Interview with Atsuko Okatsuka
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Atsuko Okatsuka
Stand-up comedian known for the specials The Intruder and Father and for her family dance videos online. She has written for The Eric Andre Show and voiced Mary in Fairview.
Source: Vulture on YouTube
These answers are taken from Is the Future of Stand-up Comedy Atsuko Okatsuka? | Good One Podcast on Vulture's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with comedy?
Knock knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange you glad you're seeing me, or something like that. Those were the jokes I knew. I did that so much as a kid to adults that I was trying to connect to when I was learning English. I'm very embarrassed.
Ever since I was a kid, I was always doing something to see if I could make my mom feel better. My mom loves songs. She loves to sing. She loves music.
I didn't always know the language of the place I was at. So I always communicated more with physicality. Because of that, some of the comedians early on that I was watching were physical performers like Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball, because I didn't need language to understand them.
What drew you to a career as a comedian?
For me, performing is about protecting the audience. When I do stand-up, it's about protecting the audience. They bought tickets. They came out to see me. I'm not just gonna tell sad stories. I'm gonna make sure you laugh. I want you to forget your life's problems. This is why I do this. My job is to help you escape or feel seen, and truly laugh.
I don't want people to ever feel alone or left out. And a lot of it comes from seeing my mom suffer all my life. And she still does. She can't do all the things I get to do. She can't tour with me and see the world. She's just stuck at home watching the Travel Channel. So there's a real sadness to me that always thinks about her and people like that. I can tap into both, because that's where the comedy comes from.
What do you enjoy most about comedy?
It was really cool. It was real time. Okay, these are the jokes I wrote, and then seeing it work, and that would also encourage me. I'm an extrovert in that the energy in front of me will help me come up with tags on the spot or write even more. Okay, you really like that stuff? I have more on that.
I love musicality a lot. I love paying attention to little details like that.
It's always me arguing for how life is beautiful. Or like, I never wanted to be here anyway, but I am. So let's do this. That's behind all my jokes, I think.
What was a great moment for you as a comedian?
It was cool to see that I didn't change my show. Just me being me was accepted also universally. It would be a bummer to be like, oh wait, I have to super change for Asia or Australia or New Zealand. I got to still be me. So I was like, okay, good. They came out to see me because they like me for me, and great. So now it's just about digging deeper. There were some jokes that I shortened, for example the cheerleading stuff, because internationally they don't have cheerleaders.
I also ranked the countries from shiest to liveliest. It is usually, the more rights you have as a human, the shyer you are as an audience. Shiest was Belgium. And then out of 27 countries, Indonesia was the liveliest. They were like, you came here to see us.
How did your career as a comedian unfold?
When I first started, I liked being deadpan, so I was very deadpan. And then it's like, oh, but where do you go from there? Then I started touring with very political comedians. They were social justice people and I'm 10 years younger than them. We formed an all-Asian, mostly female stand-up group, spearheaded by Jenny Yang. I was like, oh, maybe I'm supposed to sound like that too. I was easily trying to morph into whatever was near me, trying to be a sponge.
I pitched a show. It was a Japanese game show, and we shot the pilot for Quibi. Ultimately that wasn't a show that was really me either. I was like, oh, I'm not an idea person necessarily. That's why the pandemic, and just be me. Turns out this whole time people were wanting just me. But I didn't know what me was. I was scared.
I got to really start honing my voice, writing jokes at home and performing on Zoom. When the drop challenge happened and I garnered even more audience members, I was like, I think I can start touring. I've been doing stand-up for so long, and I'm getting my voice finally.
What advice do you have for new comedians?
Tig once told me, you don't have to say "recently" before you go into a joke. "Recently I did this." Just say, "I did this." And then Mike Birbiglia was just like, don't forget about the people in the balcony. Look at them while you're performing. It was the first time I was performing in a theater with a balcony. So I was like, oh, right. Not just the people in front of me. So very simple, but great advice.
People hated Zoom comedy shows. I was like, oh my gosh, it was super pivotal for me. It's the only time you're performing while you're seeing your face the whole time. So you're noticing little tics you do, little eye movements that you do when you're doing a punchline. I still use those techniques on stage to this day.
There's always a way you can make it funny. I just haven't arrived at it yet. That's all.
How do you keep communication clear with writers, directors and the comics you work with?
