‘Fashion Police’ panelist and comedy queen Margaret Cho is bringing her Psycho tour to the Astor Theatre this September. We caught up with the outspoken comic about trying to celebrate Pride in the wake of Orlando, her take on the US Presidential election and her new album.
Calling from her LA home as Pride celebrations wrapped up around the country, Cho tells us there was a cloud over the parades in the wake of the tragic events at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.
“I was really upset about what happened in Orlando which unfortunately happened to coincide with Los Angeles Pride. I found it really hard, I was depressed for a long time. I’m still upset about it and I’m still furious about it.”
“In Australia you have a generation that has grown up with no concept of the gun violence that happens in this country every single day. Although Pride celebrations are very important to the community, it’s very hard to go out and enjoy your pride after something like that happens.”
“The spirit of it was just so depressing because Orlando was such a majorly horrifying tragedy. I always think of gay clubs as being a safe place that you’re free from a lot of the male aggression that we endure – even if it’s not guns – in life. Free from judgement, free from homophobia. To have it at a place where people were experiencing this sanctuary for the first time is really upsetting and it’s all because some guy couldn’t get dick on Grindr.”
Community outrage in the wake of Orlando has seen many turn to politics in the hopes of enacting change, though Cho is apprehensive about the state of US Politics with particular concerns about the Republican candidate.
“I don’t really know what’s happening with the election here, I am a fan of both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and worked for both campaigns, the whole thing is a very strange environment for politics.”
Cho says she finds it hard to believe that gay conservative political writer Milo Yiannopoulos and other LGBTIQ people would align themselves with Donald Trump and hoped to offer ‘Gays for Trump’ some advice.
“They need to teach him how to fix his foundation first because he’s not blending the paint or whatever he puts on his face. If you’re gay and you really want to help the Trump campaign, a makeover would be in order.”
This year, Cho channeled much of her emotion toward the marathon Presidential race into making music, trying her hand at composition on her latest album ‘American Myth’.
“Music is a very big part of my life. I have a very large collection of guitars and I’m close with amazing artists like Tegan and Sara, Andrew Bird, Fiona Apple and Amanda Palmer. I’m lucky that’s a community I’m very close to, maybe even closer than comedy. I’ve always gotten along well with musicians.”
Cho says she will perform some of her favourite tunes on stage on the Psycho Tour, flexing her musical and comedic muscles.
“I’ll do a couple of songs from the record. One is ‘Fat Pussy’ which is an anthem for me. I really enjoy that song’s positivity and then ‘I Wanna Kill My Rapist’ which is also a very big part of the show talking about sexual abuse and how you feel from it by just trying to find some way of processing it.”
Audiences can expect to hear songs from Cho’s albums, but Margaret says the comedy is best when it’s fresh from the news and caters to local audiences.
“It’s constantly developing, I’ll have to wait until I get into Australia to see that. The show changes day to day depending on the news cycle and what’s going on so there’s always this mutable element to it. I try to tailor it to every place I go so it makes it very local, that’s important to me.”
“We will talk about racism, sexism and homophobia in very real ways and about how we deal with that in the world and but there’s always comedy – even if you’re talking about whitewashing in American cinema and beyond – I always try to find that balance.”
Margaret Cho’s Psycho Tour hits the Astor Theatre, Tuesday September 6th. Tickets available from Moshtix.com.au
