Atsuko Okatsuka’s online fans think she’s ‘mothering,’ but real comedy heads know — she is ‘Father’
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The first time Atsuko Okatsuka filmed a comedy special, 2022’s “The Intruder” for HBO and Max, she didn’t have health insurance. A lot has changed since then.
Instantly recognizable for her severe bowl haircut and “art teacher”-esque, maximalist fashion, the Los Angeles-based comedian has since become insured, hired an assistant, embarked on a world tour, amassed more than two million Instagram followers, met family members she didn’t know she had and filmed her second comedy special, “Father,” which was released June 13 on Hulu.
“I think I have, like, 12 agents or something, and I’m like, ‘Is that even a thing?’” Okatsuka says over Zoom. Wearing a purple, yellow and magenta colorblocked T-shirt, Okatsuka flashes aqua nails topped off with hot dog charms. “It comes with leveling up, right? Not to quote ‘Spider-Man,’ but … yeah, responsibility, right?”
The building blocks of Okatsuka’s life remain in place, though. Amid traveling the globe on her “Full Grown” tour, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and Chelsea Handler on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and being named one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2022 (among other accolades), the Taiwanese Japanese stand-up still spends most of her time with her Grandma Li, her mother, and husband Ryan Harper Gray, who is an actor, director and producer and helps manage Okatsuka. Family members feature prominently in Okatsuka’s comedy, to such an extent that a lot of her sentences begin with “My grandmother…” and “My husband, Ryan…”
In this respect, Okatsuka jokingly refers to herself as codependent, but from a comedy standpoint, her familial riffing serves as a handy world-building device, building a sense of familiarity with audiences, who no doubt walk out of Okatsuka’s sets feeling like they really know her. “I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” she says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans. It just naturally happens to be that I am with my mom, grandma and Ryan a lot. I love that the fans have gotten to know the family. They can be Team Ryan. They could be Team Me. I think most often they’re Team Ryan. They’re like, ‘Oh, Atsuko did it again. She can’t find her keys.’”
Okatsuka’s scatterbrained qualities — like losing her keys, realizing she’s never once used the washer and dryer and depending on Gray to set up her Zoom calls — are not only endearing, they also have informed her special’s title of “Father.” As Okatsuka’s star rose, her fans have taken to calling her “Mother,” a mostly Gen Z slang term signaling approval. But to Okatsuka, a “mother” knows how to do things like use the washer and dryer and fill out paperwork correctly, which she remains willfully ignorant about. For example, she frequently tells a story about how she and Gray forgot to file their marriage certificate when they first got married in 2017. When Okatsuka went to put Gray on her health insurance in 2023, she learned there was no record of them being married. “What about the unorganized girls?” she asks her audience. “What about the b— that crumbles easily? We exist! We are not a monolith… No, no, no... I am Father.”
While Okatsuka has been doing stand-up for the better part of a decade, starting out with local sets at the Virgil and Dynasty Typewriter, she shot to viral fame during the pandemic when she posted a video of her (and her grandmother) suddenly “dropping” to Beyoncé’s “Yoncé” in unexpected locations like Little Tokyo and the grocery store. Generating millions of views, the #DropChallenge exploded, with everyone from Mandy Moore to Serena Williams emulating Okatsuka.
In addition to classic observational and absurdist comedy, part of Okatsuka’s charm is also that she has a real knack for tapping into internet humor. Across her social media channels, she dances and puts her own spin on TikTok skits and trends. A recent example is a clip of her doing Doechii’s “Anxiety” dance while her grandmother hovers in an attempt to feed her dumplings.
While “Father” is a self-deprecating jab at Okatsuka’s nondomestic qualities, the title also refers to Okatsuka’s recent reunion with her dad in Japan. This marks the beginning of a winding life journey, which Okatsuka has spoken of at length in her comedy, as well as in an episode of “This American Life” titled “I Coulda Grown Big In Japan.”
Her story began when Okatsuka’s parents, who met on a Japanese dating show, divorced shortly after her birth in 1988. At first, the comedian lived with her father in Chiba; later, she moved in with her mother and grandmother. But when her mother began having mental health struggles (Okatsuka’s mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia), Okatsuka’s grandmother moved everyone to Los Angeles to be closer to her uncle in West L.A. At the time, Okatsuka’s grandmother told an 8-year-old Okatsuka they were going on a “two-month vacation.” But as eight weeks turned into years, Okatsuka started to wonder if perhaps she’d been kidnapped — another concept she’s worked into her sets. “We’re just like a chiller, more polite, Japanese ‘Jerry Springer’ show,” Okatsuka cracks of her familial backstory.
When asked what it meant to reconnect with her father, Okatsuka becomes somber. “It filled a lot of holes — like, questions that I had. Like, did my grandma kidnap me? I also learned your gut is often right.”
Technically, Okatsuka was kidnapped, if only because her father had full custody of her at the time. Okatsuka might joke about suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but she really is best friends with her grandma, who was her primary caregiver in childhood and now has her own social media fan base.
Ironically, it didn’t occur to Okatsuka to pursue comedy until she was in her early 20s. Her first exposure to stand-up was when, in eighth grade, a friend slipped her a Margaret Cho DVD during a church sermon. “I was like, this is badass. But nowhere did my brain go, ‘That’s gotta be me,’” Okatsuka says. “I dreamed pretty small. When I was a kid in L.A., my dream was to work at an ice cream parlor … And then at 17, I did. [I worked at] Cold Stone Creamery in West L.A. I said, ‘Now what? I’ve already reached my goal. I peaked at 17. I have to dream more.’”
Okatsuka spent a year and a half attending UC Riverside and then transferred to CalArts, where she majored in creative writing and film/video. “You can just get in with an art portfolio; you don’t need grades,” she deadpans. “My interest was in the arts. I wasn’t an academic.” After art school, Okatsuka decided to really make a go at stand-up amid juggling a handful of jobs — dog walking, teaching cinema at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and dance fitness in Atwater Village. “But stand-up comedy was always first for me,” she says. “Sometimes I would, you know, take off from teaching community college and get Ryan to substitute for me. It was totally illegal.”
In 2018, Okatsuka got her now-signature bowl haircut, which has made her so recognizable that fans all over the world show up to her sets wearing bowl-cut wigs. She might kid around about being stuck with it (“because my brand,” she says in “Father”), but she really does delight in its permanence, simply because it makes people so happy. Plus, her fans went to the trouble of buying and customizing lookalike wigs. “I mean, in this economy? They gotta be able to wear their wigs again the next time they come to see me.”
Fans will get their chance to break out the wigs again. After “Father”, Okatsuka is heading back on the road in September for the Big Bowl Tour. But there’s a bittersweet element to Okatsuka’s always-expanding schedule. The busier she gets, the less time there is to spend with her mother and grandmother. “The point of all this is we can all be together more, and we could be that happy family that we were trying to be when we first moved to America,” she says. “That’s kind of what I’m talking about in my new show. It’s a real thing that I’m figuring out right now.”
For the time being, Okatsuka has signed her mother up for Instagram, where she can see her daughter anytime she likes. “It’s taking a minute to teach her these things, but at least she can look at what I’m up to,” Okatsuka says. “You just click on my face, and you see what I’m up to that day. And that’s how she keeps up with me. We can do phone calls, but there’s nothing like being able to see your favorite person in your hand.”
Ultimately, Okatsuka revels in the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible, wherever she might be in the world. “That’s why I got into comedy, right? So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”
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