Ultimate red-carpet treatment
He blows celebrities' minds while impersonating them to their faces
To the celebrity impressionist, there are few subjects more tantalizing than Nicolas Cage. And yet there Matt Friend was at the Golden Globes in January, doing his Cage for Cage himself (“I just wanna kind of FIND the Declaration of Independence!”) when Paul Giamatti walked into his sightline.
Friend had spent years nailing Giamatti's vocal tics and signature exasperations, and he was desperate to share his imitation with the veteran actor. But in the star-studded chaos, Giamatti skirted right by Friend's perch on the press line. “The carpet is like Madame Tussaud's come to life,” Friend said recently over lunch in SoHo. “I was like, `Oh my God, I missed him.'”
A couple hours later, though, while loitering inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Friend spotted the star of The Holdovers again, just moments after he had won for best actor in a musical or comedy. Friend raced over and broke into an uncanny impersonation right beside his idol.
“I am doing you, to you, right now,” Friend shouts, shaking his head in the actor's visceral style.
Without missing a beat, Giamatti perks up and participates. “That's very good!” he yells, matching Friend's exaggerated tone. “Very good!”
The surreal video, which blew up on Friend's TikTok and Instagram accounts, is a prime example of the comedian's sharp miming abilities, which often impress and surprise his targets.
Though their encounter lasts just a minute, Giamatti can't stop laughing at the charade, commending Friend's startlingly familiar and hard-to-achieve mannerisms.
Over the past couple of months, Friend has turned the red carpet into a petri dish for similar viral content, mastering impromptu interactions with actors and musicians who have become increasingly familiar with his online presence. He's prompted Kieran Culkin to slap him after a profane parody of Succession character Tom Wambsgans. He's traded King Charles III's syllabic riffs with The Crown actor Dominic West. And he's broken out his near-identical Howard Stern voice to appease Netflix head Ted Sarandos.
“It was very nerve-racking at first, but I just love it,” Friend says.
Friend got his first taste of the red carpet at last year's Globes, after Jeremy Lowe, a friend who works at Dick Clark Productions, granted him press access.
The 25-year-old impressionist purchased his own microphone at a camera store. “There was no producer helping me. I had my manager filming me, holding my phone, and I was monitoring the sound. It could have been a disaster.”
Austin Butler approached him, eager to compliment Friend's recent Elvis impression as Friend broke into song in the actor's husky drawl. The filmed interaction proved Friend didn't need to flag down A-listers — they were looking for him. “It's been amazing ... It's pretty wild. My goal in these events is to get really funny moments and make the celebrities feel comfortable and relaxed.”
The press line is just a heightened glimpse of Friend's instinctual social media and comedic skills. Since his more than 250 impressions began catching fire throughout the pandemic, he's amassed more than a million followers on TikTok, where he shares cooking spoofs of Stanley Tucci, croons like Michael Bublé and addresses constituents as Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.
He frequently guests on cable news networks, has started voicing characters on Family Guy and The Simpsons, and is currently in the middle of a national standup tour, mixing in his astute impressions with observational humour. A few years removed from college, he can't quite believe how far his videos have taken him.
“To have these things happening at such a quick rate compared to a lot of other people is amazing,” Friend says. “I do not take it for granted.”
He estimates his early impression of Rami Malek put his profile on the map. He got another boost after an encounter with Jeff Goldblum, who spontaneously brought Friend up onstage at a jazz club so the pair could out- Goldblum each other.
His impression of Stern was so good that the longtime radio host invited him on the show to poke fun at his own vocabulary. Living in downtown New York has also had its perks, as his frequent, random run-ins with Andy Cohen, John Oliver and David Letterman have almost functioned like test runs for his red carpet shtick.
“I actually read theories that people have on me,” Friend says. “Like, `'How are you so connected?' `Are you in the CIA?'”
Throughout our conversation, Friend sipped an iced coffee, occasionally slipped into various voices, blurted out a word-perfect rendition of The Music Man's Ya Got Trouble and began self-awarely narrating his own profile: “Can he really be himself ? People think I'm telling a joke all the time.” He laughs. “I want to make the record clear: I'm able to recognize when I'm being myself versus a voice or an impression.”