This comedian once thought she’d been kidnapped. She’s now a viral hit.

Stand-up comedian Atsuko Okatsuka is known for a lot of things. In appearance, her ink-black, razor-sharp bowl cut perfected in 2017 is a throwback to the hairstyle she had as a child in Japan. She is also known for thinking she was “kidnapped” when she was eight years old by her grandmother, but more on that later.

The 36-year-old Taiwanese-Japanese-American comic is unmissable in her bright, primary-coloured jumpsuits, chunky bright pastel boots and dangly, often food-themed jewellery: croissant necklaces, Froot Loop or fried-egg earrings.

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka’s distinctive haircut inspires a cult following among her fans.

When she performs live, fans often turn up wearing bowl-cut tribute wigs or earrings dangling with mini pretzels or cheese snacks. But it’s not her style, in the main, that inspires audience members to model the Los Angeles comedian’s look.

“Comedy really is a cult,” she says over Zoom from her hotel room in Singapore, where she is in the middle of a South-East Asian tour before heading to Australia. “I’m just kidding.”

Is it a wig?

Okatsuka grabs her hair and pretends to pull it off. “No,” she says, laughing. “It’s embracing the weirdo, that’s what’s happening.”

Born in Taiwan, briefly raised in Japan before moving to the US, Okatsuka (pronounced “ahtz-ko oh-cots-ka”) is perhaps best known for her breakout HBO special The Intruder, which is listed as one of 2022’s best comedy specials by Variety, Vulture and The New York Times.

She also created the 2022 viral social media sensation the Drop Challenge, in which Okatsuka suddenly, and sexily, drops in public spaces via bent knees to Beyonce’s song Partition.

The video topped 10 million hits and Serena Williams, Chelsea Handler, Margaret Cho, the casts of Saturday Night Live and Hamilton and fans around the world posted their public drops, too.

Atsuko Okatsuka teaches Guillermo Rodriguez how to do the Drop Challenge on Jimmy Kimmel Live!Credit: ABC via Getty Images

Bold, offbeat and silly, Okatsuka’s quip-smart, often physically screwball comedy (most extremely during a 2019 Pasadena gig when she joked through a 7.1 magnitude earthquake) was influenced by watching Scooby-Doo, Lucille Ball and Buster Keaton as a child.

But she also deftly weaves in topics including mental illness, eating disorders, divorce and how it feels to be an outsider, things she and her family have experienced.

“My main motivation in performing and doing comedy is for people to not feel alone anymore,” Okatsuka says. “A big part of it is to talk about things that are hard to talk about, like mental illness. It’s also about making people laugh a lot.”

As a child, Okatsuka was always able to make sad things funny for herself and her family. She helped keep her mother, who has paranoid schizophrenia, happy and calm with funny songs and jokes.

Okatsuka’s family is another thing she is known for. In her hugely popular TikTok and Instagram videos, Okatsuka’s 90-year-old Taiwanese grandmother, Ying-Hsi Li, is also the star.

As Okatsuka “drops” or twerks in supermarket aisles, the streets of LA’s Little Tokyo or on top of the kitchen table, Grandma Li is there, tapping her foot, jiggling with a melon or beating ginger on a bucket to the beat, the latter to Best Friend by Saweetie.

“I originally did Drop Challenge to make my grandma laugh,” Okatsuka says. “She raised me. And, I discovered, she is very funny.”

When Okatsuka was eight, her grandmother told her they were going on a two-month holiday to the US. Except it wasn’t a holiday, it was the beginning of seven years as undocumented immigrants until they qualified for citizenship. Left behind in Japan were her father and friends.

On stage, Okatsuka has always joked she was kidnapped by her grandmother. The family didn’t talk about what happened. She only recently discovered the abrupt move was accepted, with great heartbreak, by her father, whose marriage to her mother had been short.

Life in the US was challenging. At first, Okatsuka, her grandmother and mother lived together in her uncle’s two-car garage. They briefly took on Anglo names and kept their heads down.

“I was a very quiet kid,” Okatsuka says. “I was very shy for the most part. But I was learning at home the way people communicate. Comedically, it was very animated. I didn’t dare try that at school, though. At school, you’re supposed to be cool. It wasn’t until years later, after I’d been practising in the comfort and privacy of my home, that I finally came out and tried to be funny.”

Atsuko Okatsuka on stage in 2019. She used to be afraid to show her true self by wearing bright colours, but has since embraced her inner weirdo.Credit: Getty Images

The spark came when Okatsuka was 17. A fellow church-goer gave her a DVD copy of Korean-American comic Margaret Cho’s 2002 comedy special Margaret Cho: Notorious C.H.O.

“I’d never heard of stand-up comedy,” she says. “I had no idea it was even a job.”

At university, a boyfriend suggested she try it, leading to open-mic nights and then proper gigs. These, and her burgeoning suite of social media videos, built an audience that brought her to The Intruder, only the second HBO comedy special by an Asian-American woman after Cho’s 1994 Comedy Half Hour.

Okatsuka attributes her success to embracing her true self after years of hiding traits and passions to fit in.

“When you’re trying to find your voice, or trying to figure out who you are, you should go for the thing that you’ve been trying to run away from the most,” she says. “Because it’s possible you’re in denial of who you really are.

“I was afraid to wear bright colours and stand out and rock this haircut that I think is actually very artful and chic and I love. But, as a kid, you’re made fun of for it.

“So now I’m finally embracing all the things that made me feel like a fake or an outsider. Things that actually make me feel good.”

She says her comedy voice came when she stopped looking at other comics to find a stand-up style.

“It was during the pandemic,” she says. “I really embraced this haircut, my brand of comedy, the way I joke and, finally, talking about my mom’s mental illness. It took the world to shut down and being forced to look inward.

“I’m not academic and I’m not organised. I’m very unapologetically someone who makes mistakes, too, and I have to fail to learn.”

She points to her and her husband, actor and painter Ryan Harper Gray, discovering in 2023, six years after their wedding, that they were not officially married due to not filing the paperwork.

“This is the second time I’ve been undocumented and I didn’t know,” Okatsuka jokes in a video of their second wedding.

Her new show, Full Grown, is about figuring out what being an adult is.

“It’s sillier and funnier than The Intruder because it’s exploring an even deeper side of me,” she says. “It’s talking about how you make friends as an adult, it’s about me and my husband and my abilities as a human person.

“It’s about realising that maybe you’ll never be full-grown.”

People, she says, have to have grace for themselves. “I don’t ever want anyone to feel judged, especially by themselves. There’s enough of society you have to keep up with. That’s a big message in my show.”

Okatsuka says 70 to 80 per cent of her audience is women, plus a large proportion of the queer community.

“They’re just sweeties,” she says. “The theatres always tell me, ‘God, you have like the nicest fans. They’re on time, they take their trash with them and they’re very thoughtful.’

“I’m so proud that that’s the people that I cultivate. They’re there to have a good time and truly connect with the community.”

After shows, fans talk to her about their immigration or mental illness stories, adding that her humour helps them to not feel as alone or embarrassed about those parts of their lives.

“The more people talk, the more stories that are out there, the more other people feel seen,” she says. “It’s finding your community.

“We’re all not normal. My fans are fellow weirdos and I love them.”

Atsuko Okatsuka performs Full Grown at The Palms at Crown, Melbourne, on July 31; and at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, on August 3. The Intruder is now streaming on Binge.