AP Breakthrough Entertainer Sarah Cooper: TikTok to Netflix

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The video couldn’t have been simpler: A woman in her apartment, lip-syncing audio of President Donald Trump as he expounded on possible coronavirus treatments.

“We hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said at the time. “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"

Comedian Sarah Cooper lip-synced the president and demonstrated “injecting” herself with a cleaning spray, posting the 49-second video, “How to Medical,” on TikTok in April. A mere four months later Cooper was filming her own hour-long Netflix special alongside anyone’s dream guest stars: Helen Mirren, Marisa Tomei, Ben Stiller, Jon Hamm, Winona Ryder, Jane Lynch, Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph.

“Six months ago I was in my living room making a TikTok,” Cooper recently told The Associated Press, which is naming her one of its Breakthrough Entertainers of 2020. “And then I’m on a golf course with, like, a dolly shot and a crew. And I’m lip-syncing the same guy that I’ve been lip-syncing, but I’m doing it in a whole different scale. And so at that moment, I had that moment of like, ‘Wow, this happened fast.’ You know? Like, breakneck speed.”

There’ve been so many pinch-me moments since Cooper’s first TikTok that she’s lost track. But she’ll never forget the feeling of having made it when she saw Jerry Seinfeld talking about why her videos were funny in an interview.

“The reason this is funny is because she doesn’t think she’s being funny,” Seinfeld said. “When you think you’re being funny, that’s less funny for us as the audience. When you’re being dead serious, that’s funnier. You don’t see her...