Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard Want to Be on White Lotus

Longtime friends and queens of comedy worked together for the first time on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and it went so well they’re looking to manifest another job together.

Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard are two women who need no introduction — not to readers, and not to each other.

The two actress-comediennes remain ubiquitous decades after first becoming household names, Cho in the 1990s with her raucous stand-up specials and a brief stint leading her own ABC sitcom, All-American Girl, and Bernhard in the late 1970s with her inimitable brand of one-woman cabaret-comedy and a breakout performance in Martin Scorsese's 1982 film The King of Comedy.

Between them, they've racked up hundreds of TV and film credits, half a dozen from this year alone. Cho recently appeared on an episode of ABC's Doctor Odyssey, had a recurring role on the FX dark comedy Dying for Sex and offered answers in the form of a question on Celebrity Jeopardy! This was all in addition to a new music album (Lucky Gift, released in February) and a “Live and Livid!” stand-up tour that ended in May.

When Bernhard isn’t hosting her weekly SiriusXM radio show, Sandyland, she tours the country, and her show “Shapes & Forms” has dates planned through the year. She was recently a guest judge on season 17 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, appeared on Netflix’s Survival of the Thickest and had a recurring role on the Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller Severance. Come December, Cho and Bernhard will try something new on television: appearing alongside each other, as two of the Gray Sisters (with Kristen Schaal as the third) on the second season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+.

Sandra Bernhard / Photo Credit: Nick Spanos

As a reunion of sorts following their work together, Cho and Bernhard took to Zoom (with emmy editor Stephan Horbelt listening in) to swap notes on the state of the world, their recent TV projects and the hit HBO series for which they’d both gladly travel (and go dark on social media) to join.

MARGARET CHO: Well, hello.

SANDRA BERNHARD: Hi, Margy. How are you, honey?

MC: I’m good. How are you?

SB: Good. How are you feeling today? I feel like things, even though they’re insane, are breaking in the right direction. People have never been more engaged.

MC: I do enjoy the resistance. I’m so glad that we got back from Canada [where we shot Percy Jackson] when we did, because if the customs agents took one look at our social media, we would be in El Salvador! I think art now — and comedy — has such an important role in trying to keep things sane. We’re trying to remain sane in the craziness of what’s going on, so it’s really important that we’re out there doing our part.

SB: We do have powerful voices. We’re engaged, and we’re always trying to encourage people to show up and do the right thing, and that’s all we can do. Your new album is fantastic, by the way.

MC: Thank you.

SB: And I’m so glad to see how hard you worked on that, because we all know that for those of us who like to sing, but it’s not necessarily how we’re always perceived — as singers — that it takes a lot more gumption and commitment to get music out there, especially original music. So, I hope that’s going really well for you.

MC: It is. I love it. And I’m obsessed with you on Severance! How did that come together? What was that like?

Bernhard portrays Lumon nurse Cecily on the Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller Severance. / Photo Credit: Apple TV+

SB: I got a call from Ben Stiller asking if I wanted to do this role, and I was like, "Yeah, of course I do." We shot it a year ago. I’ve been sitting on that for a year, because I was sworn to secrecy, which I love. I’m not really one to run around, putting my fingers in my suspenders and going, "Look what I’ve got going on," you know what I mean? It’s just, like, not my bag. So, when things get revealed in that very authentic, organic way, it’s so exciting. And to get that feedback and to work with such incredible people, I mean, Adam Scott, Ben, everybody — the whole crew — they’re next level. It’s vibrating at a whole different level than I’ve ever worked before, so it was amazing.

MC: I would think everybody on Severance would be in awe of you. Like, this is an icon on the set.

SB: They gave it up to me. They were very cool. I mean, it’s a nice position to be in. Of course, like you, I’d like to be part of an ensemble on a show that’s around for a long time, because we want to work and make money.

And the more you work, the more exposure you have, so the more power you have as a voice and culture. And, of course, we have our thing coming out.

MC: Percy Jackson is coming out this year. I mean, we shot that quite a few months ago. [It has] lots of special effects. It’s a show with a very high production value — many hours in makeup, many hours in the process of turning us into those characters.

