SPOTLIGHT Good for a laugh

Comedian Sarah Cooper goes from TikTok hit to Netflix special.

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 lipsynced 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 hourlong 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 named 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 lipsyncing, 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 enjoying what she’s doing — she’s doing it because she has to do it. That’s what’s funny.”

Rudolph said she first saw one of Cooper’s videos after a friend sent it to her, “laughing hysterically, saying, ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’”

“I was just so impressed with just the natural joy of it,” Rudolph said. “I felt like she just clicked into this thing that was coming out of her so effortlessly that it was making all of us laugh.”

Cooper’s Netflix special, “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine,” was the first project for Animal Pictures, Rudolph’s new production company that she started with actor Natasha Lyonne, known for her work in “Russian Doll” and “Orange Is the New Black.”

“I was just like, ‘Who is this person? This is exactly articulating why everything is so insane,” Lyonne said of the first time she saw “How to Medical.” “It just resonated much harder than somebody being like, ‘Is he crazy or what?’”

Rudolph and Lyonne said green-lighting Cooper’s special was a no-brainer.

“Sarah really epitomizes somebody whose voice and a sense of humor and talent we want to help bring to the world,” Rudolph said. “She had so much material to work with. It was really just a matter of helping her edit and then helping figure out how to bring these things to life and using all the experience that we had.”

It was clear Cooper was “ready for her moment,” Lyonne said. “She knew it was her moment and she was not going to blow it ... Sarah just showed up and crushed.”

In addition to helping her land the Netflix special, Cooper’s lip-syncing videos renewed interest in the books she’s written, “100 Tricks To Appear Smart in Meetings” and “How To Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.” The latter is being turned into a sitcom for CBS, which Cooper is currently writing with Cindy Chupack (“Sex and the City” and “Modern Family”).

All that success may appear to have happened overnight for Cooper, but the 42-year-old has been working on her comedy for years, even during her career in tech. (She worked at Yahoo! and Google until 2014..

“Those videos have turned into the thing that I wanted to do this whole time, which is write TV and create characters and tell stories,” Cooper said. “I’m actually getting to do the thing that I’ve been wanting to do this whole time since I quit Google.”