Renowned feminist comedian Margaret Cho recently revealed that she declined a coveted role in HBO’s hit series “Heated Rivalry” due to concerns about potential detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Despite being a San Francisco native, the 57-year-old comedian shared on the “I Never Liked You” podcast that her vocal criticism of Donald Trump might attract ICE’s attention, a concern she couldn’t ignore.
Cho elaborated that the project she was approached for was being filmed in Canada.
“Last year, I received a pilot script for a show that truly resonated with me,” she recounted to podcast hosts Matteo Lane and Nick Smith, expressing her anxiety about encountering issues at the border.
She articulated her fears, saying, “I was genuinely terrified because of my outspoken disdain for ICE and this administration.”
Her apprehension was clear: “I thought, ‘If I travel, I might be detained at the border and end up in ICE detention.'”
Margaret Cho has revealed which acting role she regrets passing up; pictured in March
Cho said she turned down the chance to be on the hit hockey romance-drama Heated Rivalry, starring Connor Storrie (L) and Hudson Williams (R)
‘And I was like struggling over it, and I had to talk to all these people about it. And I was super upset, and I said “no.”‘
‘And it was Heated Rivalry,’ she eventually revealed to gasps from the show’s hosts.
She didn’t let the tough decision stop her from watching the show when it premiered on HBO in November 2025.
Heated Rivalry’s main roles – Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander – are played by Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams respectively.
The hot and heavy scripted series is based on the romance novel of the same name by Rachel Reid.
Cho recalled about reading the script, ‘The pilot was beautiful, and I was like, I want to do this.’
And she teased the possibility that she’ll appear in the second season, saying, ‘We’ll see.’
The next installment is expected to premiere in April 2027.
The show’s co-writer and creator Jacob Tierney told Rolling Stone that when he first discovered Reid’s Game Changers book series, he was stunned by how ‘smutty’ they were.
And François Arnaud, who played the character Scott Hunter, had a similar reaction, telling Variety, ‘At first I was a bit overwhelmed, I guess, by the intensity of the sex scenes, but I knew Jacob had something that he would turn on its head.
‘People are hooked by the smutty aspects of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think Jacob really uses that to peel away layers. I think the end of it is quite emotionally affecting.’
The hot and heavy scripted series is based on the romance novel of the same name by Rachel Reid
In March Cho recalled now-president Donald Trump’s ‘odd’ insistence in having her join the cast of The Apprentice in an exclusive interview with The Daily Mail.
Before his career in politics, he was the host of the reality show, which followed a group of businessmen and women competing for an opportunity to work with him.
Trump, 79, was particularly keen on having Cho join the cast and sought her out over the course of several years.
‘It was just odd, because he really wouldn’t let up over a couple of years, he really wanted me to do it,’ she said at the 2026 Queerties, where she was receiving the Icon Award.
The comedienne was dissuaded from being a cast member after she appeared on an episode to support her friend, singer Cyndi Lauper, on The Celebrity Apprentice.
‘And I just was like, I have bad feeling. I had gone on briefly for when my friend Cyndi Lauper had done The Apprentice,’ she said.
‘And so I went to visit her challenge in her diners, and it was just very stressful. I didn’t want to put myself in that position. I had no idea who he was.
‘I never really spent that much time in New York, and he’s such a New York kind of person. Everybody knew, but I didn’t really know,’ she recalled.
Cho previously said during an appearance on The Julia Cunningham Show that she also turned down a request from Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to support his 2016 presidential campaign.