SB: I mean, you’d had special-effects makeup before, you said, but I’d never had that. And that head guy up there in Vancouver was so cute. I had a little crush on him. He was kind of rock ’n’ roll sexy, and that was fun. It was so much fun working with you, and our other friend —

MC: — Kristen Schaal. She’s so great.

SB: I’d never met her before, and she was so adorable.

MC: My experience working with you was so exciting. We should get on White Lotus together. Let’s manifest that.

SB: I know Mike White. I’ve known him for years. We have dinner, we’ve hung out. Every time we get together, he goes, "Do you want to do TV?" And I’ll be like, "Mike, of course I want to do TV."

MC: I love him.

SB: We’ve been in touch. I keep saying, "Write me a role."

MC: We both need to go on. We need to both be on it. I’m manifesting that for us for our next journey. Hopefully by then we can leave customs and not get our phones searched. In any case, when we go work on White Lotus, wherever they do it, I’m going to bring a burner phone, so I won’t have to deal with it. This is what I will do for Mike White: I’ll delete my social media. I’ll totally go dark on everything.

SB: Well, you’ll have to help me through that. I’m really technologically inept.

MC: I feel like they’re going Nordic. I’m so into conspiracy theories about White Lotus, so I think it’s going to be somewhere like Scandinavia.

SB: That seems doable. I mean, it certainly seems it’d be easy to get back and forth from there.

MC: Well, easy for you.

SB: Oh, right. You’re in L.A. I always forget.

MC: I’m loving that all of your appearances on David Letterman are making a resurgence now on TikTok. There are quite a lot with you, and with you and Madonna, because you made so many appearances on that show.

SB: Thirty.

Bernhard with Madonna on a 1988 episode of Late Night with David Letterman / Photo Credit: NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

MC: I think the most of anybody, right?

SB: Right up there. There are a lot of ladies who did the show on a regular basis: Teri Garr, myself. There were four or five women at that time. And then when he moved over to CBS [from NBC], he didn’t have any of us on anymore. It was really weird. I was only on the CBS show once.

MC: Oh, weird, because whenever I think about that show and the legendary appearances, it’s always you. I never did the CBS show, just twice on NBC in the ’90s, and he was always very flirtatious with me. He was so charming.

SB: We all had a crush on him.

MC: So crushy, so beautiful. Such a good guy.

SB: Yeah, for sure. Brilliant. I hadn’t realized that you just did Celebrity Jeopardy!

MC: I won my first round and made it to the semifinals. I studied 50 hours of episodes from the 1980s, ’90s, 2000s and now. I practiced by just immersing myself in the world of the show. You really have to listen to the clues, because they try to trick you. They’re such smart people that write these clues. They do whatever they can to divert your attention within the clue to make you think it’s something else.

SB: Who else was on the panel?

MC: [In the quarterfinals] I was competing against Rachel Brosnahan and Seth Green. And then [in the semifinals] I went up against Jackie Tohn and the totally phenomenal W. Kamau Bell, who’s my really, really good friend.

Cho made it to the semifinals of Celebrity Jeopardy!, where she won $50,000 for the L.A.-based charity Friendly House / Photo credit: Christopher Willard

SB: I love him.

MC: He’s amazing. [Bell went on to win the third season of Celebrity Jeopardy!] It’s very hard to compete against a really good friend. He’s really, really smart. I just love Jeopardy!

SB: Oh, I love it. I’m obsessed with it. Do you keep the money, or does it go to charity?

MC: I won it for Friendly House, which is a recovery house for low-income women and trans women here in Los Angeles. For me to be able to give back to a community that’s done so much for me, I love that.

SB: I’m going to check it out, because we watch it a lot. I did Celebrity Jeopardy! years ago with Isaac Mizrahi and Melissa Gilbert. Isaac won. I did okay. I mean, like you said, you’ve got to listen, concentrate and work that buzzer.

MC: The buzzer is tricky.

SB: It’s always incredible catching up with you, Margaret.

MC: I miss you, and I hope I get to see you soon. Are you bringing your show to the West Coast?

SB: I think I’m going to be in Orange County in September or October, so look for that. And I’ll probably be out in L.A. in August for a week, too. Let’s hang out.

MC: Well, see you. I love you.

SB: Yeah, love you, honey. I’m so glad we did this.


This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #7, 2025, under the title "Queens of Comedy."