I'm the One That I Want (16 page)

There is a passion that I love about Koreans, an internal heat that makes us drive ourselves harder, work long hours, sing loudly in the church choir, hold our families together as tightly here as we do in our homeland. Where does this passion turn inward, to cannibalize our own as “different,” “imperfect,” “fat”? Perhaps it’s not particular to Koreans. Is there an element of this in all ethnic groups? Is there always an effort to keep us from expressing the diversity that is true to who we are as human beings, something that manifests itself in variations as numerous as the ones they are trying to conceal? Perhaps every culture on earth has its own method of doing this. It’s not just Koreans, it’s everyone. It’s the world. It’s just that the way it happens in my world hurts me so much.

I used to think it was just me, but I know that is not true. My mother has had a terrific eating disorder all my life, one that swings her weight up and down every year. I have so many cousins and other distantly and not so distantly related women who were and still are anorexic. I also received a letter from a young Korean girl whose carefully articulated experience was nearly a direct transcript of mine. I know that I am not alone.

During
All-American Girl
, I was exposed to the ugliness of the media, and since I sought definition and meaning from that world, I supposed I was ugly by default. Some of the criticism of the show had to do with my weight, that I didn’t have the delicate quality and fragile birdlike body with which Asian women are normally associated (“Cho, who is not svelte . . .”). One critic decided to be completely original and just criticize my looks (“Beauty is not Cho’s strong point . . .”). Either way, they were all just passing off insults and racism as journalism.

I was working on
It’s My Party
, when the prop master came to me complaining that he had seen a picture of me in a tabloid and the quote underneath said: “Margaret Cho Has Thunder Thighs.” I got upset and told everybody on the set about it, and everybody got on the prop master’s case. He felt bad and I felt bad; it was really a no-win situation for everyone.

He said he wasn’t trying to upset me. He just thought it was ridiculous because I looked great in the picture, I looked great the way I was, and it was total bullshit that they would print something like that.

I saw the picture later, and he was right. I was thin. And even if I wasn’t, the tabloid had no right to say it. But it hurt me. It hurt deeply. I was cut to the bone with every comment. One tabloid printed the “Chow Like Cho” diet, which was a fake diet that I never went on with fake quotes from me like, “When I was young I was raised on rice and fish . . .” That is so
Mulan
! It had all these recipes that used Kikkoman and almond slivers and exuberant exclamations from me like, “I don’t want to be ABC’s overweight Asian-American!”

The tabloids and I have long had a strange relationship. They always put me in the “Would You Be Caught Dead in This Outfit?” columns, which I adore, but then they print stories that they get from my act and try to repackage it as gossip for their idiotic readership. Facts like “Margaret is into
fisting
” would go in there plain as day—as if fisting were some sort of hot new workout like Spinning or Tae-Bo. “Todd Tramp’s now offers FISTING! Sign up and lube required.”

That awful Week before we shot the pilot, after I had put myself in the hospital, all I could think about was working out. I was afraid of losing the show by not losing enough weight. Having so much body shame and all the cultural baggage surrounding it, it’s no wonder that I felt I had no other option. I did cut down on the workouts— but only to five days a week. The pilot was finally shot before a studio audience. The audience gave me a standing ovation when I came out, but the show wasn’t funny. Most of them left before the taping was over.

Then the pilot was screened for executives at ABC, focus groups, and whoever else decides what will be on the air in the fall. We all put our lives on hold until we heard the news. The big announcement of the fall schedule, the first time anybody would know what was going to happen, would be held at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

I went to New York to wait for the word so I would be close enough to go right to the event if we made it. I stayed at the Paramount and shopped at Barneys. The phone was ringing and I ran into the room to get it. My best friend, Siobhan, was with me. I picked up the phone. ABC picked up the show.

Siobhan and I ran around the room and jumped up and down and ordered room service and the door banged open with champagne and flowers. The phone rang nonstop. This was making it. The ship was coming in. It felt like my life was finally happening. I forgot about the diet. I forgot all of the executives who didn’t get it. I forgot about the dumb jokes. All I wanted to do was call my mom.

It was also Mother’s Day. She cried when I told her what had happened. Hearing her cracking voice on the other end made me lose it, too.

“This is the best Mother’s Day I ever had. This is the best present. Oh no. There was one Mother’s Day that was a little bit better. . . . That was before you born! I went to Clearlake with Daddy and we drive in mountain and when we drive there was a lot of turning kind of turning to go up the mountain kind of thing, and I get blood clot some kind of blood clot in Mommy womb—can you imagine, and we have to go to hospital, and Daddy was so mad because we have to go to hospital and we on vacation! But I don’t care because I hate Daddy! And we went to hospital, and they say ‘You miscarry!’ and I say ‘I don’t know Miss Carry. Who is Miss Carry?’ because Mommy don’t speak English too good, so Mommy was confused! But I almost miscarry you and you almost die, can you imagine? But then we fine, and we go home, then two months later, you born! And they have party for Mommy because it was Mommy first Mother’s Day and I was with you and I was so happy, can you imagine? And
that
Mother’s Day—that was a little bit better.”

I was invited to the announcements at Carnegie Hall. The people in attendance were all executives from the network, press, stars from all the shows, sponsors, and station owners from across the country. It didn’t mean that the show would be a hit, but it did mean that we were going to be on the air that fall. We had a thirteen-episode commitment, so no matter what, we would be on the air for thirteen weeks. It felt like a lifetime. It meant that we would be given a chance. It meant that I, at least for the time being, was a television star.

I bought a black Chanel suit and a gardenia for the occasion. I rode in a brand new $100,000 white stretch limo on its first trip out. We got into an accident on the way. Tragic foreshadowing.