We tour together and I run my jokes by him. Ryan is very witty, he's very funny. He's an artist too. He was a performer, he was an actor before. He was also a filmmaker. We don't have a title for what it is, but we just work together.
We talk about what can be touched on or shouldn't be. I run it by him: is it okay if I mention that? He's like, yes, yes. And if something's like, let's keep that to us, he'll tell me. He's very vocal. He's not like me. I'm passive, I won't confront things.
There was a joke about him having diarrhea. After the show, someone was like, hey, that's the diarrhea guy. And he was like, that's going to stick. So he immediately was like, can we not do that one? I was like, yeah, yeah. It's not even a good joke, to the point I don't even remember it now.
Who is your favorite comedian, and why?
Margaret Cho. Chris Rock. Chelsea, because I grew up watching her in that garage I grew up in. And Tig's face. Chelsea Handler is a friend too now, and I love the way she parties. She's silly energy. And I love her directness.
There's a joke I wish I could have: Gary Gulman talking about the portable CD player. Seeing someone work out with that on a treadmill, and he's like, I wonder if they're okay. It looked like a pizza. And he goes on and on about the portable CD player. That was so great. I was like, wow, I never thought of it. Jokes can be this simple.
Describe your style.
It's just how I communicate. If you've been to Japan or seen Japanese performers, physically, that's how we communicate. So that's how I communicate in real life, and I'm going to end up doing that in stand-up too. For the most part, if you've watched cartoons, I'm very like a cartoon.
I'm very energetic, but I go deadpan too, because that's also how I express. I have this lower voice. I'm an alto.
I have this very cheerleader-esque quality to me. I still do that for people. I love making people feel seen instead of criticizing things. I talk about things I love, not things that annoy me. It's easy to make fun of single people. I kind of find it boring. I always want to defend the people that are easy to make fun of. That's a lot of my MO.
Tell me about a bit or a project that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I talk things out loud at home. I was telling Ryan, God, we're such babies. We're so childlike. And then I started playing around with it at home, doing the whole, if this, then what. If it's childlike, okay, let's come up with examples. What are some things married couples say to each other that are also childlike?
There's some parts of it that I cut out. I started trying to link it: I think that's why kids would like the idea of polyamory. I cut that because I was afraid I was promoting that to kids. So I kind of stopped it at, when we were kids, you have a crush on everybody.
And I didn't love, do you want to be alone forever? That's actually making you feel bad. I was trying to take away even more any shame of being alone.
I cut it because it didn't go with the flow of that last special. I was trying to force it in because I was like, well, it's got to be in a special somewhere, because it's the essence of so much of me and Ryan.
What is the biggest audience you have reached?
When I was asked to present at an Asian award show, there was a moment where I was like, oh, that old joke could be unexpected and funny, because I always want to be entertaining and funny even when I'm just presenting an award to someone. I was like, it's been so long, I don't even know if it's documented anywhere.
People also recognize me more now. So when I put something out now, it reaches even more people. It was seen by that many people this time, like a hundred million or whatever. So I had to acknowledge it in the special. When I go, I'm half Taiwanese and half Japanese, people started throwing that punch line at me. So I was like, okay, if you're thinking it, I got to at least get ahead, so you don't do that anymore.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
When we were shooting the pilot for Quibi, I landed on this haircut. It's a haircut I had when I was a kid, a toddler, like four. A lot of Asian kids have this haircut. It's very chic to me. I love fashion. I love a precision cut. But also it's an homage to my Asian roots, and the things that people go, oh, I hated that haircut, I had that one too. But it's about me owning it. All the things that might have made you feel like a freak before. I feel like that's a lot of my MO: defend the things that are easy to make fun of.
This character I have to upkeep every three weeks. It's a burden. I joked on Kimmel: does Goofy take that lime green hat off? No, because then he'd just be any other dog.
Atsuko Okatsuka's Full Biography
Atsuko Okatsuka is a stand-up comedian who was named one of Variety Top 10 Comedians to Watch in 2022. Her debut late-night set on The Late Late Show with James Corden (2015) was praised by Vulture, stating that she won late night the week it aired. She voiced the role of Mary in Stephen Colbert's animated series Fairview (2022) and Candice Fisher in his animated feature Washingtonia. She has written for The Eric Andre Show (2012) and "Soft Focus with Jena Friedman".