We all know my complicated feelings on Heated Rivalry. The smutty book-turned-TV show had all the sex scenes a viewer could want alongside none of the realities: the existence of lube, visits to the STI clinic, douching, you name it.
But I was sad to learn recently that Margaret Cho turned down the opportunity to play the mom on the show. All because of Trump. She broke the news on the I Never Liked You podcast with Matteo Lane and Nick Smith earlier this month.
"Last year, I got a pilot script for a show that I really loved," she said. "But it shot in Canada, and I was so scared because I'm so vocal about hating ICE and hating this administration. I was like, I will get detained at the border and I will be put in ICE detention if I go."
And it was Heated Rivalry.
The role was Shane Hollander's mother. The closeted golden-boy half of the show's snoozier couple, played by Hudson Williams, would have had Margaret Cho for a mom. "That's my child," she said of watching him on screen. "Hudson is my child." The part eventually went to Christina Chang, who was lovely.
Cho still hosts rewatch parties. She's already asked about Season 2. "It kills me," she said, then said the quiet part loud: "It's all because of Trump."
If you read my original rant, you know the only part of the Shane and Ilya storyline I actually loved was Shane coming out to his mom. The "you have nothing to apologize for, look at me" scene. I wept. I said it was the moment I would have wanted, the conversation most queer people never get.
Saul Sugarman
Ultimately I think Cho would have been distraction. But not since she did Dancing With The Stars, Drop Dead Diva, and a relatively recent appearance on Hacks have I been able to delight in some Margaret Cho worship. So I would have likely welcomed the distraction on Heated Rivalry. And I would have judged the show a little less harshly.
Cho is a San Francisco kid. Born here in 1968, raised between the Inner Sunset and Ocean Beach back when she describes the neighborhood as a melting pot of old hippies, burnouts, drag queens, Chinese, and Koreans.
T Von D
Her Korean immigrant parents, Young-Hie and Seung-Hoon, ran a bookstore called Paperback Traffic on Polk at California, in the heart of what was a very gay Polk Gulch before the Castro took the crown. And it wasn't just any bookstore. It was a gay bookstore, rolling racks of gay romance and Drummer and Honcho, where Armistead Maupin did signings while a young Margaret took it all in.
She started doing comedy at 14, at open mics in a space above her parents' shop. By 17 she was headlining clubs around town. She went to the School of the Arts, then SF State, and never really stopped.
The good news, if we want some: she's coming home. Cho brings her Choligarchy tour to the Palace of Fine Arts on Thursday, May 29. The early show is already sold out; there's a later one. And the tour is, fittingly, a sustained takedown of the very man who cost her the gig. Trump took the role. He does not get to take the city that made her.
It looks like there are still tickets for sale on StubHub for the Cho show. Not even expensive. I should go. So should you.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
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