12

FAME! I WANT TO LIVE FOREVER. . . .

The Carnegie Hall affair for ABC’s official fall schedule announcement was surreal. Stars were everywhere. Ellen Degeneres and Brett Butler were already acquaintances; I met Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher from
Lois and Clark
. I flirted with
The Commish
for most of the day. But the stars who really blew my mind were the news people, Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs. They were the most unreal. I grew up watching
20/20
like it was part of my religion, so they were my own personal icons.

After a brief meet-and-greet backstage, we were all seated in the house. There was a presentation from the president of the network and then the chairman of the network and then the Lord of the network. They were identical Brylcreem triplets. Well-preserved white men in suits and slick dick hair. They talked about “pushing the envelope,” “family programming,” and then—“diversity.”

They showed a clip of
All-American Girl
. My image flashed on the big screen. “The first Asian-American family on television” in a booming voice-over. B. D. Wong and I looked at each other, and I could see he was crying and that just made me lose it.

It was astounding because I had never dreamed my life would take me here, so many miles from home, in the middle of show business itself, surrounded by stars and starmakers, all looking at me up there on the screen.

The way the trailer was edited made the show look a lot better than it actually was, so even though it really wasn’t great, it felt like the beginning of something big.

I’d always felt strange and special, that somehow I was destined to be a star. Since I grew up without role models or even people in the media who looked like me and were doing what I thought I wanted to do, I knew that I would need a miracle.

Now, my miracle was unfolding before me, on the stage at Carnegie Hall. Everything I had ever dreamed about was happening, happening, happening. Plus, I was so emotional about every little thing because I never ate and I exercised constantly and I was so hungry and weak that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time.

I walked into the bathroom and Teri Hatcher and Brett Butler were there smoking, like the bad girls in my high school. I wanted to smoke, too, but I decided instead to go into a stall and shit a brick.

There was a big network party afterward at Tavern on the Green, a tense affair with many people standing in line to take pictures with their favorite stars. Nobody wanted to take a picture with me, so I got in line to take pictures with Dean Cain and that other guy from
Home Improvement
.

The stars of the new shows—me, Steve Harvey, and Ralph Harris— were more reserved than everyone else. We were the new kids on the block, not sure of our status. I kept wondering if we were going to get hazed. I could just see Urkel putting my head in a toilet and flushing it.

The next few days were just a blur. There were so many interviews. Suddenly, because I had a network show, my opinion about everything and anything mattered.

“Margaret—who is the sexiest man alive?”

“Margaret—can you be too rich or too thin?”

“Margaret—what do you think about what is going on in North Korea? Do you think the famine will affect plotlines this season on
All-American Girl
?”

A network person once told me that if the situation in North Korea did not improve, it would adversely affect the chances of us getting picked up for the “back nine.”

We all have those defining moments in our lives, the film clips that make up our own personal retrospectives, the images that will flash in front of our eyes, should we die suddenly. I believe that at the end of our lives we are allowed to go back and make snow globes out of those defining moments. Mine is not of some wintry scene, but of one of the first parties that I had to attend in Century City for the ABC affiliates. The affiliates had sent representatives from their stations all across the country, so for many of them, this was their big trip to the city, and they were eager to meet the stars and hobnob with the rich and famous. I wore a red dress that made the old men from Peoria clutch their left arms with heart attacks.

A small band of paparazzi lined up against a black rope barrier outside, and when I walked out there with my manager Greer and my old friend Sledge, the photographers called out my name in a frenzy.

“Margaret, over here. Margaret. Margaret. Here. Over here please. Margaret you are great. Over here. Please. Here please. Margaret.”

They’d never called my name before and here, it was happening. My life was happening, and for the first time, I really felt like a star. I had my purse, and I threw it to Greer and Sledge like it was a bouquet and they were my beaming bridesmaids and this was my day.

In my snow globe, it won’t be snowflakes swirling around, but that little red purse, floating through the air, and me in the red dress and the paparazzi and Greer and Sledge and the first taste of dreams coming true.

There Was a press conference held just before the show premiered that was specifically for television critics. Gail and Gary had been fretting about this event for weeks and they prepared me for the worst. They said the critics were going to be merciless and would ask me awful questions, and the best thing to do was to not let it get to me.

They never went over what they thought I would be asked, perhaps because they didn’t have any idea themselves, they just wanted me to be ready, ready for the worst.

Sitting on the platform, with Gary and Gail on either side of me, I braced myself. The questions were relatively easy. I remember one critic, with a bored, annoyed, tired voice said, “I understand that this show is about a Korean family selling pornography. How do you expect that the Asian community is going to react to your portrayal of them as perverts?”

We didn’t even bother to answer that one.

It was almost over, and then one critic asked me, “Miss Cho, isn’t it true that the network asked you to lose weight, to play the part of YOURSELF, on your own TV show?”

Gail grabbed the mike from me and said, “There is no truth in that whatsoever.”

I couldn’t believe it. I kept looking at her, trying catch her eye, and she wouldn’t look at me.

In this crowded room full of critics and TV people and photographers, I felt totally, completely alone. Another critic started arguing with Gail, and then another leapt to her defense and then I shouted:

“CAN WE STOP TALKING ABOUT MY ASS??? Please . . .”

There was a nervous laugh, a smattering of applause, and we were led out of the room. I walked, unsafe and unsure, out of the frying pan, and into the volcano.

During this period, I taped my HBO special. I wore a black pleather pantsuit, and killed. “Everything was going to be great from here on out,” I thought.
Shiny shiny bad times behind me . . .