One of the songs on comedian/musician Margaret Cho‘s latest studio album, “Funny Man,” is a tribute to the late comedian Robin Williams — a song she started writing on August 11th, 2014, the day Williams passed away. “Having grown up in San Francisco, having known him since I was about eight years old, [his passing] was a shock,” she tells Consequence. “My relationship with him was personal and parasocial. I wasn’t close to him, really, but I knew him in my work life and in comedy, and I knew him as a child, and I knew him of course as a fan.”
Williams’s death hit the world hard, and while his legacy is undeniable, Cho feels that lately, “people are really uncomfortable with talking about him. Very rarely do you hear his name mentioned. Which is unfortunate because he’s one of the most important comedic figures in film and television in the last century. I think people just don’t want to talk about, you know, mental health and all those things that may make it a difficult conversation. But I want him to be remembered.”
When Cho originally wrote “Funny Man,” it was during a time when she felt that “a lot of people were spurred into action: Like, what can we do about it? What can we say about this?” The answer for her and others was a project called #BeRobin, “an outreach for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.”
#BeRobin, Cho says, “was a network of artists who would raise money and go to encampments and steal electricity and play these huge shows out on the street. We would give out food and supplies and money and all sorts of things. It was almost like we were bringing a music festival to these big camps of people who were experiencing homelessness.”
Also involved were local figures like Bob Mould and Boots Riley: “Just an amazing array of talented people. And we would play this song with horns and strings and stolen electricity into amps. It was just an incredible experience.”
Cho says the inspiration for #BeRobin came from Comic Relief, the long-running comedy charity effort spearheaded by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Williams. “It was a way to sort of talk about [Williams’] activism and charity work as somebody who was a representative of people who were experiencing homelessness very early on. And also to talk about grief.”
While “Funny Man” originated in 2014, it wasn’t until recently that Cho recorded it to include in her new album Lucky Gift — she hasn’t even played it live since the days of #BeRobin. “So it’s great to return to that,” she says. “I love the song. I think it celebrates these funny men and women, who are just trying to do the best that they can.”
Cho notes that the laughter heard at the end of “Funny Man” came from a show she did with Kyle MacLachlan in 2024, one that paid tribute to Twin Peaks and, naturally, the now-late David Lynch. “The song could apply to him as well,” Cho says of Lynch. “He was a funny guy. To me it’s really magical, the laughter at the end.”
Roger Rocha (of 4 Non Blondes) co-wrote the song with Cho, along with several other songs from Lucky Gift, which he also helped produce alongside Garrison Starr.
The story of how Cho met Williams at the age of eight is simple: Her parents owned a bookstore in San Francisco, and her father asked him for his autograph one day (because she was too scared to do so). “It was the first autograph that I ever got,” she says. Later, as a 14-year-old starting out in stand-up comedy, their paths would cross repeatedly because he was a secret partner in the San Francisco comedy club Holy City Zoo, where Cho would perform every day.
“He would ride his bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge and come to the club, and he would bump me,” she says. “I would always have to go and perform after him — which is like the scariest thing, to have to follow Robin Williams. But I ended up doing that all the time as a kid. I guess it made me a better comedian.”
Cho remembers how Williams, at that time, was “such a big deal in standup comedy in San Francisco. And also a bit of an unknowable figure as well. What a powerful artist. I was so lucky to be able to see him for a period of my life, to get to see him perform every single night. He would go on stage and every bar and restaurant would empty on the street; they would all run into the club to watch him. It was like this incredible experience — we were all so lucky to be able to be in his presence.”
You can hear “Funny Man” on Cho’s new album Lucky Gift now, available for streaming on Apple and Amazon Music. Also, check out her recent Crate Digging, featuring her picks for the comedy albums everyone should own.