The comedian in her element
This is one of the awesome perks of my job as a reporter. Sometimes I meet really cool people. In this case, I got to meet comedian Margaret Cho. She was in Philly performing and the folks from Live Nation asked me if I’d be interested in interviewing her. Hell yeah! It got even better as we got closer to the interview… I was told when she flew into Philly that it would be most convenient for me to interview her in her hotel room. That was pretty awesome. So I pulled up to the Four Seasons and knocked on her door. When she opened it, poor Margaret looked so tired. She was also super thin. Much thinner than she had been when I saw her on tour a couple of years ago last time she was in Philly (three years ago?). I walked in there expecting a firecracker and she was uncharacteristically calm! Gracious, but calm in a way that I didn’t expect. I had already spoken to the operations manager at my radio station about putting an advisory on the Margaret Cho podcast in case she decided to say something raunchy. To my disapointment, she didn’t. Margaret told me she’d been on the road now for EIGHT MONTHS! No wonder she was tired! I got the impression that after our interview, she was going to happily crawl into bad and go to sleep, and I think that’s what she did.
The next night, Laura and I went to see Margaret Cho’s show. She absolutely sparkled on stage as she described raunchy senarios of sex and other funny situations. She’s just silly and out there. She lets it fly on stage.
But when we went backstage to meet her, she was her calm self again. Don’t get me wrong, she was absolutely gracious — just much quieter than I expected her to be. I guess you can’t be crazy ALL the time. It makes me wonder if she quietly watches the world and the crazy people in it just to file it away in her mind and then let it fly later on stage. She’s so crazy. Especially those facial expressions she makes. I think she’s not only a comedian, she’s an actress, too. Thanks for the show, Margaret!
