Margaret Cho recalls groundbreaking legacy of 'All-American Girl': 'I wish that we could have done so much more'
Margaret Cho's breakthrough sitcom All-American Girl depicted the first Asian-American family on TV.
In honor of AAPI Heritage month, Cho recently spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about what it was like to take such a giant step forward for representation and visibility, and what she'd do differently if she got a second chance.
Watch more from Cho in the video interview above.
Video Transcript
- What's with the sunglasses? You look like Yoko Ono.
- Tell our daughter I have nothing to say to her.
- Mom, this is how they used to fight on The Brady Bunch. We can do better.
MARGARET CHO: When I look back on my own contributions to television with All-American Girl, which was the first Asian-American family on TV, I'm really grateful. And I'm really proud. But I wish that we could have done so much more. We were so limited by this idea of having to be this autobiographical narrative that was quote unquote authentic. And really, that's not the point. And I was caught up in that too. Like how can we actually be authentic? As if we couldn't be trusted to tell our own story. And that was the wrong attitude. But I am proud of my achievements, as far as I could go. It was really important.
I think that what I would like to have seen, if I were able to do All-American Girl now, would be a voice that matched my voice as a stand-up comedian. Which was impossible to do at Disney on a television show that was on at 8:00 PM. And we only had four channels then. And we only had this moment to sort of capture what younger life was like. But I wasn't a teenager. And I wasn't married, so I didn't fit in to like the demographics of anybody.
Friends had just started. We started the same season as Friends. So there was no focus on young, American people who were not necessarily marriage-minded and not necessarily work-minded. You just wanted to live. And so, that was a very foreign idea still in television.
- When did things go wrong between us?
- I say around the 14th hour of labor.
MARGARET CHO: I have had a lot of different development opportunities to create TV shows. I actually made one with Youn Yuh-jung, who won the Oscar for "Minari." She and I made a pilot in 2018 that didn't end up going, because we made a pilot about a Korean family running a medical marijuana dispensary. She was great. And it was a lot of fun.
But it was unfortunately, just ahead of its time. It would have been really great to be able to do that with her. But it's also another opportunity, where I was trying to create a television show about an Asian-American family. And so I'm still working on it, but it'll happen soon.
- Wow. I wouldn't have taken you for such a culturally-aware guy.
- Well, that's what you get for judging a book by its cover. Hey, [? dude. ?]
MARGARET CHO: Quentin Tarantino asked to be a part of the show. And he really wanted to be in it. And I was so excited. And you'd never seen a bigger star. And this was sort of the return of the 90s director-auteur. And I have never seen that level of people bending over backwards to do whatever he wanted. And it was really incredible to see how show business really will bend to the will of a genius. And he was that, at that time. So it was really fun to do and innovative to sort of look at the episode and look at the way that they pulled it all together. But we had a great time.
It was really the writers. It was really the writers of the show, and then my focus on trying to get him there and being a part of it. He was really excited. And he was really into the idea of like being on a sitcom. It was a really fun experience to have him there. And we really laughed.
