Margaret Cho is booked and busy and spilling tea along the way! She released her album Lucky Gift on Valentine’s Day (music), and is in the middle of her Live & Livid tour now (comedy). She also has a kabillion recent credits on IMDb, including my favorite TV show of the year Dying for Sex, plus a newly out movie called Queens of the Dead. The logline is unbeatable: “Drag queens and club kids battle zombies craving brains during a zombie outbreak at their drag show in Brooklyn.” Sold. So clearly, Miss Margaret has a lot to promote. Last month, she went on The Kelly Mantle Show and recalled Ellen DeGeneres’ mean girl play of routinely acting like she’d never met Margaret, despite the two meeting many times over the decades on the comedy club circuit. Now, Margaret just dished on a People Mag pod that while filming the 1997 movie Face/Off, she and costar John Travolta regularly dined on beef wellington and boysenberry pie. Except for the day they didn’t share, because instead Travolta attacked the entire pie by himself, armed only with a fork and the will to dominate.
Margaret Cho revealed one of John Travolta’s most delicious secrets from the set of Face/Off.
On a podcast episode of PEOPLE in the ‘90s, Cho, who played Wanda in the 1997 action movie, said she would eat “beef wellington and boysenberry pie” in Travolta’s trailer while they were filming nearly every day.
Cho recalled that Travolta, who starred as an FBI agent alongside Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, had a specific affinity for boysenberry pies, as compared to blueberry or other kinds of fruit pies.
“One time, I saw John eat an entire boysenberry pie,” she continued. “A whole pie, without slices. He just ate the pie with a fork.”
Cho called it “great” and compared Travolta’s untamed approach to eating the nine-inch, freshly baked pies to a king’s behavior. She added that there was never any cream or ice cream on it either.
“He’s like the closest thing to a king I’ve ever been around,” Cho joked.
However, indulging in the baked steak dish and rich pie slices between takes led to some issues with the wardrobe department. Cho said her costume, which she was meant to wear throughout filming for a year, became too tight.
Cho explained that costume designers had to sew an elastic panel about three inches wide in the back of her suit “to make it fit.”
“They were so mad at me,” Cho said.
I’m not going to quibble over a single human devouring a whole pie on their own with just a fork. I mean, I can’t relate personally. It’s not like I’ve ever gone to the supermarket and perused the bakery section for a small(ish) yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting, possibly topped with sprinkles, that I purchased and took home and systematically consumed over a REDACTED number of sitting(s) with a plastic spoon and, like Travolta, without cutting any slices because why would I want to generate more dishes to wash when I live alone and there’s no one but the dog to witness my marriage of sloth and gluttony. I’ve never done that. What I’m more curious about comes down to these questions: Why boysenberry pie? Why beef wellington? Why beef wellington and boysenberry pie together? And why always wellington and boysenberry day after day?? Not to mention, how do you eat all that and then do anything other than take a nap for 18 hours?! Though I do thoroughly appreciate that Margaret describes this scene with reverence, calling it kingly behavior. I feel so seen and respected (even though I’ve totally never devoured dessert that way before). As for the costume designers being mad at Margaret, I’d like to think that today, nearly 30 years later, they’d be less shamey. But I can’t tell you how many times just this year alone I’ve had to have it out with my own costume department over the fit of my threads, sigh.
Photos credit: IMAGO/Faye Sadou/Avalon, IMAGO/RW/Avalon, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Getty