely.
I couldn't agree more, and I love the fact
that you're touching on calling it what it is,
and that's such an important part of this conversation,
you know, 'cause it's so tempting
when you see the media covering stories,
and they don't wanna call things a hate crime,
and they want to tiptoe around language.
I think language is so important,
and it's like, call it what it is.
If it's a hate crime... both: It's a hate crime.
- That's what it is.
But it's like, that hesitance to do so
is really internal bias,
and so it's really that we have to really kind of
change the way that we think towards people of color.
Include Asians in people of color,
which, sometimes, we get left out of that.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Let's talk about the same subject.
Let's look at it through a Hollywood lens for a second
because you go down in history as being the first person
to have an all-Asian-American show back in the day,
and then 21 years later,
"Fresh Off the Boat" happened.
So it took 21 years for it to happen again,
and "Fresh Off the Boat" was only the second show.
Do you think Hollywood
is trending in the right direction?
Do you think it's evolving well?
Are you satisfied with the pace?
Like, what are your views and thoughts
about Asian-American representation in Hollywood?
- I think it's getting better.
I think it's definitely getting more complete,
that you're seeing more of a picture
of who Asian-Americans are in movies and TV.
There's a--there's a lot.
So I'm hoping that there will be more,
but it's just beginning, you know?
In 1994, we thought, "Oh, we're gonna have
Asian-Americans in TV and movies,"
'cause we had my TV show, and "The Joy Luck Club,"
and everybody was reading Amy Tan.
You know, there was a lot happening
in terms of Asian-American culture,
and then it was gone.
So I think that now, paying attention to it
and really focusing on it,
I think that social media has helped.
I think campaigns like "Oscars so white,"
those things helped.
So I think everybody is more conscious of it,
and so I hope that this continues.
- Absolutely, and I'm gonna call myself out
because I never know how to answer
this question when I'm asked it.
Very often introduced to people, like,
"So, do you feel like Indian representation is"--
and I never know how to answer 'cause I'm like,
"Of course there's progress.
"Am I satisfied with said progress?
Not really." [laughs]
And I never know how to answer it because really,
the goal is for us to not be asked
questions like that, to be honest.
Like, that's when you really know
that you're getting to a place, right?
- Right.
- One of the things I think
I'm hoping for to see in my lifetime
in terms of representation is,
anytime a new show comes out--
let's say it's, like, an Indian-based show--
I feel like there's a lot of conversation around, like,
"Oh, this doesn't represent me,"
and it's the Indian community that's saying,
"This doesn't represent me, that's not my experience,"
and so our own community starts tearing things apart,
and I think that's a result of not being seen so much.
And so they're hoping that everything represents--
I hope in my lifetime,
I can see an array of Indian shows
where, like, some can be silly,
some can be goofy, some can be serious.
Do you ever feel that way?
- Oh yeah, I think it's--
I think it's important to point out, too,
but also, we're recognizing that there's so much diversity
in our community, and that we don't hold white people
accountable for "authenticity."
- Authenticity is really this weird thing
where we apply to marginalized communities
in order to sort of say,
"Well, this is almost like a nature show or something.
Like, we wanna make sure this is 'real.'"
[laughs] It's like, everything's real!
If you've written about it, it's real.
If it's your story, it's real.
We don't have to look to authenticity
as a weird way to marginalize our truth.
Our truth is our truth if we write it, create it.
It's that--the thing of authenticity
is the assumption that, um,
white people are making our art.
- Mm-hmm.
It's really not--it's not true anymore, hopefully.
You know, as much as we're involved in it,
we create it.
I've never thought about it like that,
but that's exactly what it is.
You nailed it.