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Five years ago, we asked Margaret Cho to break in our inaugural Soapbox for Pride 2004, shortly after San Francisco began marrying same-sex couples. Well, boy, how things have changed. Margaret is returning to scripted television (and taking on rock and roll), and, well, there’s been just a little news of late to discuss. So if we were going to ask anyone to take a second stab at the Soapbox, we would have to make it a Cho show.
I’m living in Atlanta right now for Drop Dead Diva, this cool new show I’m working on. It’s about a really selfish, beautiful, thin, blond model who dies and is reincarnated into the body of a plus-sized attorney, who is brilliant but does not pay attention to herself so she is ultimately incredibly selfless. So it’s really about waking up fat—if you’ve been totally hot your whole life and then you wake up fat. And she’s pissed!
It’s really an exciting job. I am playing the paralegal to the brilliant attorney. I’m sort of helping her come back into her life, so it’s a fun part. It’s a nice return to something that I did really enjoy doing before. It’s a little different, too, because there is a lot of drama. It sounds like a comedy, but there is also quite a lot of drama in the show. That’s really wonderful and a challenge as well.
It’s kind of hard, though, because I’m living in Atlanta right now. I love Atlanta, but we’re not actually in Atlanta. We’re an hour outside of Atlanta, in Peachtree City, which is, um, really, I’m the blackest person here. I mean, there’s no black people, there’s no Asian people. The gays—we had to bring the gays. We had to bring our own! B.Y.O.F.
But I love the show! I love the writing, and the acting is really phenomenal. In a lot of ways it’s about suddenly becoming invisible. In our society, if you don’t adhere to what our society sees as beautiful, you don’t exist. And I think this is especially true within the gay community. For gay men, it’s very hard. Because of the image issue of needing to look a certain way, nowhere is it as prevalent as it is in the gay community.
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The consciousness around gay Pride really taking on a political agenda is coming into its own this year. I’m so proud that Iowa went for gay marriage and Connecticut and Vermont. That is really great. I’m still wishing for California and working hard for California, but this is a wonderful sign. And with New York saying that they might go, I love that. I think that it’s really powerful. As gays and lesbians, and just the future of our country, the future of democracy, it’s just the right thing. Also this whole thing with Angie Zapata, that the “gay panic” thing lost in court, that’s great! So this is a remarkable, remarkable step in the right direction for the community.
There is so much power that we have now, and I think we just need to keep talking about the issues. We have all of our outlets for communication; we can be Twittering about it, blogging about it, there are rallies happening all the time. I’m really close with Equality California in working with them and talking to them all the time and figuring out what we can do. I think it’s just about showing up to these rallies, making it as important as it was in November, when it was super important for everyone to show up. I think it’s a constancy not to let it go. And I think that’s happening.
I think people are really sick of it and they see now that the other side, the people that “want to protect marriage,” are also willing to lie and spread misinformation, blatant untruths, in order to scare people into thinking that gay marriage is going to be taught in school and all this bullshit.
So we really have to get very aggressive. And ultimately we don’t have to lie, which is the greatest part about it. We don’t have to be untruthful. We don’t have to spread propaganda. All we have to do is show up.
Drop Dead Diva premieres on Lifetime July 12. For more Margaret, including previews of her first musical CD release, visit margaretcho.com
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