The comedian had used TikTok only a handful of times before her impersonation of the president garnered 15 million views. Now it’s making her rethink her routine.
SHIRLEY LI
MAY 8, 2020
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“I need comedy more than ever.” — Sarah Cooper MINDY TUCKER
When Sarah Cooper made a TikTok of herself lip-synching to President Donald Trump’s statements about injecting disinfectants into patients to battle the coronavirus, she didn’t think it would take off. The Brooklyn-based author and comedian usually performs at open mics and live shows; this video, titled “How to medical,” was only her tenth upload on the social-media platform. Yet when she shared it on Twitter at the end of April, the spoof went viral, logging nearly 15 million views and scoring retweets from A-listers such as Jerry Seinfeld and Ben Stiller.
Cooper, though, told me she felt somewhat guilty. She hadn’t even caught the press conference live; she’d heard about it from her husband afterward, found the remarks ridiculous, and made fun of them with a 49-second riff. “My impostor syndrome is kicking in,” she told me this week over the phone. “I’m like, ‘Wait, I didn’t actually write anything.’ I didn’t actually work very hard on this at all, so what does that say about me, that I went viral with something I basically spent an hour on?” She laughed. “I’ll just chalk it up to years and years of trying different things to get to this point.”
Trying different things has become the new normal for comedians such as Cooper. After all, stand-up and other live shows are unsuited to social distancing, so many performers have come to rely on the internet to compensate. During the first at-home edition of Saturday Night Live, the “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che used Zoom just so that he and Colin Jost would have spectators laughing in the background. The comedian Ted Alexandro has been live-streaming new material, and even edited his series of Instagram Live videos into a “special.” Cooper, too, is participating in this type of scrappy online entertainment; she just guested on a podcast that broadcast via Zoom last weekend.
With her sister working as a nurse in D.C. and her 70-year-old mother battling asthma, Cooper finds that her work has helped her relieve some of the anxiety she’s feeling. “I need comedy more than ever,” she said. “I need escape and I need something to relax me, even more than I needed before the quarantine.” In our conversation, Cooper reflected on pivoting to a digital platform during the pandemic and the role of topical comedy in a time of crisis. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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