Caitlin Reilly Talks TikTok, WASP Moms, and Her Dream Acting Jobs

With the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes what you need most is a good laugh. Actress Caitlin Reilly has been using TikTok to do just that.

With videos reaching over 2 million likes, her sketches are centered around “making fun of terrible people,” such as high school bullies and WASP moms. She met with “Hers” to discuss the making of her videos and her passion for acting.

From the beginning of the pandemic until now, you’ve spent most of quarantine becoming a viral TikTok star with millions of views on your amazing videos, and not only is that super impressive, but you also seem like you have a lot of fun with these characters too. What has been the best part about making all of these sketches?

It’s been a super weird time to be getting this attention, so it’s been weird but also exciting but also like, I can’t leave my house… I think the most exciting thing is, obviously I’ve been allotted way more time, just to like sit around and think about characters and video ideas, and I strangely feel very inspired because I have no distractions right now. I don’t have a job, I don’t have to go anywhere, so it’s sort of like, every day I feel like I can really sit down and think of ideas and think of videos and it’s now my full-time obsession.

Yeah, you get to kind of just focus on what you’re passionate about.

Yeah! I’ve been connecting with a lot of people too on Tik-Tok and Instagram, so it’s creating this little networking system. It’s been really fun.

I know for a lot of people, from watching your videos and reading all the comments, finding something to laugh at and enjoy has been a really crucial part of getting through quarantine and through the pandemic. A lot of people are dealing with stressful situations, sometimes with loss, and I’ve read people saying that your videos are a really great escape for that. Do you find that making them has helped you in the same way?

Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s such a crazy time right now, so to be able to laugh is great. I feel like we’re all dealing with our own hardships, whether they be big or small. I’ve gotten like a lot of messages from people who have told me that they were having a rough week or that they had lost someone and then they watched my video and it made them laugh, and that’s an incredible compliment to receive. I mean, that’s insane that I made someone’s day like that. But as far as me, I feel like my number one coping skill in life is just to joke around, so that’s been a big thing. I think I find this weird catharsis in making fun of terrible people. I don’t know. It’s just the one thing that, like, it makes me feel like everything’s gonna be okay.

So in a lot of your videos, you use different accents and voices to specify each character. There’s the Southern conspiracy theory lady, the super high-pitched sorority girl, and the iconic WASP mom. I was wondering, what kind of research or preparation, if any, does it take to kind of get into these characters and get them right?

I feel like I’ve always been a pretty strong observer of people. As far as research, I don’t really do much, it sort of just pops into my head. Like, I’ll wake up one day and just start talking like that person all day. Like for some reason, [I] can’t stop talking in a Southern accent, and then I’ll just sit around and put my ring light on and just start improvising stupid little characters and conversations. It comes from there. Sometimes if I’m sitting around, an idea will pop into my head of some form of problematic personality or something that I just think is funny about people. Yeah I don’t know, I think it just comes from my insane brain.

I was recently showing my mom your video of the wedding vows, and she was like, “I have a friend that talks exactly like that!”  It was just so relatable, so it’s really cool how you can do that.

Yeah, if you spend as much time on YouTube as I do watching other people’s wedding videos, you will see those wedding vows more than once!

I wanted to ask about probably your most well-known and recurring character, which is Cheryl Johnson, the WASP mom.

I love that she has a name now!

I was wondering, for people who may not be familiar with the term ‘WASP’, could you describe it for them and [describe] what a WASP mom means to you?

Yeah, so, I thought it was a well-known term. I mean it is, but I got a lot of questions as to what it means. WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. It’s a really old term, but it has morphed over the years into basically describing rich, privileged, problematic white people. So it comes from there, and I also recently found out that WASP is in the Urban Dictionary. And my videos are connected to the definition, but I didn’t put it there. I had no idea it existed, but the poster—the person who added this into Urban Dictionary—their username is my name. So now everyone thinks that I put it on Urban Dictionary, but I didn’t!

Well now you’re getting the record out!

I know, I know. It basically just means like, a rich, snobby, upper middle class, privileged white person.

So kind of like a ‘Karen’ but extra snobby?

Yeah, like a Karen. I just, I hate Karens so much. But there’s almost a classiness to the problem, like there’s pearls, and there’s a J.Crew shirt, and a glass of chardonnay. She’s very… like country club Karen.

Is there anyone in your life that inspired these characters, or in the media specifically, or is it more of just an idea?

Oh gosh, I don’t know. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I grew up in an affluent area. So, I was definitely used to being around women like that. I feel like I just sort of grew up around it, like a lot of my mom’s friends were like that… As far as anyone in the public eye… I kind of want to say Ivanka Trump. She’s just, everything about her is problematic.

And you did a video where you were Ivanka, right, at one point?

