Atsuko Okatsuka

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Being able to make light of extremely heavy topics is what makes Atsuko Okatsuka a brilliant comedian. Her new comedy special Father aired on Hulu last month. Atsuko chatted with us about how recording videos on social media with her family brought them closer together, what it was like bringing her grandma on her honeymoon and much more!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:16.6	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:36.6	It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:38.7	Atsko Okatska, my next guest, has dreamed of being a stand-up comic since she saw her first
0:44.8	performance on video. It was a DVD of Margaret Cho. She worked at it for a long time. Now she
0:52.0	has several stand-up specials of her own. But you got her big break,
0:55.6	not by doing stand-up, but by dancing with her grandma. It was 2020, Atsko, like the rest of us,
1:02.5	was stuck at home. TikTok was the hot new thing. And the more little videos she made of her
1:08.8	dancing with her grandma, the more people learned about
1:12.1	Atsuko Okatsuka.
1:14.3	When I talked with her in 2023, she just released her debut comedy special on HBO.
1:18.8	It's called The Intruder.
1:20.1	It is so funny.
1:21.6	As the name of the title suggests, it's about the time that someone tried breaking into her
1:25.7	house.
1:26.8	The show goes into a lot more than that.
1:29.1	There are a lot of stories about Atsko's life and family.
1:32.4	She jokes about things like trying to impress teenagers
1:34.5	and attending a Magic Mike live show with the aforementioned grandmother.
1:40.1	She's also able to make light of some heavier topics,
	...

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