Catherine Cohen Wants Her Comedy To Feel Like Attending a Wild Party
The breakout comedian shares a photo diary from her Netflix special "Catherine Cohen: The Twist...? She's Gorgeous" and talks her major moment — and what's next.
Catherine Cohen has been crying a lot lately. That's sort of what happens, it seems, when after years of work and the unpredictable threat of a pandemic, your Netflix special finally is released and people spring up in your DMs night and day to share how much it's stuck with them.
“I got this really emotional message. This person, a stranger, emailed me through my website saying that I reminded them of their daughter, who had passed away, and that they were watching it every night,” Cohen says. “I was in bed sobbing.”
The New York-based 31-year-old has proudly released “Catherine Cohen” The Twist...? She's Gorgeous” on Netflix after doing the first version of the sketch in 2017.
"The material was ‘just something I had been doing for years” she says, until she finally got a Facebook message from a director who wanted to get it in front of Netflix.
“So much of it is just luck. It's just chance, meeting the right people,” Cohen says of the world of comedy, from a table at Fairfax in the West Village over breakfast. “That's how when something does, like when a project does not end up happening or whatever, it's just not the thing, because something else will come along. So you have to have some detachment from it.
I was talking to a friend and I was like, ‘I just feel like I can't control anything,' and she said, ‘You can't.' I'm like, ‘B---h. That's rude,'” Cohen says. “But that's been all of our journey this past year. Yeah. I just wanted the special to be a fun party. Enough suffering. People just come in to have a cocktail and enjoy their life for a little bit.”
Cohen, born and raised in Houston, grew up a fan of musical theater and pop acts like The Spice Girls, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
“Those were my influences, and then beyond that, I just loved the drama of theater, and the glamour of it, and I always wanted to be in New York,” she says.
One of her two brothers is an actor, currently touring with the production of "The Band's Visit," but she says her parents, who are both business people, are rather bewildered by the pursuit of performance.
“They're incredibly supportive, but they don't know anything about this. They're like, ‘What is this?'" Cohen says. “I don't know how it started. When I was little I really loved singing and performing, and I did musical theater. I was lucky enough my parents were really supportive, and I did theater and stuff all through college. Then I moved to New York. I was like, ‘I want to be an actress,' and then thankfully fell into the comedy scene.”
As a declared lover of all things glamorous, how did Cohen decide what to wear onstage for the special?
“Oh, my favorite question,” she says. “Well, I knew it had to be absolutely beyond.” She had previously worked with emerging designer Kelsey Randall for her appearance on Seth Meyers, and knew Randall would cook up something over the top for the special. “She added 25,000 hand-placed rhinestones” to the pink romper, Cohen says. “It was insane. I just like anything that's over the top. Life is so boring. Although, then I do feel like then after a show, I like to be in sweatpants for five days.”