The Comedy Queens of Quarantine
It's been a long six months. Since March, when COVID-19 was declared a full-blown pandemic, we've endured lockdowns and quarantines that have been pivotal to public safety but a drag on our mental health. Millions have lost their jobs amid an economic recession. Apocalyptic wildfires have blotted out the sky along our west coast. A national reckoning over racial justice has emerged in the face of countless Black Americans being continuously killed with impunity by police. All while staring down the arrival of a high-stakes, high-anxiety election. The poet Lord Byron once called laughter cheap medicine, and since we're waiting on a coronavirus vaccine, sometimes it feels like laughter is all we've got.
Luckily, when the live comedy scene shut down, comics immediately got creative. Some performed on the back of flatbed trucks outside their favorite haunts to small, masked audiences. Some quickly launched podcasts. (So, so many podcasts!) Many turned to social media to livestream sets, sketches, and bits. There were shows on Instagram and Zoom and, yes, even Animal Crossing. TikTok made comedy stars out of teenagers who'd be turned away at the Comedy Cellar and of a few savvy adults like Sarah Cooper, whose lip synchs of President Trump landed her a comedy special and an appearance at the DNC.
Some comedians already excelled in an online medium and had tens of thousands of restless followers eager to tune in; others were new to shooting front-facing comedy with nothing but an iPhone and an Instagram login, but they caught on quick. Yet for the few who have become true stars in quarantine—the comedy go-tos we scroll through nightly to fend off our existential dread—it wasn't technical savvy that made them required viewing. It was the canny and quirky ways in which they interrogated a difficult moment in our history; it was how they helped audiences cope while finding a way to cope all their own; it was just how adept they were in reclaiming for us all just a little joy.
So this week, HarpersBAZAAR.com presents the Comedy Queens of Quarantine, an interview series where we're celebrating some of the comedians who've gotten us through a spring and summer of uncertainty and who might just get us through a fall election season in one piece. If what they're peddling is cheap medicine, then don't tell Big Pharma, because it's some good shit.
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Ziwe Fumudoh
Her livestream interview series, Baited, defined a summer of isolation and racial reckoning. Can Ziwe Fumudoh's comedy help heal us—and herself?
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Meg Stalter
Just as her IRL comedy career was taking off in New York, she left to quarantine back home in Ohio. But Meg Stalter's stable of clueless, overconfident characters continue to grow their audience online and connect with them in surprisingly personal ways.
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Sydnee Washington
When faced with a quarantine full of sweatpants and Seamless, Sydnee Washington tackled her anxieties—and ours—by putting on a full beat and livestreaming herself as she learned her way around a kitchen on Syd Can Cook. And she can! Sorta.
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Jenny Yang
When the pandemic drove everyone inside, she recreated the L.A. she loved—including a comedy club featuring live performances—in Animal Crossing. Now she's using her online reach to help her community in the real world.
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Patti Harrison
When she had to press pause on her just-launched monthly live show at the Largo, Patti Harrison asked herself, What's next? The answer might lie in a back catalogue of comic songs, absurd characters, and a knack for keeping audience guessing.
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