Margaret Cho Gives Us a ‘Lucky Gift’

Margaret Cho is incredibly talented. Along with her brilliant stand-up comedy and hilarious and memorable roles in 17 Again, 30 Rock, and Fire Island, Cho is a great musician. Her newest music album, Lucky Gift, is her first since 2016’s American Myth. In this interview, Cho talks about Lucky Gift, the importance of advocating for and standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, and the films 17 Again and Fire Island.

Cho started working on some of the songs on Lucky Gift around 10 years ago. “Some of them came out of when I was working on an outreach for the un-housed in San Francisco following Robin Williams’ death,” she states. “I wrote a bunch of songs. So ‘Funny Man’ is about Robin Williams, and we would play that song live in these encampments when we were setting up to feed people and distributing needed supplies; we would also play music.” Over the years Cho continued to write more songs. “I just never had the time to put it out ‘cause I was doing stand-up comedy and acting stuff. Finally, there was a moment where I could put everything together and put it out a record.”

Cho chose Lucky Gift to be the title of the record because it encapsulates all of the songs. “All the songs are kind of like these things that just come out of nowhere,” she comments. “It’s so weird how music happens and how songs just appear like a gift. It was like a metaphor for the whole record.”

With Lucky Gift, Cho finds she has gotten more confident as a writer. “I think I more understood my style as a singer and songwriter,” she comments. “I’ve had a long journey with music, but it’s not as developed as the other parts of my work as a comedian or an actor. This part I’m newer at. Cho continues to develop her craft as a musician, adding, “I’m still forming my own impression of what this art form is for me. With each song that I write, it gets stronger and stronger, so I’m really grateful to learn.”

Storytelling is a huge part of Cho’s career, whether it be via stand-up comedy, film and television acting, or music. She finds that each art form has their own unique way of storytelling. “I think for comedy, the storytelling is very literal, and you are actually taking stories from your life and projecting them, and it’s also taken as face value too. Jokes are often at face value, and there’s little interpretation from the audience.”

“Film and television and acting, for the most part, I’m taking someone else’s story and giving a body to it. So therein interpretation has already been done by the author, and you’re bringing forth what you’re seeing.”

“With music, for me, storytelling is very different because an audience can take whatever they like from it. You can interpret a song in so many different ways that the artist may or may not intend, and that’s the point is that you put something out without necessarily putting an expectation on a listener  to feel a certain way. I have a little bit of an intention, but for the most part, I think I want people to come away from it feeling like they can establish whatever relationship they want to each song. I think that’s really special.”

“Doot Doot” is one of the rare covers that Cho has done in her career. “It is a wonderful song from the ‘80s by a band called Freur, who I just absolutely love,” she says. “It was an amazing revelation that synthesizers could have so much heart in the ‘80s. I wanted to revisit it. I kind of have a spoken word thing going through it but that’s actually the one cover on the record. I don’t really do a lot of covers, so this for me was really special.”

One of Cho’s favourite songs from Lucky Gift is “You Can Be You.” “The creation of that was really special because it was written right after the death of Nex Benedict, who was this trans nonbinary teen who unfortunately died mostly at the hands of bullying but also horrible bullying by the state of Oklahoma and how that was handled,” comments Cho. “Their life had such an impression on me. And all of these anti-trans and anti-queer laws happening in all these states now, and this push to erase the trans community and genderfluid community it’s really disturbing. So, I wanted to write a song about that.”

“My longtime collaborator who produced most of the songs on the record, Garrison Starr, comes and sings on it too. We wanted to fill it with something that was informative of sorrow but also a celebration of life as well, like this life was lived and unfortunately cut short. How do you do that with sound? I thought that bringing in a trumpet was really essential. I think when you bring in a trumpet, you’re bringing in sorrow—It’s like a human sigh, a sorrowful sigh.”

Throughout her life, Cho has been a huge advocate and supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. “It’s always been a big thing for me because I’ve been part of the queer community since I’ve been born, and I’ve been part of queer history all this time, so for me it’s very vitally important,” she says. “I was bullied a lot when I was a kid for being queer, and I know the suffering of that. So, if I can alleviate it somehow through my work in any way, I want to try and do that. I mean, it’s so important to put that message out there because now we’re getting bullying that’s amplified by the state. We have a president now who wants to put into law that there are two genders, which is so ridiculous and crazy. Like, ‘WHY? WHY?’ There’s no reason to do that, but you have like all these people attacking the very idea of being different in any way that doesn’t conform to this idea of two genders, and it’s so preposterous and ludicrous. So, whatever I can do to address that and amend that I think is important.”

One of Cho’s most well-known film roles is Mrs. Dell in 17 Again. Since its release, 17 Again has become one of the most timeless teen films of the 2000s and continues to connect with viewers today. “I think it’s really exciting when people connect to something,” smiles Cho. “Everybody wants that chance to start over and do it again. I think now it’s even more poignant with the death of Matthew Perry (and Michelle Trachtenberg, who passed away a month after this interview was conducted) like it’s the very thing, ‘I wish we could start again. That we could have a do-over.’ But yeah, it’s a really special film. And I love working with Zac (Efron). He told me he came to my shows in disguise. I wish I’d known that. I think that’s so funny and cute. But he’s really cool.”

Of all the characters Cho has played, the one she relates to the most or feels she is the closest to is Erin from Fire Island. “I am really much the mother of so many younger gay people and have lived that life,” she says. “Even on set when we were filming, we were all those characters, and it was a very easy transition to go and start filming because we’re already them.”

Cho is very happy and proud of Lucky Gift. “I really love these songs,” she smiles. I’ve lived with them for a really long time. I hope people can enjoy it. I feel like, for me, it’s a miracle that songs happen. There’s nothing, and then there’s a song. I think all songwriters feel that. Like, ‘That’s so wild. This just happened!’ I’m so lucky to get to be able to experience this. I hope people love it!”

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Stream Lucky Gift here

This interview is a longer version of the print version

Photos courtesy of margaretcho.com