Margaret Cho Recalls Urinating Blood After Losing 30 Pounds in 3 Weeks, but Being Warned Not to Gain the Weight Back
Margaret Cho Recalls Urinating Blood After Losing 30 Pounds in 3 Weeks, but Being Warned Not to Gain the Weight Back
Virginia ChamleeWed, July 1, 2026 at 9:30 PM UTC
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Margaret ChoCredit: Matei Horvath/Getty -
Margaret Cho revealed TV executives pressured her to lose weight while starring in the sitcom All-American Girl
She took the controversial weight loss drug Fen-phen, which caused her to lose 30 pounds and experience kidney failure
Cho said executives were more concerned about her maintaining weight loss than the health issues she faced
Margaret Cho is opening up about the pressure she faced when television executives said she needed to lose weight.
Speaking on The Person Who Believed In Me Podcast, Cho shared her experience starring in the ABC sitcom All-American Girl from 1994 to 1995. In the show, Cho starred as herself, though higher-ups, she said, "wanted me to be a lot less fat."
"That was the main criticism was of my body. Like, they were like, 'You're way too fat to be you,' " she said. "Like, I was supposed to be me in the show. Oh, like I'm playing myself and then I'm like super everybody's freaking out cause I was like, so fat."
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Margaret ChoCredit: Arturo Holmes/Getty
Cho added that she felt executives "just wanted the show to have the best chance it could," saying, "And the main criticism from everyone was that I was just too fat. And that didn't mean that I was actually fat."
Cho then went on the popular — and, in hindsight, controversial and dangerous — weight loss cocktail Fen-phen, which combined the drugs fenfluramine and phentermine and was pulled from the market by the FDA in 1997.
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After going on the diet drugs, Cho lost 30 pounds in two weeks and then had kidney failure, which she discovered after she urinated blood in her trailer.
"It was horrible," she acknowledged.
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Asked about the reaction she got when executives learned she had been so negatively affected, or whether they felt "bad or sorry," Cho responded, "No, they just had to still continue to try to figure out — don't gain the weight back, though. They were like, 'That's fine, but just don't get the weight, don't get the weight back.' Like, it was more terrifying that I was gonna have to stop dieting than that I was sick."
Cho added: "That's all they know from their focus groups and from their understanding of what television is."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
