- As a kid, I didn't go to "Star Wars."

I went to John Waters movies.

I didn't give you any hands.

- Oh, that's okay.

- I feel like emotionally it doesn't make sense.

My parents' bookstore was underneath a British pub that had comedy nights, and you could buy tomatoes at the door and throw them at the comedians.

- Oh my God.

- But I never got anything thrown at me.

- Okay, good.

What is your dog's name?

- Lucia.

She just loves being around comedians.

She's been going to green rooms in comedy since she was eight weeks old.

- Is there a comedian that Lucia has had a negative reaction to?

- No, only positive.

- Great.

- There's certain comedians that she's really interested in, like Patton Oswalt, Jim Jefferies.

She's really in love with him.

Much more interested in men, oddly.

Maybe because we're not around a lot of men other than in comedy.

- You know, my daughter's like that because it's obviously it's just like us and there's just so many girls in our family.

And during the pandemic she was a baby and so she just didn't get out.

And it's almost like she was living in a man-less world.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And then so finally when everything was lifted, she's looking at a unicorn or like a fairy when she sees a boy.

- Yeah, it's so exciting.

- Right?

Yeah.

Because it's so different.

- Yeah.

- You're being a good sport, being in this pouch.

- I don't think I could bring my dog.

He's like so... He's a chihuahua/terrier.

Actually, the material that I do about my dog is the material that I'm like, everybody gets this.

There's not one person that doesn't get dog material.

- Uh-huh - So I like to put that in the middle - Like this one's for everybody.

- It is because we all understand.

Have you ever had cats?

- I want a cat so bad.

I have this comic strip that I've been drawing for over 10 years and she has a cat, the character, and the cat's name is Sylvia Plath.

I feel like I've been leading up to convincing my wife to get a cat by first having a dog, then I got pregnant and had a baby and it was all in service of convincing her to get a cat.

- I love my cat so much.

It's just the best thing I've ever done in my life is have cats.

- We have this thing called quick draw where we'll do one minute to draw one of your cats from memory.

- Okay.

- All right, we'll start the minute now.

See, you have 20 seconds left, a minute.

Let's see.

Oh my gosh, I love this.

This is real art right here.

I love her little butt hole.

I don't know if I'm great at drawing dogs.

I don't know.

- Oh my God, that's so cute.

- Did you draw as a child?

- No, I've never drawn anything ever.

My family put so much importance on math and studying that something like drawing or art was really looked down upon.

So they would never allow.

I never had a coloring book.

I didn't have crayons.

I didn't even know what they were.

It was really about building a career.

But I always thought drawing would just be a cool thing to start to try to do, but I never tried.

- I didn't necessarily take any art classes growing up, but I just love to draw for the expression of it.

It's very similar to standup, although standup then became my career, but drawing is something that you can do if you have five minutes.

You can doodle on your standup notebook.

- Right, and it's creating something and embellishing it from an image.

So that's he way that it's similar to standup.

And in standup, you take an observation and then it's really about the embellishment of it.

- I read that your parents owned a bookstore in San Francisco when you were growing up.

- Yes, it's a gay bookstore.

So we had a rolling rack of romance novels for gentlemen.

There was an early transgender magazine mainly for men transitioning to be women.

There was a lot of people working for my father who were early supporters of Harvey Milk.

And my very first gay pride was in 1978, which is very small in San Francisco.

It's very different.

But yeah, so I've been around the gay community since I was a real little kid.

I'm very lucky that way.

That's sort of what made being gay so easy because when you're gay and you're surrounded by gay people, it's like being gay is actually the default.

As a kid, I didn't go to "Star Wars."

I went to John Waters movies.

- I was thinking about Borders, Barnes and Noble.

And when I was younger, I would go in and the gay and lesbian section was like this big.

- Slim.

- So slim and it was in the basement next to the tractors and all these other farming.

And I remember going down there and just basically pretending like I'm into farming, but really trying to look at these books.

- Trying to see.

- Yeah.

When did you start comedy?

- I started comedy in 1982.

- And was it in San Francisco?

- In San Francisco.

I had a teacher who would sign her students up for open mics and there was a comedy club that was really popping.

My parents' bookstore was underneath a British pub that had comedy nights and you could buy tomatoes at the door and throw them at the comedians.

- Oh my God - Horrible.

- No.

- But I never got anything thrown at me.

- Okay, good.

- But I was just a little kid and I would go upstairs and do comedy.

- Do you remember one of your first jokes?

- Yeah, so I would have to go on after, usually it was a bunch of white guys in their 40s doing jokes about Asian drivers.

So I would come on and I would say, after all of that, and just say, "My name is Margaret Cho, and I drive very well."

And everybody would feel super guilty and laugh out of the guilt, and then I would just start.

But yeah, my early comedy was really just about really being a little kid and being around all these adults and how weird that was.

I'm drawing French film star Isabelle Huppert.

You look a lot like, she's a legend, that's who this is.

- You moved to LA from San Francisco, right?

- Yeah, I moved to LA in 1990.

- Were you part of the bookstore standup?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Because I love hearing stories about that because I mean, it wasn't happening when I got here as much.

I mean, obviously we'll do comedy anywhere.

- I would do a show with Janeane Garofalo and Kathy Griffin called Hot Cup of Talk, and it was at Big and Tall Books.

You know, they were really brave about it.

And they're still, Kathy and Janeane both, they're so good about going into these environments, doing new material, untested things.

They don't have a sense of worrying about how things will be received.

They just go, and it's really, I admire that so much.

- That's actually what I was going to add.

I mean, I have a question for you on that because one of the last shows that we were on a lineup together and it was at the Ice House in Pasadena.

And I'm like, personally, I'm always trying to make goals for myself on stage.

And one of them is to be brave on stage and talk about the things that I really.

And I've been so focused on joke writing.

And then when I see you out there performing, you're like, I love that it's like you don't know who this audience is and you're out there and it's like there are no apologies and I respect that so much.

- Oh, thank you.

Yeah, there was one night that this woman threatened to kill me and it's not even, I don't even know.

It's not even about a difference of political opinion.

It's like you just cannot handle an opposing thought.

- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- I was really shaken by that because I've had a lot of death threats online, but I've never had a person issue a death threat in my face.

- Right, yeah.

- You know, you go, "Well, is it worth it?

I don't know if the jokes are worth it."

I mean, it all is, it's all important.

I think that your portrait now also looks like kind of an Eminem also.

- Okay.

- You know when the Eminem wears high heels?

- Yes.

- It's giving that.

- She's hot.

If I didn't meet my wife, I think I would've ended up with her.

- I just hope that you included Lucia in your drawing.

- Of course I did.

I actually might draw an additional one of Lucia.

- Because she's such a muse.

Now she's all the way down on the bottom of her pouch.

I didn't give you any hands because I feel like I- - Oh, that's okay.

- I feel like emotionally it doesn't make sense.

- Okay, Margaret, I'll just have you come over here and you can see your little cartoon that I drew of you.

- Oh, it's so cute.

Oh, I love it.

That's so adorable.

- I tried to put some books from your bookstore.

- Perfect, that's amazing.

- Okay, you ready for your big reveal?

- Yeah, big reveal.

- Oh my gosh, I love it.

It's me, oh my gosh.

- Well, it's Isabelle Huppert.

- Yeah, yeah, it's Isabelle.

- It's odd.

And it's also like when the Eminem wears high heels.

- Yeah, you know, I love these eyes though.

Yeah.

This is amazing.