"Heated Rivalry" is what Hollywood would dub a surprise hit.
The HBO Max series follows a gay couple - nothing remarkable there - who happen to be professional hockey players on rival teams. Now, that's a new wrinkle. It's a Canadian original series acquired by the U.S.-based streamer, and it didn't take long for it to make its mark.
The show became one of the streamers most popular shows and earned fawning reviews. Season 2 will start production this summer. "Heated Rivalry" star Connor Storrie hosted "Saturday Night Live" earlier this year, with his on-screen partner Hudson Williams dropping by for a cameo.
And Margaret Cho could have boosted her career with the series.
The far-Left comic made a splash in the 1990s with the short-lived sitcom "All American Girl," focusing on a young Asian woman's life and times. The show flopped, but it introduced Cho's spiky sense of humor to the culture.
She leveraged the show's failure to a dearth of well-written Asian characters in Hollywood, fueling her stand-up career in the process. She was new, edgy and interesting. She's kept busy since then, but mostly in minor projects like last year's little-scene horror comedy "Queens of the Dead."
A gig on "Heated Rivalry" could have introduced her to a new audience and spoke directly to her decades-long LGBTQ activism. Cho is openly gay, so the material would be a perfect fit for her.
Instead, she turned it down. Did her agent nix the deal? Was she worried the plot wouldn't sell with audiences?
No. it all came down to Trump, that's why.
She explained more during a chat on the "I Never Liked You" podcast, hosted by Matteo Lane and Nick Smith.
“Last year, I got a pilot script for a show that I really loved. But it shot in Canada, and I was so scared because I’m so vocal about hating ICE and hating this administration. I was like, ‘I will get detained at the border, and I will be put in ICE detention if I go.’”
That show, of course, was "Heated Rivalry."
Cho is an American citizen. Border officials aren't locking up Americans critical of the country's immigration laws when they re-enter the country. There's nothing factual about her fears.
They exist all the same. And they cost her the kind of role that could have led to a Cho-style rebirth, in theory.
She's not alone in these sort of reckless fears. Singer Neil Young shared a similar sentiment prior to a European tour.
When I go to play music in Europe, if I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket ... that is happening all the time now.
It's not.
Late-night talkers keep telling us they're one Trump joke away from the gulag. They're not. Jimmy Kimmel's 2025 suspension came after he misled viewers about the suspect in Charlie Kirk's murder and ABC affiliates revolted.
These unfounded fears are part and parcel of Trump Derangement Syndrome. For many stars, TDS simply results in professional embarrassment, like claiming assassination attempts on President Trump were staged.
For Cho, TDS led to losing a killer gig.
