Margaret Cho: Celebrity as a disease

Wed, 28 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The last time I saw Margaret Cho, we were in Hollywood. We were both vaguely hanging around the same pack of young L.A. comics, a lot of whom are pretty famous now. I was half drunk at Smalls. She walked in with her entourage of pretty, gay young men and had on a fabulous go-go dress and white boots, and we compulsively started sexy-dancing together. I felt special. Her big TV show was about to come out, and she was going out with Chris Isaak, and Disney had recently signed her to a contract worth millions. I was half-suicidal on a rotating schedule of Ritalin, Wellbutrin and a not-so-carefully controlled cocktail limit, and having seizures of depression so fierce friends would have to come and baby-sit me until my arms stopped uncontrollably jerking around, but I thought I was the only one with serious problems. Only last week did I realize that Cho was also hysterically crazy and traumatized during that little disco emergency. Who knew? She seemed so slick.

When her TV show, "All American Girl," came out, everyone felt sad for her, because it was so unforgivably lame. It was clear that she had no creative control; otherwise it would have been funny. The show was quickly canceled and America didn't hear from Margaret Cho for a while, because she was totally drunk off her ass.

Salon.com > By Cintra Wilson

Margaret Cho: Celebrity as a disease