This stand-up comedy phenom of the 1990s fleetingly turned sitcom lead as the star of "All-American Girl" (ABC, 1994-95). Cho skillfully mined the many contradictions and absurdities of her dual heritage as a twenty-something Korean-American to generate laughs while exposing and exploding ethnic and sexual stereotypes from within and without.
Cho began performing stand-up while enrolled in the theater program at San Francisco State University. The comedy club where she began developing her act was conveniently located above the bookstore owned by her immigrant parents. Cho became a fixture on the San Francisco comedy circuit before appearing on the same bill with Jerry Seinfeld as the West Coast Champion of the US College Comedy Competition. She gained national exposure with a 1991 stint on "Star Search." By the next year, Cho was doing TV guest shots and appearing in comedy specials including "Six Comics in Search of a Generation" (Lifetime, 1992) and "Bob Hope Presents the Ladies of Laughter" (NBC, 1992). Soon she was sharing a comedy special with just one other comic ("Pair of Jokers: Margaret Cho & Bobby Collins," Showtime, 1993) and, by 1994, headlining and scripting her own ("HBO Comedy Half-Hour: Margaret Cho").
Cho had only acted on a few TV projects and one feature ("Angie", a failed 1994 comedy drama wherein she played a nurse with a heavy Brooklyn accent) before landing her sitcom. "All-American Girl" provided the comic-actor with a strong supporting cast including theater star B D Wong and veteran character actor Clyde Kusatsu. But her sometimes blue, raucous character was toned down for family consumption, and all the color and fun washed out, too. The show folded, despite a second-season re-tooling.
Cho returned to her stand-up roots, cutting an album in 1996 Doom Generation" (1995), gay Asian-American filmmaker Gregg Araki's low-budget indie feature, and co-starred in Randal Kleiser's "It's My Party" (1996), as a friend of AIDS patient Eric Roberts. She also appeared in several films lensed in 1996 for 1997 release including the black/Chinese cultural comedy "Fakin' D' Funk", John Woo's futuristic thriller "Face Off", "Sweethearts", with Janeane Garofalo, and the teen drama "Pink as the Day She Was Born". She had a small voice role as Lieutenant Klavin in “The Rugrats Movie” (1998), then made a cameo in “The Tavern” (2000), playing opposite Kevin Greer as his wife who resents sinking their money into a New York pub. Meanwhile, she continued appearing in ultra-low-budget indies that barely saw the light of box office day, including “Ground Control” (1999), an action-drama about the high pressure world of air traffic controllers; “Can’t Stop Dancing” (1999), a comedy about a fired theme park dance troupe trying to make it big; and “Spent” (2000), a drama about a group of fame-seeking L.A. twenty-somethings drowning in self-delusion and addiction.
In 2001, Cho released the first of several concert documentaries, “I’m the One that I Want,” a frank look at her rapid rise on the comedy circuit and faster decline after the cancellation of her groundbreaking ABC show. Her subsequent descent into depression and substance abuse was used as comedic fodder, as Cho continued to tour comedy clubs and college campuses across the nation. She later emerged from her despair clean, sober and confident. Her next concert film, “Notorious C.H.O.” (2002), followed the comedian to Seattle, where she finished a successful 37-city tour across North America. In her third concert film, “Margaret Cho: Revolution” (2004), shot at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, Cho’s unbridled humor touched upon such topics as monogamy, gay children, making out with Anna Nicole and the embarrassment of growing up in an immigrant home. She returned in 2005 with her fourth concert film, “Margaret Cho: Assassin,” shot at the Warner Theater in Washington D.C., where she lambasted the rapidly devolving State of the Union.