Sabrina Brier’s TikTok comedy is inspired by ‘that friend’ we all know and love (to hate)
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Even if you don’t know Sabrina Brier, chances are you’ve already met one of the many “friends” she plays on TikTok.
Best known for her New York-set point-of-view videos, the prolific 29-year-old comedian, actor and writer has amassed more than 800,000 followers in three years on the strength and utter relatability of her “That Friend” videos, which portray Brier playing a variety of characters ranging from well-intentioned and oblivious to downright hateable and entitled. For example: a wedding guest who dated the groom in high school and can’t stop bringing it up, a friend who is upset with you for inviting another person to dinner (she just wanted some one-on-one time), a friend who always finds a way to circle a conversation back to her, an extremely passive-aggressive roommate and a friend who is embarrassed to have wealthy parents.
Brier’s online fame is so massive, it’s long since spilled over to into her real life. “I’ve had friends say to me, ‘You’re kind of like the mayor,’” she tells The Times over Zoom of what it’s like to leave her apartment and be waved to on the street. “I’ll never forget the first time,” she continues, remembering going out to eat with a friend who was visiting from out of town. “I had been viral for a month. Our waitress was like, ‘Oh, my God. You’re the girl.’ People just started to say to me, ‘You’re the girl. You’re the girl.’”
Since she first went viral on Instagram in August 2021 with a short video about how to upset New Yorkers (hint: it’s by pronouncing “Houston” like the Texas city), Brier has carefully leveled up her online presence with the eventual goal of crossing over into mainstream media. Thanks to her self-professed “obsessive” work tendencies, that plan is coming to fruition: Last year, Brier was named to Variety’s New York Power list. She also became a widely circulated meme. This past spring, she hosted “Sabrina Brier & Friends” at Hotel Cafe for Netflix Is a Joke Fest and guest starred on “Abbott Elementary” as “JessCa,” an overconfident sub who doesn’t believe in capitalizing names of cities and terms her classroom experience as “exceptionally mid.”
Early next year, Brier will release an audiobook — fittingly titled “That Friend” — about an aspiring NYC influencer whose advice podcast becomes successful just as her personal life falls apart. “I always knew I wanted to take my material and go long-form,” Brier says, adding that she initially hoped to move her writing to television before being approached by her editor at Simon & Schuster.
“It felt very cosmic because it made sense completely. I love short form, but I’ve obviously done so much of it. The thing I haven’t done as much of is long-form. I’m eager. I love serial stories [and] a long arc. It’s why I love television so much. There is so much underneath every 45-second video that could be a whole episode of something. I feel really proud of the way that [‘That Friend’] represents my TikTok material. … You can expect a lot of what you’re used to with my stories, but I’m taking you much further on the ride. It’s hopefully going to be really satisfying for people in a different way.”
It only takes one conversation with Brier to realize that her star is too big to stay contained to phone screens. Originally from Woodbridge, Conn., Brier says she “very much grew up on the stage” with a playwright mother, who would occasionally place her in bit roles for a production. Brier also participated in theater in high school and at Smith College, where she also did improv and stand-up comedy. Upon graduating in 2017, Brier moved to New York and became a talent manager assistant, eventually landing at Door 24 Entertainment, which — fun fact — now represents her as a client. “I wanted to be on the creative side, that was never a question for me,” says Brier, who transitioned to writer’s assistant in 2019. When the first year of COVID sent everyone into lockdown, Brier started tinkering with a pre-Reels Instagram, where she filmed comedic videos she thought might appeal to New Yorkers.
“I’m from Connecticut, and I have a lot of friends who are native Brooklynites,” Brier says of the Tristate Area-specific inspiration behind her earliest videos. “I could see it was striking a chord, and I was able to find a niche.” After building a local audience, Brier started branching out, making videos about her and her friends’ experiences living and dating as a 20-something in New York. “I definitely write from real life,” Brier continues. “And the reality of my life these past seven years in the city has been that I work a ton, then I put the work away and I go out with my girlfriends. I take care of them, and they take care of me. I went to a women’s college, I have so many communities of women around me. All of the best [ideas] would end up coming out of social situations. I always found that if something irked me, that probably was going to get a good reaction on TikTok.”
Brier constantly has her antennae up for ideas that could make for a funny situational sketch. For instance, one hangout revealed a story where someone ran into an ex-boyfriend the rest of their circle never liked. “I took that story and regurgitated it as a TikTok, and it went super viral,” she says of what became “When Your Best Friend Runs Into Your Ex,” which now has nearly 1 million likes on the platform. “It just became tidbits of my life, tidbits of things that either happened to me, to my friend, or something happened to my friend with her friend, but I’m having an internal reaction to it. … I also just have too many friends, which has always been a thing with me.”
One of those friends is fellow comedian and podcaster Hannah Berner, who recently debuted a Netflix comedy special, “We Ride at Dawn,” and occasionally appears in Brier’s sketches — one from June has Berner playing “That Friend Who Travels More Than You Do.” “Hannah is, like, America’s golden retriever,” Brier says of Berner, who has utilized TikTok in a similar way to build a global audience. “Sabrina is not only smart, hysterical and kind,” Berner said, “but her hustle to consistently put out high-quality content has really set her apart from other creators.”
Elsewhere in Brier’s digital Rolodex is “Abbott Elementary’s” Quinta Brunson, whose creative career also took off online, first with a 2014 viral Instagram clip, which quickly became a meme, and then with a successful Buzzfeed Video residency. The two became friends after Brunson followed Brier on Instagram (where else?), which led to a DM conversation where the showrunner said she’d been discussing a potential “Abbott” guest spot for Brier. “I obviously was already a fan,” Brier says. “Because I 100% want to be a showrunner. That was a huge goal of mine, to have my own show where I’m in front of the camera and behind the camera.”
Brier also says connecting with Brunson “was a huge lesson in how you never know who’s paying attention.” Once she was on the “Abbott” set, Brier channeled her energy into acting while simultaneously observing how Brunson operated as showrunner. “I’m shadowing and watching Quinta’s every move — because that’s what I want to do, too, is wear all of the hats.”
After all, why couldn’t she? From Justin Bieber to Bo Burnham to Please Don’t Destroy, there exists a strong precedent for entertainers transitioning from internet fame to household name. “I do think it’s interesting to watch this gap between the internet and television. … I feel like we can see the bridge being built. It’s not quite built yet,” Brier says. “I think it’s something that I used to feel insecure about, like, ‘Oh, am I just going to be known as an internet actress?’ And then I realized, what’s so wrong with that? I am working at my craft in a very serious way. Just because it’s 45 seconds per video doesn’t doesn’t make it less important.”
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