Atsuko Okatsuka presents as someone who knows exactly who she is and has no trouble expressing it. But in truth, it’s taken the comic some time to come around to this place. These days, she travels the world selling hundreds of thousands of tickets — an artist whose appeal knows no borders. But it was […]Atsuko Okatsuka presents as someone who knows exactly who she is and has no trouble expressing it. But in truth, it’s taken the comic some time to come around to this place. These days, she travels the world selling hundreds of thousands of tickets — an artist whose appeal knows no borders. But it was
Atsuko Okatsuka presents as someone who knows exactly who she is and has no trouble expressing it. But in truth, it’s taken the comic some time to come around to this place.
These days, she travels the world selling hundreds of thousands of tickets — an artist whose appeal knows no borders. But it was only within the last five or so years that she embarked on her touring career in earnest.
Okatsuka hints at her unusual trajectory in Father, her sophomore special released on Hulu last summer, which is being put up for awards consideration this year.
Calling herself a “late bloomer,” Okatsuka was burn in Taiwan, spent her early years in Japan, and came to Los Angeles as a result of being kidnapped by a grandmother with whom she’s very close. After seeing her parents divorce early in life, she moved into a garage with her grandmother and schizophrenic mother — an undocumented immigrant living an otherwise ordinary adolescent life.
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During her teen years in Los Angeles, Okatsuka recalls walking by the El Capitan Theatre and marveling at the beauty of a venue where her family couldn’t afford to buy movie tickets.
“I didn’t dare to dream big as a kid when I didn’t have the right papers to even work here,” Okatsuka says in today’s episode of Comedy Means Business. “I didn’t think I could work here or go to college or get a driver’s license.”
Little did she know that with Father, she’d become the first female comedian to headline the historic L.A. venue.
Given that there wasn’t exposure to art in Okatsuka’s home growing up, she first came to awareness of stand-up via a church friend, first dabbling in it via Craigslist class “Pretty Funny Women.” Drawn from the outset to Lucille Ball and other artists of a bygone age, she leaned into physicality in her comedy, finding that an asset as someone who only began learning English, as her third language, when she moved to the U.S.
Okatsuka’s life has had its share of ups and downs — as many serious, emotionally loaded moments as upbeat ones. But in her act, she takes things in stride.
“For me, silliness is so number one. [It’s] so important for me to process things to entertain people,” she says. “So even when I’m writing about a topic or a story that might be, on paper, tragic, I’m always looking for the weird. I’m like, ‘Okay, what’s the absurd in this?’”
Okatsuka drills into that ethos in today’s podcast, going deep on the crafting of her latest hour, her “full-circle moment” at the El Capitan and journey in comedy, her worst fear as a performer, and more. Over the course of the hour, she also discusses performing at the ocean and to the trees in her backyard, her appreciation of recent performances from Justin Bieber that prove “it’s ok to go small,” and more.
