Margaret Cho "All-American Girl" set-visit interview

Newsday

September 14, 1994, Wednesday, CITY EDITION

SECTION: PART II; Pg. B04

LENGTH: 1716 words

HEADLINE: All in the Korean-American Family;

Margaret Cho transforms her life - and stand-up act - into a ground- breaking sitcom.

BYLINE: Frank Lovece. Frank Lovece is a free-lance writer.

DATELINE: BURBANK, Calif.

BODY:

BURBANK, Calif.
 
CALL IT Manifest Disney, the doctrine stating that comics like Tim Allen, Ellen DeGeneres and
Margaret Cho all get Disney-produced sitcoms based loosely on their own lives.

And here at the Disney Studios' Stage 1 - right next door to "Ellen" and just down Goofy Way
from Allen's "Home Improvement" - Cho's new series about an MTV-ish young Korean-
American culture-clashing with her traditionalist parents shows us the philosophy at work:
Though the series has been much retooled from the pilot episode, Disney's belief in its essential
rightness is unwavering. In other words, the Cho must go on.

She does so, specifically, tonight at 9:30 when her sitcom "All-American Girl" previews on ABC
(next Wednesday it moves to its regular 8:30 time slot, hammocked between "Thunder Alley"
and "Roseanne"). And to hear her tell it, it was meant to be. "It's really, like, for a lotta
metaphysical reasons," she says in her trailer outside the stage, sounding more like a Valley Girl
than the San Franciscan she is and plays. "I was born on the same day as Walt Disney," she
explains.

Cho, 25, sucks on a Marlboro Light in the tiny trailer, filling it with smoke. Dressed in a black,
farmer-type overall dress with a white halter top beneath it, she still displays some of the baby fat
she joked about in her recent HBO special. A writer, she recalled, once described her as "funny,
sexy, zaftig. What is 'zaftig?' " she wondered pointedly. "German for big fat pig?"

The series posits Cho as Margaret Kim, a rebellious, smart-mouthed, completely assimilated
young Korean-American woman living at home with her traditionalist parents (Clyde Kusatsu,
Jodi Long), who own a small bookstore in San Francisco - all real elements of Cho's own life
before she made her success in stand-up. And as in stage act, the show makes much of her
Korean-American upbringing. And while it's not the first TV show about Asian-Americans, it is
the first such sitcom.

Cho and the rest of the cast feel the historical weight. "We're going in just showing people with
the same concerns, joys and generational conflict as anyone, and it just so happens we're Asian,"
says veteran actor Kusatsu, himself a third-generation Japanese-American. "And in the process,
hopefully, some stereotypes are broken down, people going, 'Hey, Marge! These guys sound just
like Uncle Louie!' " - this said, ironically enough, with a stereotyped blue-collar accent.

It's also said on the show's set, which looks appropriately lived-in and homey. The kitchen has a
refrigerator with a jumble of magnets holding recipes, a San Francisco 49ers schedule and an
envelope from Germany addressed to "Mr. Lee Majors, 20th Century Fox." The bookstore set is
adorned with a truckload of real books, most apparently scrounged from remainder bins; one is
"Top Dog: Canines and Their Companions," boasting a foreword by Betty White. The office part
of the bookstore behind the cash register is adorned with clutter including a Korean Times
newspaper, a Jerry Lewis charity solicitation showing him in half-clown face.

On this particular day, two days before the episode "Submission: Impossible" gets videotaped
before a 186-seat audience, Cho sits in a temporary food-court set where two friends rib her
about her new Korean-American boyfriend (guest star Garrett Wang). The storyline has
Margaret getting uncharacteristically humble and subservient with him; later, indeed, she'll have
dinner with his family, passing their subtle cultural tests thanks to coaching by her grandmother
(Amy Hill). And then, of course, she learns that real happiness means Always Being Yourself.
Awwwww.

Cho's act is much more biting and aggressive, especially in her merciless skewering of her old-
world mom, whom Cho paints as hopelessly clueless. That's been predictably toned down for the
show, which in the pilot, at least, has Mom (Jodi Long) as a formidable, even overbearing,
presence.

Disney staff producer Gary Jacobs, who wrote the pilot, "worked with me and watched my act,"
says Cho, "and we met and talked for hours about my family and about the kinds of things we
wanted to do and the kind of show we wanted to have." Jacobs - who'd served as an executive
producer of "Empty Nest" for three years, and created the ill-fated Fox post-nuke sitcom
"Woops!" - came together with Cho via her management company, Sandollar, which has a
production deal with Disney. "The show's inspired in part by her act and in part by meeting and
talking with her," he says in his office, across the lot. "She and I had a lot of lunches and talked
and I found out a little bit more about her real life. Much of what she says in her act is pretty real.
She exaggerates, but it's pretty much her story."

In the pilot, directed by Andrew D. Weyman and which may remain unseen, Cho played
Margaret Kim, a college grad working at a department-store cosmetics counter in Anywhere,
USA. She lived at home, for reasons of both tradition and finances, with her affluent, bookstore-
owning parents, her grandmother and her little brother Eric (J.B. Quon). Older brother Stuart
(B.D. Wong), an Armani-clad, married cardiologist, habitually joined them for dinner every
night, without his wife.
Much of that changed. Terry Hughes, formerly of "The Golden Girls," was brought in as regular
director. Among storyline changes, Margaret became a college student living at home and
working part-time (with co-workers Maddie Corman and Judy Gold remaining from the pilot)
and the now middle-class family lives in a San Francisco apartment above their bookstore.

