Catherine Cohen: The Twist?...She’s Modern

Catherine Cohen feels a spike in her coronavirus fears before logging into Zoom. As she figures out how to schedule a testing appointment, the comedian takes her laptop along for a spontaneous home tour. Above her lush yellow couch hangs a whimsical painting featuring elegant figures, tchotchkes easy to spot throughout her one-bedroom apartment. The teal lamp next to her bed fills the room with a warm light as she curls up to chat.

Her blue sweatshirt juxtaposes the usual glitz and glamor she wears while performing, a haphazard bun residing where headbands that would make Blair Waldorf envious are often spotted. With crossed fingers, she proclaims success, the slight joy in her voice disappearing once prompted for her credit card. When she’s all set, Catherine lounges back in her bed and declares she’s present once more.

Known for her comedy cabaret acts The Twist?...She’s Gorgeous and Cabernet Cabaret and hilariously real online presence, Catherine has always felt destined to perform. She counts Molly Shannon’s performance in Superstar and living legend Cher as inspirations for her onstage persona, Cat Cohen. Cat parades around in sequins as she sings musical numbers about the woes of being a millennial woman. Catherine does commercial voiceover work to pay the bills. Both love a fun beret and sharp cat-eye.

“I just want to wear the most dramatic stuff at all times to make life fun, because it can be so boring,” Catherine mused. “And I have a face for hats, what can I say?”

Both halves of Catherine come together to create a person who’s growing beyond the self-bestowed title of “Beautiful Comedian” into a performer who celebrates her deep artistic roots.

Growing up in Houston, Catherine began performing at a young age, her big break coming when she played a baseball player in the musical Help, I Need a Vacation. The third-grader sang the song “It’s Lonely Way Out in Left Field,” lamenting about her apparent invisibility to the sound of cheers from the audience.

“Everyone was very impressed and I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm really good,’” Catherine said. “And they're like, ‘You are.’ And I was like, ‘Thank you.’ Yeah, I have a lot of like, unearned confidence. Somehow, I think it's because I was praised incessantly by my father.”

While she feels her father’s appreciation for her perfection may have stunted her, Catherine values her family’s constant support and love as she settles into her new hometown. New York City has always been her dream city, Broadway’s allure a siren call to the young girl.

Before planting her flag in the Big Apple, Catherine took a slight detour to attend Princeton University. She graduated with an English degree in 2013, a lifelong love of poetry and the desire to talk about her feelings influencing her degree path. She recalls her college years as dreamy, and the university’s diverse student body allowed her to form lasting friendships.

“I always felt like I was meeting new people who have totally different worldviews than I, and that was super exciting,” Catherine said. “Even like, senior year, still meeting people it was just so fun. It's such, like a cult, whenever you go back.”

2020 is the first year since her graduation she hasn’t made it back for Princeton’s annual reunion, but her sense of connection is still strong.

“When I'm part of something, I'm part of something,” Catherine emphasized. “And it's important to me to embrace whatever community I'm in.”

She takes this mantra to heart, throwing herself into the comedy scene’s “group work” with as much gusto as a Virgo valedictorian (She’s a Leo sun but “all [her] other shit is Virgo.”) Along with Patti Harrison and Mitra Jouhari she hosts It’s A Guy Thing, a traveling show infusing music and comedy with a very modern experience — mansplaining. Catherine also hosts the podcast Seek Treatment with Pat Regan, each episode dedicated to all things “boys, sex, dating, fucking and love.” The duo discusses everything from hot gay rabbis to dating a journalist with such infectious energy and familiarity they feel like two old friends. Creating a home-away-from-home is a gargantuan task, but she’s found her own little place in the world.

That place shifted online during the pandemic, Catherine performing Cabernet Cabaret on Instagram Live with guests like Vagabon and Chloe Fineman. Performing without an audience is a hilarious new experience, but she’s taking it in stride.

“I think people are really supportive and they make me laugh in the comments,” Catherine said. “It really does feel like I'm connecting with them even if it's not in a traditional sense and that it makes me feel a lot less lonely.”

She explores her loneliness and other emotions in the upcoming book, God I Feel Modern Tonight. Deb Garrison, Alfred A. Knopf’s poetry editor, approached Catherine about creating a collection of poetry after following her work “even before Instagram was a thing.” Similar to the growing online comedy scene, Instagram and Tumblr poetry has become a big trend in recent years for young writers. Social media platforms have also been helpful in introducing a modern audience to an artist — it’s how I found Catherine, after all.

“I think those are very impactful because it brings people into an art form in a way that it could literally pop up in their feed and they could discover voices that actually are really talented and rich,” Deb said.

 The two worked together in selecting and reworking her strongest poems, the collection spanning between 2015 and mid-2020 showing her growth as a poet, even if the early stuff makes Catherine cringe. They reworked the original ending to feature some of her quarantine poems, Deb stating this choice gave the collection a stronger arc.

“If you were to read the first part of the book now, which is almost like nostalgia for our prior life, like riding around in the city all dressed up looking for adventures, it's something we're not doing right now,” Deb said. “It was nice to be able to add that last part, to have that arc in the book of being that young person and having these adventures and then having those adventures taken away.”

Eenie Bernard, a Knopf publicity assistant, has been working with Deb, Catherine and co-worker Josie Kals on figuring out how to get God I Feel Modern Tonight out to the masses with our new normal. The original in-person book tour ideas were scrapped, but the early February release date remains intact. Eenie said she was a fan of Catherine’s prior to working on the project and sees her wit and sarcasm throughout the book’s exploration of young adulthood in New York City.

“It’s not just about coming of age in New York, but coming of age in general in the internet age,” Eenie said. “I was like, ‘This is so weirdly relatable.’ It’s weirdly sardonic, but where you're making humor to cover up the pain. It was really relatable and I was impressed with her poetry and how both vulnerable and real she was on the page.”

While her escapades may be on pause, Catherine’s attitude never falters. Her welcoming aura radiates through the screen as she ponders her desert island movies while lounging in bed (Her picks? Frances Ha, Father of the Bride, Obvious Child, Liar, Liar, and The Aristocats.) We share our struggles of frizzy curls and finding a good jumpsuit, the Zoom call feeling more like a sisterly catch-up than an interview.

As the rise of The Influencer™ seemingly continues to grow, Catherine’s down-to-earth nature feels grounded and modern. She uses drugstore makeup and doesn’t worry about having a skincare routine (“I naturally have amazing skin”). She’s working on becoming “body neutral” by accepting her current state of being and trying to make her image take up less mental space.

“We all have been conditioned for so long to hate our bodies that I'm just like, let's start with feeling neutral and not pretend,” Catherine said. “You know, I don't wanna pretend like I love every part of myself. I don't always feel that way. There are times when I feel that way. I think the main thing is to stop the like, self-hate talk. I didn't even realize how much I was doing it for so long. So I think that's the first step and then maybe we'll get to the positivity.”

If Catherine Cohen, Beautiful Comedian™, can accept her flaws and learn to celebrate them, so can the rest of us plebeians.