With an epic roll of her eyes, a tremble of her lower lip and a dramatic wave of her hands, Brooklyn comedian Maria DeCotis offered her interpretation of a Gov. Cuomo lecture on fatherhood. And Twitter took note.
DeCotis has taken the internet by storm this month, spinning absurd audio nuggets from the governor’s daily — and often zany — coronavirus briefings into prop-powered, lip-synced comic gold.
In the first video in the series, DeCotis inhabited multiple characters in a 98-second rant from Cuomo about the love life of his daughter Mariah.
DeCotis donned a suit jacket as the 62-year-old politician, a brown wig as the boyfriend and a sleeveless red shirt as Cuomo’s mortified daughter.
“Advice to fathers: The answer on what you think of the boyfriend is always ‘I like the boyfriend,'” Cuomo’s voice echoes over the solo skit. “Because there’s only two options. Either you like the boyfriend, in which case you say, ‘I like the boyfriend.’ Or you don’t like the boyfriend. But you can never say you don’t like the boyfriend. I learned this lesson the hard way.”
The video has hauled in more than a million views. And DeCotis’ series has crystallized the state’s love affair with Cuomo as he leads New York through the pandemic.
DeCotis said she made the video after popping into her roommate’s bedroom to watch the governor’s April 19 briefing. It went a little off the rails.
“He goes on this big tangent about his daughter’s boyfriend, and he just didn’t stop,” DeCotis told the Daily News. “I just couldn’t take my eyes off of him.”
The stand-up comedian, who’s originally from Atlanta, said the clip reminded her of her own Italian family, and her dad. She drew inspiration from a similar lip-synced video by comedian Sarah Cooper based on President Trump.
She usually writes scripts for videos she makes, she said, but Cuomo had already provided her with sufficiently off-the-walls material. She crafted the sketch with a simple premise: “There’s no way he could like the daughter’s boyfriend.”
“He said it way too much to actually like him,” DeCotis, 28, said. “I was just thinking of ways I could visually tell a different story than what he was actually saying.”
She published the tape to Twitter on May 1. The skit took off, and was bolstered when Cooper retweeted it.
DeCotis now watches the briefings daily, taking notes on moments she can translate into sketches. She said the habit has helped her keep busy during the lockdown, a time she’s spent playing with her cat and going for walks.
In her latest installment, she distills a clip of Cuomo saying that one of his daughters made him feel lousy by comparing him to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who bought test kits from South Korea.
Cuomo’s three daughters — Cara, Mariah and Michaela — are all in their 20s.
DeCotis’ follower count on Twitter has ballooned from about 700 to more than 40,000. On Friday alone, model Chrissy Teigen and Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda chirped clips from the series.
When Stephen Colbert retweeted the first video early this month, DeCotis said she initially missed it because she was so inundated with notifications.
She said she thinks Cuomo’s commentaries strike a particularly resonant chord at a terrifying time when many people are missing their families or spending more time with them than ever before.
Long before the pandemic, Cuomo once said he’s “just a cool dude in a loose mood.” Some might quibble with the self-description from the typically intense leader.
But DeCotis explained why so many people have felt soothed by Cuomo’s daily briefings. The governor, it turns out, can be quite relatable.
“Him talking about his daughter’s boyfriend is such a familiar feeling to me,” DeCotis said. “We’re in the midst of this global pandemic. And he’s still worried about his daughter’s boyfriend. And his relationships with his daughters.”
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