Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 30, 1994 TAG: 9408200002
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: R.D. HELDENFELS KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
"I feel like Lyle Menendez," she said. "Is this a courthouse? Isn't this `Murder, She Wrote' or something? I want to say `No comment,' but I have comments."
Cho had drawn a crowd in part because, as college student Margaret Kim in the new fall sitcom "All American Girl," she is the latest in a powerful succession of women comics in ABC series, following Ellen DeGeneres, Brett Butler and Roseanne (formerly Barr, formerly Arnold).
Cho has the added attraction of being a first, as in "first Asian-American star of a network sitcom," in the first sitcom about an Asian-American family to boot. She already has become a trailblazer, a standard-bearer and a role model - someone whose every comment will have added weight in the national media.
Not that it worries Cho, who said that as a Korean-American stand-up comic she already had been made a role model. And she plans to bring a sense of her self as a true "all-American girl" to her new series.
"We don't have gongs," she said. "We don't have bound feet, we don't walk on people's backs, and we don't eat dog."
The daughter of Korean immigrants, growing up in San Francisco, she was your basic kid. She watched "The Brady Bunch" - identifying with the neurotic Jan - and had a major thing for Robert Urich in his "Vega$" days. In school, she said, she was not the funny one in the back of the room.
"I was Miss Extra Credit," she said. "I was totally glasses, braces, never said anything. Had my slide rule and protractor." She also was different from her carefree TV counterpart. "Margaret Kim would go to Lollapalooza," she said. "Margaret Cho would go to `The Three Tenors.' "
Still, she noticed that the world of television was not portraying Asians, and especially Koreans, with the diversity that she saw, especially in her multicultural hometown.
"I think it was most apparent when I was watching `M*A*S*H.' Because they would always have these Koreans on and I would always feel a sense of embarrassment or maybe a little bit of annoyance because it just did not seem right to me, or real to me. Even though those characters were not stereotypical, they still were not real enough."
In her teens she started performing, over some objections from her parents because "they were worried about me being able to break ground in this industry." She also admits a measure of rebellion was at work.
"I think that any teen-ager goes through a period when you reject your parents. ... What made me reject them was maybe the sort of strictness in our household, and something I didn't see in my friends' households.
"You know, when I grew up in the '70s, all of my friends' parents were divorced. And I thought that was like the greatest thing. It seemed so glamorous. They were always going to their dads on the weekend. ... And I always wanted my parents to get a divorce so we could finally be happy."
But her parents stayed together and their worries about Cho's career proved somewhat accurate. Frustrated by the shortage of good acting roles for Asians, she turned to stand-up comedy. But there were barriers to overcome there.
"The prejudices that I encountered in the early years of my doing stand-up never really came from audiences," she said. "People were happy to hear what I had to say because I had a different point of view and a different perspective. ... The prejudice that I encountered was just from traveling around, being in these tiny towns where I'm the walking, talking Chinatown. I'm the only Asian person for miles."
When faced with Cho's American diction and Korean looks, the series' producers said, "We don't want you to take this the wrong way, but could you be a little bit more, oh, Chinese?"
"Well, actually I'm Korean."
"Whatever."
Cho imagined that they wanted her "to come out in a giant rickshaw, break a board over my head, and then do some calculus."
So now that opportunity has come, how does she expect to avoid letting such attitudes seep into "All American Girl"? She talks a lot about being in step with the series' executive producers, Gary Jacobs and Gail Berman. Jacobs in turn points to Cho, the other Asian actors in the cast, Asian-American writers and a consultant on culture and language.
If the series opens doors for other productions, Cho knows what she wants next. "We need an Asian `Melrose Place,' " she said. Not that success guarantees happiness. When she mentioned her boyfriend, a reporter asked, "Is it Tom Arnold?"
by CNB