Girls5Eva Let Catherine Cohen Revert to Her Tween-age Self

Girl5Eva’s arrival on Netflix is a boon for fans of weird, girly, fun comedies, a tragically underserved genre that no one is more poised to rock than comedian Catherine Cohen. She practically flutters into the third season’s fourth episode, “Orlando” — descending the same stairs where Taylor Swift herself once greeted her music video lovers — dripping with the baubles in which her sugar daddy husband has adorned her, to enthusiastically announce “I’m Taffy England!!” But Taffy isn’t just a trophy wife, she’s also a massive fan of the show’s titular girl group, having invited them to her birthday party where the theme is “my posters come to life,” featuring appearances from every early-2000s icon that ever adorned her bedroom wall.

Cohen’s performance is both a standout guest appearance in a season full of them and a perfect fit for this song-and-dance comedy. It’s an area she often lives in, as a former theater kid whose stand-up features plenty of songs that would feel perfectly at home on this show. “I was like, Oh, we all know a Taffy,” she tells Vulture. “She’s over the top, but then at the same time, she knows what she likes. We have to give it to her.”

What was it like meeting Taffy England on the page?
As soon as I read it I was like, This would be a total dream. I’ve admired, obviously, all the Tina Fey shows for a million years. Grew up watching 30 Rock and then watched Kimmy Schmidt, and I’d seen some of Girls5eva and I just thought it was so funny. I was so happy it was coming to Netflix, I feel like more people will see it now. So yeah, I was like, “Oh, this will just be a great time.” And we filmed it at the Taylor Swift “Blank Space” mansion.

Wait, really?
Yes, and I was dying. We pulled up and I was like, This looks so familiar.

That means the stairs that you are running down in the beginning, those are the stairs from—
Yes. Yes. It’s like this huge, I guess it’s a part-hotel-type thing. I’m not sure what it’s used for. I think a lot of weddings and stuff, but it’s in Long Island. It’s gorgeous. And I’m obviously a huge Swiftie, so I was thrilled. We shot it almost a year ago.

Oh, wow. That feels so long ago.
It was lucky they wrapped pre-strike. So there was obviously a delay, but yeah, we did that almost a year ago. And I got to hang out with Rebecca Lobo, who was amazing.

For Taffy, did you draw inspiration from anyone in life that you’ve met or that you see on TV? 
She’s just so obvious in the most annoying way. I was like, Oh, we all know a Taffy. She’s over the top, but then at the same time, she knows what she likes. We have to give it to her. But ultimately, in some ways she’s an idiot and in some ways she’s smart.

She’s really kind of sweet at the end, when she lets Dawn come on stage.
Yeah, she is a monster, but I like to think she means well.

You get to wear a lot of really cool looks in this episode. What was your favorite?
Oh my God, the costume team killed it. I think every girl dreams of wearing the, “Oops, I Did It Again” bodysuit. It was so funny, I went in for my fitting and they’re like, “So we’re custom making you a latex bodysuit.” And then the other fun part was obviously getting to wear the same dress Sara Bareilles does for the girl-group moment, and that was also a custom little denim corset dress. I just love all the looks. They crushed it.

The bodysuit, I was like, “This has to be a dream come true.”
Yeah, obviously. And then the makeup team killed it too, doing that light blue eye, that super-pale blue, and then I had that crazy wig. Dressing up, that is my favorite thing in the world. I feel like I’ve reverted to my tween-age self in many ways, which is part of the fun of the whole show.

If we were getting a Cat Cohen billionaire birthday party similar to this, who would be there?
Spice Girls was my first concert. They changed my life. Had a huge poster of them in my room. So I think that will be the dream to reunite the Spice Girls. Casual.

Who was your favorite Spice Girl?
I was Sporty.

What else were you obsessed with back then?
I remember the day I bought Britney’s album and I remember holding it in my hands. I feel like I’m the perfect age for this show because it’s just so growing up in the early 2000s.

How long did it take you to learn the choreo?
Those girls are so amazing because they learn that shit so fast. They give you the song and in between takes, we’re learning the choreo. It’s very quick. They made it so fun. It just felt like being in the high school musical and you’re just in the hallway counting together, learning it. I remember I had been kind of a little depressed before, and then when I got to the shoot I was like, Oh my God, this is medicine. It’s just so fun doing all these things you grew up loving, dancing and singing and wearing crazy clothes.

Right, like how often do you get to be in a weird girly comedy like this?
I know. And the four of them are just so nice and welcoming. Especially just popping in for a few scenes, they really made me feel like part of the group.

I was curious what it was like to chew out Sara Bareilles.
I was dissociating. I was like, “This is not your real life.” She’s so amazing. I was very starstruck.

How many takes did it take for you to say, “So cute Rebecca Lobo”? It feels like a name that was really built for you to say, Rebecca Lobo.
I don’t remember. “So cute Rebecca Lobo.” She was so cool. And actually, because we got to hang out for a while, she sent her daughter to one of my shows last summer, and so I met her daughter as well. She’s like, “I’m Rebecca Lobo’s daughter.” I was like, “Icon.”

What overall would you say is your favorite memory from the day? 
Just learning the choreo. I felt so in my element. I do songs and stuff obviously in my act, but to be standing around a piano with Sara Bareilles learning a song, I was like, “This is crazy.” A) To do something as a group is so fun and, B) that it was with such superstars.

I also wanted to ask about your cameo as the Siren in What We Do in the Shadows, which is also one of my favorite shows of all time.
That was sick. We filmed that peak pandemic, so my main memory of that is the quarantine in Toronto and being in a hotel room for two weeks by myself. And then also, I’m such a fan of the show too, but then when we got to set, everyone still had to kind of be sequestered in their own little area. So I was like, “Nice to meet you,” across the hallway. But they made me feel like a Marvel star because for the chicken legs in that costume I had to do full—is it motion capture where they take your picture in the green screen legs, the green screen leggings? I was like, “Okay, go off.”

What do you think Taffy England and the Siren have in common? Are they in conversation?
A lot, yes, thank you for asking. I was going to bring that up. No, they definitely inhabit the world of characters I love to play called “annoying women,” or in the Siren’s case, “annoying woman-slash-creature.”

And so seductive.
I would say, yeah, annoying, seductive creatures are my bread and butter.