Margaret Cho says Donald Trump is the reason she passed up a major chance to appear in HBO’s hit hockey romance series Heated Rivalry.
The sports drama earned a rare perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes following its 2025 debut, but Cho wasn’t among the actors who ultimately featured in the pilot and went on to receive widespread acclaim.
With sports romance series still relatively uncommon, Cho said the project felt like a standout opportunity when the pilot script landed in her hands.
Yet despite her enthusiasm for the material, she later explained that she turned it down over fears tied to the current US political climate and border enforcement.
Appearing on the I Never Liked You podcast, Cho detailed how the role slipped away because filming was set outside the US: “Last year, I got a pilot script for a show that I really loved, but it shot in Canada.”
Although Canada is just across the border, Cho suggested her outspoken views made the trip feel risky, saying the environment around immigration enforcement weighed heavily on her decision.
She explained: “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.”
Cho didn’t specify which character she was being considered for, but she confirmed the script was for the series about two professional hockey players, [Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams], who begin a romantic relationship despite being on opposing sides as “rivals”.
She described how difficult the choice felt at the time: “I was struggling over it. I had to talk to all of these people about it. And I was super upset about it, and I said no. And it was Heated Rivalry.”
Even so, Cho said she ended up watching the show and becoming a supporter, and she hinted that a future appearance isn’t off the table.
“I’ve watched it. I’ve hosted some rewatch parties, and I’m like it kills me, like it kills me because of Trump,” Cho said, reflecting on what might have been.
Cho has previously criticized Trump’s immigration policies. In a 2015 interview with The Daily Beast, per The Independent, she said: “I really do believe that it’s something to distract us from the real problem, which is that we’re going to lose a huge part of women’s health care that is vital to the survival of women, the health of women, and the sanity of women. So I think it’s a red herring. I think Donald Trump is not really there for any purpose other than to distract.”
She later told The Guardian in 2021 that she enjoys criticizing Trump, explaining: “I love ‘to Donald Trump-bash and blame him for any reason I can’, adding: “But the fact is that his casual racism is more a symptom of the greater problem than the cause of this. It’s about the repetitive nature of hate crimes and how they’re not new, even if they seem new, because they’re presented as shocking and new by the news.
Cho also discussed fears around personal safety as a Korean-American, saying: “I’m really scared. It’s kind of like: how do you escape your skin? I limit my time out and I think it’s awful to acknowledge that.”