'90s Comedian, 57, Admits She Had On Stage Accident Amid Weight Loss Drug Use
- - '90s Comedian, 57, Admits She Had On Stage Accident Amid Weight Loss Drug Use
Alex GurleyJanuary 8, 2026 at 7:47 PM
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Photo by Rebecca Sapp on Getty Images
Margaret Cho is opening up about the unfortunate side effects of weight loss medications—and how it led to an embarrassing moment for her.
The longtime comedian recently looked back on a period of time early in her career when she was dealing with anorexia and experimented with different medications to help her lose weight. Those drugs, in combination with her diet, ended up being a recipe for disaster during one of her stand up gigs years ago.
"I started taking all these weird drugs," Cho shared on the How to Fail podcast on Tuesday (Jan. 6). "There [were] also foods that would move food through your body quickly. All these sweeteners would make you just have diarrhea constantly. I just started eating only that and then taking these drugs that would remove the fat from the food that you ate."
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She continued, "I was taking all these weird drugs that would just make you s---, and also I wore a lot of white. There was one time I was wearing all white at a show, and I was killing. I was doing well and I was almost at the end, and I started to s--- out. I couldn't control it."
Cho went on to explain that since the medication was meant to "remove the fat from your food," it started coming out in the form of oil and grease. On top of that, it was a terrible orange color.
"This is orange, and I think the pills that you took were orange so it would dye the oil fat and cling to it and push it out of your body," she recalled. "I started spurting orange grease out of my a--hole while I’m on stage."
By the time she was able to wrap up the show, she says her "dress-and-pants combination" was stained bright orange and although the crowd gave her a standing ovation, all she could do was "back out of view through the curtains."
Instead of giving an encore, Cho got to her car as soon as possible—but her bowel distress didn't stop there.
"I got up, and my car was right outside the stage door. There was nobody backstage, there was nobody in the parking lot...I got in the car [and] I could still hear the audience applauding, like, demanding an encore," she said.
Cho continued, "I was crying [and] I was really upset. I was really, like, disgusted. I was also concerned because I knew I was staining the seat in my car, and I was not sure how I was getting [it out] because it wasn't leather seats. They were fabric seats that would absorb it. [The seats were now] so orange and it smelled."
While Cho admits she was also able to laugh and see the humor in the situation at the time, it marked the end of her use of weight loss medications.
You can hear all that Margaret Cho had to say below.
This story was originally published by Parade on Jan 9, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
