Henry Cho – “I Reckon So”

An AmericasComedy.Com Interview

Henry Cho’s fairytale career began in 1986 when, as a student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he entered a “Funniest Person in America” contest sponsored by the Showtime network.

Cho, who is a full-blooded Korean, but raised in the heart of the South, walked onto the stage and in his deepest, most Southern drawl stated, “So, I’m from the South. So I guess that makes me South Korean.” It was a juxtaposition “hook” that launched his career.

“It was my first joke, so I had to explain who I was,” he said. And that hook has served him well. The late Steve Allen, first host of the original “Tonight Show” and a huge supporter of Cho’s, once commented that there were very few original jokes left and Cho had at least 12 of them.

“All of my mentors, Seinfeld, Leno and (Gary) Shandling always told me that I had the best hook since Rodney Dangerfield.”

I just happened to hear about (the competition) and called to see if I could go on stage,” he said. “I was on the waiting list and somebody canceled so I got the last spot. I was the last to go on and received a standing ovation. That was on Monday and the club owner immediately offered me a job for Wednesday. By Friday, I dropped out of college to do stand up full time.”

Cho also had another hook that set him apart from most all other comedians. He only does “clean” comedy. Can a mainstream comedian be funny and clean at the same time? Cho thinks so.

“I pride myself on never using a cuss word on stage. Ever.” Cho brags. “I headline in Las Vegas every year, and this summer I am performing on an Alaskan cruise. Not too many comedians can pull that off. Funny thing is, my show doesn’t change for Vegas.

“My show is an adult comedy show, but it isn’t offensive. Your kids could listen to it, even though I hope they wouldn’t ‘get’ most of it. But I get a lot of fan mail from soccer moms saying ‘I love having your CD because I can listen to it with my kids in the car.’”

That clean act is partially responsible for his early success. A quickly rising comedian named Jerry Seinfeld was performing in Atlanta and looking for an opener that would perform totally clean. Cho was the perfect candidate and toured extensively with Seinfeld.

“So, when Jerry moved to Los Angeles, he told (Gary) Shandling and Leno and these guys that I was funny so I ended up working with the top 10 comedians in the nation in my first two or three years doing stand up.”

Have there been any hardships or “hell gigs” along the way?

“My wife asked me how long I am planning to be a comedian and I just told her that George Burns was performing until he was 100.”

“Well, in 1989 or 1990, Tim Allen, myself, Seinfeld, Larry Miller and Dennis Wolfberg were hired to do the White Mountain Cooler Tour. We traveled around the country and had to do eight venues. One stop was in Jacksonville, Miss., and unfortunately the comedy club there had closed two weeks before so they put us at a place called The Docks. It was actually a dock and people would come off of their boats and there was only four tables so everyone had to just stand around. That’s not even the worst part. We had to do four nights there, one show a night and it was exactly the same people each night. By the end, we were just chatting with the audience asking things like, ‘How’s was your job interview, Bob?’”

Cho moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and then to Tennessee five years later.

“Everything was great and my career was on the upswing, but it was just making me somebody I didn’t like. I’m not an L.A. kind of guy. I just have a different moral compass, so I moved back to Tennessee to buy a farm. I commuted every week for two years after that, while I was hosting ‘Friday Night Videos’ for NBC, I would just commute.”

Even though Cho appears on television and in movies, including the 1996 movie “Material Girls” with Hillary Duff, Cho has lived and owned a farm in Tennessee raising Black Angus cattle with his wife and three kids since 1994. Since it was a working ranch, we asked him if he raised anything else.

“Nope, kids and cattle. That’s enough!”

Cho works on the road about eight to 10 days a month and shares his child-raising and family duties with his wife.

“I take time off through the holidays and the summer so we can hang out with the kids.”

Shows like ‘Rosanne,’ Tim Allen’s show ‘Home Improvement’ and even Ray Ramono’s  ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’  were ‘based on the stand up of..” and not created by the comedians themselves.

“There’s no down-side to my life,” he said. “If my television show (currently being marketed) doesn’t get picked up then it’s no big deal because I get to stay in Nashville and do what I do. I have a blessed life.”

It is also a good thing that being a comedian doesn’t have an age requirement.

“My wife asked me how long I am planning to be a comedian and I just told her that George Burns was performing until he was 100.”

Since Cho has performed with many great comedians, we asked him if he would give us some quick thoughts about some famous people he knows. He agreed.

Bill Envall: “One of my best friends! His son is one of my godsons. Great mentor.”

Jeff Foxworthy: “Another great mentor and dear friend. I have so many stories with him about working back in the day before the ‘Blue Collar Tour.’”

Tim Allen: “Tim and I go way back from our time on the road. I see him occasionally.”

Phil Nee (the only other Korean comedian performing nationally when Cho was beginning his career): “I hear that he isn’t doing comedy anymore. Some of the young Asian comedians nowadays find that between Phil and I we have done almost every Korean joke there is, so it’s hard for them to find their own version.”

Craig Ferguson (co-Producer of Cho’s comedy pilot): “Most producers of television shows just put their names on there like a vanity plate. Craig went to the meeting with Paramount with me, the meeting at CBS with me, and is a class act.”

Jerry Seinfeld: “Seinfeld set me on the right track. He told me, when I had been doing comedy for less than a year, ‘People are going to throw all kinds of stuff at you, they may want to give you shows with a stand up theme, but don’t stop doing stand up because very few people can do it as well as you can do it.”

Cho admits that he made a decision early on that he would choose to be successful over being famous.

“You know, I stay right under the radar and I get all the great perks that go along with where I am. But when opportunities arise, like doing a television show, my wife and I talk about and pray about how that exposure affects the entire family and our lifestyle. Early on, I wanted to be an actor, but it just isn’t conducive to my raising a family. I can’t go away for six weeks to do a movie in Australia, no matter how much they pay me.”

With over three television pilot scripts to his credit, Cho is a member of both the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild.

“Today, it is hard to get a show that is created by the lead actor. Shows like ‘Rosanne,’ Tim Allen’s show ‘Home Improvement’ and even Ray Ramono’s ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ were ‘based on the stand up of…” and not created by the comedians themselves. To be able to get a “co-created by” gives you the control over the show, which is what I have to have. I want to control what my show is going to be.”

What can the audience expect to see next month at the Cache Creek Casino?

“I usually know what kind of show that I want to do when I get up on stage, but it often doesn’t work out that way. I have a God-given talent for thinking fast and ad-libbing on the fly, and so a percentage of my act is “riffing” with the audience and I usually have a question-and-answer segment that I do toward the end of my show. I like to interact with the people and know what they think.”

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