Jodi Long shares some insight into her character: Steve Byrne‘s overbearing mother, Ok Cha Sullivan, from the upcoming TV sitcom Sullivan & Sons. (The character is based on Steve Byrne’s real mother.) Ok Cha takes tough love to the extreme. She always makes sure to tell everyone exactly what they are doing wrong and she’s often right. As a frugal immigrant, she did not want Steve to give up his job as a prestigious lawyer in New York, but in the end she is delighted to have him home. Meet more of the cast by Barhopping with Sullivan & Son.

Jodi Long as Ok Cha on Sullivan & Son

More about Jodi Long

Jodi Long is a veteran of stage, film and television whose regular series work includes co-starring with Valerie Bertinelli in Cafe American; playing Margaret Cho’s mother in All American Girl and playing Alicia Silverstone’s secretary in Miss Match. Long has had recurring parts on The Cosby Show, Michael Hayes, Eli Stone and Law and Order: LA. She is also known as Patty, “the power lesbian,” in an episode of Sex in The City.

Long’s film work includes Beginnings, with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer; Paul Schrader’s Patty Hearst; Mike Newell’s Sour Sweet; Striking Distance; Rollover; and The Hot Chick.

In 2006, Long’s one-woman play, Surfing DNA, was produced at East West Players in Los Angeles and garnered her an Ovation nomination for Best Solo Performance. She went on to write and co-produce a documentary about her vaudevillian parents, Long Story Short, was directed by Christine Choy. The film played numerous film festivals, including the 2008 Hawaii International Film Festival, and it won the 2008 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival’s Audience Award for Best Documentary. In 2008, Long Story Short was voted one of the top ten documentaries by UCLA’s Asia Institute.

Long made her Broadway debut at age 7 in Nowhere To Go But Up, directed by Sidney Lumet, the first of five Broadway shows in which she would appear. As an adult, she has starred in Loose Ends, with Kevin Kline; The Bacchae, with Irene Papas; Stephen Sondheim’s Getting Away with Murder; and the recent revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, a performance for which she won an Ovation Award at The Mark Taper in Los Angeles.

Numerous off-Broadway productions include Wendy Wasserstein’s Old Money (Lincoln Center), Red and The Wash (Manhattan Theater Club), David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child and Family Devotions (Public Theater); and The Tooth of Crime (LaMama). Long has also performed in the world tour of Phillip Glass and David Henry Hwang’s 90-minute solo piece 1000 Airplanes on The Roof.