"I didn't want them to be as affluent as they were in the pilot," Jacobs asserts. "But we did a thing
which - I don't know if Disney coined the term - is called 'pilotation,' which means we saved
money by shooting the pilot on an existing set, in this case the set of 'Boy Meets World.' And
even though it's culturally accurate that she was still living at home after college, it was
discovered in testing that a lot of viewers perceived her as immature, or they didn't understand it.
And finally, our time slot became 8:30, and so our audience is younger than we'd anticipated,
and that again was an argument for making her younger."

Testing, presumably, was the reason for two other big changes: Eric now has a Caucasian best
friend, next-door neighbor Casey (Ashley Johnson), and the once-refined Stuart is now a
football-loving, jockhead medical student - an all-American boy, as it were.

Actually, the twentysomething Stuart isn't a "boy" anymore than Margaret, a grown woman, is a
"girl." Since no one today uses such demeaning terms as "girl Friday" or "houseboy" - the latter
once applied to Asian-men valets such Bruce Lee's Kato on "The Green Hornet" (1966-67) or
Jack Soo's Rocky Sin on "Valentine's Day" (1964-65) - the choice of title seems like an unhip
throwback. Jane Seymour's series isn't, after all, called "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Girl."

Still, the show's a breakthrough of a sort. As the half-Japanese, half-Chinese Jodi Long puts it,
with enthusiastic disgust, "Y'know, you always see Asian kids as into math, they're always into
math. I'm hoping we do break the mold a bit."
 
Asian Roles on the Small Screen
 
ALL AMERICAN GIRL" may be the first Asian-American sitcom, but series based on or
featuring Asian characters have been on TV since the 1950s - though not always with Asian
actors in the lead roles. Among the most notable:

The British-produced series "Charlie Chan," aka "The New Adventures of Charlie Chan," which
came to U.S. television for 39 episodes in 1957. Though Chan - a fictionalized version of real-
life police detective Chang Apana - was played by an Irish-American actor, J. Carrol Naish; his
"number-one son," Barry, was played by the ubiquitous James Hong, most recently seen in the
film "The Shadow."

"Anna and the King" (CBS, 1972) starred Yul Brynner - born Taidje Khan on Sakhalin Island,
Russia - as the King of Siam (now Thailand), reprising his Broadway and movie roles. Keye
Luke (later to play Master Po on "Kung Fu") played the king's aide, Kralahome, with Brian
Tochi as Crown Prince Chulalongkorn and Lisa Lu as Lady Thiang.

"Khan" (CBS, 1975) starred Khigh Dhiegh - popular as recurring "Hawaii Five-O" villain Wo
Fat - as a San Francisco Chinatown private eye. Irene Yah-Ling Sun and Evan Kim co-starred as
his two grown children (the former a criminology PhD) who work with him.

"Mr. T and Tina" (ABC, 1976), a short-lived sitcom starred Pat Morita as widowed Japanese
inventor Taro Takahashi, transferred by his firm from Tokyo to Chicago with his two young
children. There he culture-clashed with a well-meaning Nebraskan nanny, Tina Kelly (Susan
Blanchard).

"Pink Lady" (NBC, 1980) was a series featuring the Japanese rock-pop duo of the same name:
Mitsuyo (Mie) Nemoto and Keko (Kei) Masuda. American comedian Jeff Altman co-starred.
Good thing - Mie and Kei spoke virtually no English.

"Gung Ho" (ABC, 1986-87) starred Gedde Watanabe as Kaz Kazuhiro, a Japanese auto-plant
manager temporarily living in the United States. Also in the cast was popular Japanese actor Sab
Shimono as Kaz' traditionalist assistant, Mr. Saito. Patti Yasutake played Kaz' wife, Umeki, with
Emily K. Kuroda as Saito's wife, Yukiko. Others in the cast (besides co-star Scott Bakula,
playing labor liaison Hunt Stevenson) included Rodney Kageyama as Ito and Scott Atari as
Kenji.

"Ohara" (ABC, 1987-88), not to be confused with "O'Hara, United States Treasury (CBS 1971-
72)," had Morita as a Japanese-American police lieutenant in the LAPD, later assigned to a
federal crime task force, and later becoming a private detective.

Asian or Asian-American roles/actors have appeared in supporting or recurring roles since at

least the Caucasian actress Gloria Saunders' portrayal of the Dragon Lady on "Terry and the
Pirates" (syndicated, 1952). Who can forget Hop Sing (Victor Sen Yung) on "Bonanza," Nick
Yemana (Jack Soo) on "Barney Miller," Mr. Sulu (George Takei) on "Star Trek" or Mrs.
Livingston (Miyoshi Umeki) on "The Courtship of Eddie's Father"?

And thank goodness we can mostly forget Ah Chew, played by Pat Morita on a season of
"Sanford and Son," long before "The Karate Kid" gave him financial security. - Lovece

GRAPHIC: Photo-1) Margaret Cho, seated, with her TV family in ABC's 'All- American Girl,'
from left, J.B. Quon as little brother Eric, Amy Hill as grandmother, B.D. Wong as older brother
Stuart, Jodi Long as mother and Clyde Kusatsu as father. 2) Color Photo-Cho plays Margaret
Kim, a rebellious, smart-mouthed, completely assimilated young Korean-American woman
living at home with her traditionalist parents who own a small bookstore - all real elements of
Cho's own life. 3) Color Cover Photo - Margaret Cho