Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka on her journey to the stage and connecting with audiences

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Geoff Bennett: Turning her interesting, sometimes tumultuous life story into comedy comes naturally for Atsuko Okatsuka.

Amna sat down with her recently to see how that humor lands with an ever-growing audience and helps her sort out that life story. The conversation is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Amna Nawaz: Her comedy is physical.

Atsuko Okatsuka, Comedian: Did you eat? No? Eat. Please, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.

(laughter)

Amna Nawaz: Her style eccentric.

Atsuko Okatsuka: Wow. (inaudible) It's the weird one. Uh-oh. She's going to get weird and crazy.

Amna Nawaz: And she knows how to hook her audience.

Atsuko Okatsuka is an Internet sensation with followers who watch as she marries her husband for the second time.

Woman: The straights got married again.

Amna Nawaz: And dances with her grandmother, who now has a separate fan base of her own.

Okatsuka rocketed to viral fame with the creation of her own drop challenge to a Beyonce song. A million people watched her, creating their own videos, including tennis star Serena Williams and actor Mandy Moore.

Atsuko Okatsuka: My husband and I had an intruder come to our house.

Amna Nawaz: And she shines in her first HBO comedy special, "The Intruder."

Atsuko Okatsuka: The guy kind of watches this, creeps out, and starts to run away.

(laughter)

Amna Nawaz: Her quirky observational humor has struck a chord.

Atsuko Okatsuka: Truly, there is a corner in my house that I sometimes take the time to stand at, just because I pay rent.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: Yes, I'm always like, this is like $30 right here.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: Why don't I ever stand here?

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: You pay for it. At least feel it.

(laughter)

Amna Nawaz: She sat down with me recently and talked about discovering comedy in an unlikely place.

What did you see or hear that said, this is something I want to do?

Atsuko Okatsuka: When I first watched stand-up comedy was -- it was through Margaret Cho. So it was this DVD that was handed to me during a really, really boring sermon at church.

One of my friends was like -- like, passed it to me and was like: "Shh. Hey, this is stand-up comedy."

And it was someone who looked like me. And then it wouldn't be until years later that a boyfriend told me that I was funny and that I should try doing stand-up.

Yes, my fellow basic person.

Amna Nawaz: It also took years to get her own special.

Okatsuka is just the second Asian American woman ever to get her own HBO comedy special. The first was Margaret Cho over two decades ago.

Margaret Cho, Comedian: I never saw Asian people on television or in movies, so my dreams were somewhat limited. I would dream, maybe someday I could be an extra on "MASH."

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: It's not about them going, oh, you can't say that out loud. You can't go, no, no, there's only enough slots for so many Asians at a time.

It's just they show it to you. Yes, so you have to push past a lot of barriers.

Amna Nawaz: Why do you think it did take so long?

Atsuko Okatsuka: I think people are afraid of things not working. People are afraid of things they're not used to seeing, but they have to trust the audience.

The audience has been asking for -- and that's what I mean by, like, social media and, like, stand-up comedians can post their own clips online, and then they gain their own followers an, go on tour, and the audience is there. And they prove like, look, people do want to see this. Then the industry usually listens.

Amna Nawaz: You have a story a lot of people can relate to, though, about coming here, learning how to fit in, making a new life in a new country. And your comedy special is called "The Intruder."

Is there another meaning behind that title too?

Atsuko Okatsuka: Yes. Yes. And I'm glad that, like, you saw it, because it's not so over the head, right?

But, yes, the double entendre is that, as a formerly undocumented immigrant, right, I oftentimes felt like I was intruding on everyone else.

Amna Nawaz: What do you mean by that?

Atsuko Okatsuka: I'm coming to someone else's country. I'm coming to someone else's culture.

And being without papers means, like, you're not really supposed to be here. Anybody who's ever felt like an outsider just because you talk differently, or look differently, or dress differently than other people, than the norm, I think you might have felt like an intruder as well.

Amna Nawaz: Her road to success was an unlikely one. Born in Taiwan, she spent her early childhood in Japan before moving to the United States at the age of 10 with her mother and grandmother. For years, she lived undocumented, hiding parts of her identity.

Today, she owns it.

Atsuko Okatsuka: I am a product of divorced parents.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: Guilty. Was undocumented for seven years due to a lie my grandma and my mom told me about how long we were going to be here.

(laughter)

Amna Nawaz: Tell me about your family and how you came to live in the U.S.

Atsuko Okatsuka: My mom and grandma and I moved to the U.S. when I was 8. But, at the time, I didn't know I was moving here.

My grandma, she's so sweet, unassuming-looking, this, like, old Asian woman. But she was a liar.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: She told me we were coming to the States for a two-month vacation, and then she had us overstay our tourist visas. We became undocumented.

We were living in my uncle's garage. And so that was -- that's how she at least got me to move to L.A.

Amna Nawaz: Yes.

Atsuko Okatsuka: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: The challenges, some very personal, feed her work today. And Okatsuka doesn't shy away from the tough stuff.

Atsuko Okatsuka: My dad's on his third divorce. My mom's schizophrenic. At a certain point, I want to look at my family and be like, guys, if you wanted me to do comedy, you could have just told me. You know what I mean?

(laughter)

Amna Nawaz: You have talked about your mother's own mental illness.

Atsuko Okatsuka: Mm-hmm.

Amna Nawaz: Why do you think it's important to weave those details into your work?

Atsuko Okatsuka: As a kid, I was always able to make sad things funny, not just for me, but for my family. It's just a part of how I communicate with people.

I go, OK, this very-difficult-to-talk-about subject mental illness, no worries. Let's talk about it. But I'm going to make you laugh while I'm doing it.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: You know? And, that way, like, we both feel better, yes.

Amna Nawaz: Okatsuka continues to tour across the country, bringing her comedy and building connections wherever she goes.

What do you love about this work? What is it like when you're up on stage and you can make an entire room laugh?

Atsuko Okatsuka: Oh, gosh. It's just -- it's finding community, yes.

And my fans are fellow weirdos. You're a fellow weirdo for even connecting with me.

Amna Nawaz: Thank you for that.

Atsuko Okatsuka: Watching my comedy, even laughing at it.

Sorry. You're not normal.

(laughter)

Atsuko Okatsuka: And that's what I love, though, that we can all find each other and be like, yes, like, we're not alone and all the times we might have felt that way.

That's why -- that's why I love it.