Yeah! So it was a sketch, I mean it wasn’t a very good impression. I think we were sort of doing like caricatures of them. A buddy of mine, his name is Alex Schienman, he’s an incredible filmmaker and writer. We did a sketch a couple years back where we were Ivanka and Jared [Kushner]. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I think it’s on Youtube somewhere.

So one thing I noticed, this might just be a coincidence, but your WASP mom character, her daughter is named Amy, and you made a video recently of Cheryl calling the police because of a dog outside of a Starbucks. And it made me think of the Amy Cooper situation, where she called the police cause she felt like she was threatened by a black man who asked her to put her dog on a leash. And I was wondering if this came to mind when you were making it, [and] what were the thoughts behind making this video?

No, that’s a crazy coincidence. I didn’t even put those two together. That’s crazy. Wow, that’s a coincidence. No, when I started doing WASP mom videos, I think… the name Amy just popped into my head. Then when I was doing the Starbucks video, I just thought to myself, What would be the stupidest complaint to make at a Starbucks? And it would be that a dog is outside because people bring their dogs outside the Starbucks all the time. But yeah, no, I mean with all of the Karen stuff going on right now, and all of it being so problematic and in the news, I try really hard to not make it seem like I’m agreeing with that narrative. I’m more making fun of it and bringing to light how ridiculous these women are, but there was no direct correlation to the Amy Cooper incident.

It definitely comes across that you’re making fun of it though, I mean, just the ridiculousness of Cheryl saying “I’m being attacked” by this Starbucks employee, it’s, yeah, very reminiscent of things we’ve seen in the news recently.

Yes, definitely, it’s blood-boiling for sure.

Switching gears a little bit, I saw that you’ve done some acting in short films as well, a couple different horror ones, comedy, drama; is there a favorite genre you like to work with?

I’m definitely partial to comedy. I love acting, and I’ve been acting for a while and hustling, you know, the classic LA hustle. There’s a lot of actors out here. But yeah, I did one horror short film, which was so much fun because I felt like Sigourney Weaver in “Alien,” just running around covered in sweat and a dirty tank top. I felt so cool! I would love to be in an action movie, but I probably never will and that’s okay.

You never know.

Hey, you never know. But yeah, I’m definitely more partial to comedy for sure. That’s where my brain goes. That’s where my heart lives.

And what made you want to get into acting?

I don’t know, I mean I feel like it was the only thing I connected with. My dad was an actor, so I grew up around it, and I grew up around him being on set, and just that being his lifestyle and his career… It’s really the only thing I wanted to do. I just love the art of performing. I was obsessed with reading plays when I was a kid, I would watch old Johnny Carson tapes, I would beg my parents to let me stay up and watch Mad TV or Saturday Night Live or In Living Color, like I was a really weird kid. And I just didn’t- like I liked old adult comedy, and I never watched cartoons a lot as a kid, I just would always want to watch late night TV or mature comedies that I probably shouldn’t have been watching.

Do you have a favorite comedy movie?

Oh my god. It’s hard. I guess I’m trying to think of the ones that influenced me the most. I mean there’s so many. One of my favorites that still makes me laugh really hard is “What About Bob?”, and I think it came out in the late 80s and it stars Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, and that movie is amazing. I’m a huge Molly Shannon fan, I love her so much. I love a lot of the spin-off SNL movies; “A Night at the Roxbury”, “Superstar”, those were always movies that I was watching when I was a kid. Um, what else… God, I can’t think of anything. Oh, I love the movie “Big Lebowski”, that’s a top five for me. I think that movie is hilarious.

I saw on your Instagram that you’ve got a project called “Vamp” coming up soon- can you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah so it’s a show that a good friend of mine, Elko Weaver, created. He wrote and created it, and he… sort of took me on as his partner. It’s still in production. Things obviously got halted because of quarantine, but it’s a buddy ‘dramedy’ of two vampires, [and] they’re both going through an existential crisis and trying to figure out life as vampires. So it’s basically like… yeah, it’s a vampire buddy comedy.

That sounds awesome!

He’s gonna kill me with this terrible explanation of his show. He’s gonna kill me. But yeah, hopefully when things go back to normal, we’ll start filming again and writing again and getting that ball going.

I just have one more closing question, which is, if you could work on any sort of dream project with any actor or actress, what would it be?

So, as far as TV shows that exist now, I would cry and throw up if I was able to be on the show “Succession.” That show is amazing. It’s on HBO if you haven’t seen it. I love that show. I think it’s brilliant. As far as actors, there are too many to count! I love Martin Scorsese. He’s one of my favorite directors, and I love me some Leo DiCaprio. So being in a Scorsese movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, I could die happy. I’d love that; that would be wonderful. So many, so many… Laura Dern! Laura Dern is incredible… There’s so many that I would want to work with. I would want to do anything with anyone.

To watch Caitlin Reilly’s comedy sketches, check out her TikTok and Instagram accounts!