{"id":17990,"date":"2026-07-26T16:53:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T11:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=17990"},"modified":"2026-07-26T16:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T11:53:27","slug":"in-broad-strokes-comedian-cat-cohen-turns-a-brush-with-death-into-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=17990","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Broad Strokes,\u2019 Comedian Cat Cohen Turns a Brush With Death Into Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cReally, right after it happened, I didn\u2019t think about it a lot because I was just distracting myself,\u201d says Cohen. But now, \u201cit is interesting to be in a place of constantly thinking about it. Usually, what comes forth is extreme gratitude. Like, holy shit! I cannot believe it wasn\u2019t worse. I\u2019m so lucky. That\u2019s the takeaway: The more I live it, I\u2019m like, I\u2019m so lucky. I\u2019m so lucky. I\u2019m so lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">She admits that she\u2019s also having more health anxiety than usual recently, likely due to reliving the story multiple times a day, in rehearsals and then in her nightly performances. Medical shows were never her bag; not even a high school dalliance with <em>Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em> stuck: \u201cIt just sends me down a place I can\u2019t\u2014I\u2019m already there. I don\u2019t need to go further down the rabbit hole. I\u2019m trying to crawl my way out of the rabbit hole.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">After a lifetime of health worry, sometimes founded but always real, she\u2019s banned herself from using WebMD but admits to still googling symptoms. (\u201cIt\u2019s almost worse.\u201d) She wears an Oura ring (\u201chumiliating\u201d) and is too nervous to eat the salads she\u2019d usually be mainlining, thanks to the recent cyclospora outbreak. She isn\u2019t drinking in an attempt to stay healthy for the run of the show, and the positive feedback she\u2019s gotten from her health tracker as a result is, she says, \u201creally upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Still, don\u2019t expect to see a sober, somber Cohen onstage at the Lortel, free of neuroses and determined to deliver life lessons to her audience. She\u2019s still her, wrapped in another sparkly, poofy custom Kelsey Randall creation, just as she has been in her other major projects, still twirling and bragging about being \u201cyoung for [her] grade\u201d as if it\u2019s a resume-worthy skill, still gently heckling her audience in ad-libs throughout the show. The scary part (or, at least, one of the scary parts) is over. The hole in her heart has been repaired; she lived through it. And the person she was most nervous to see the show, Dr. Barry Love himself, has already attended a preview performance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Cohen, who had gotten an email from his nursing team saying a group was coming, \u201cwas trying not to look at him the whole time.\u201d They took a photo together afterward, and he didn\u2019t medically fact-check her account, which she admits she\u2019d been a little nervous about.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cI asked him a medical question, and I was like, Is he gonna bill me for this? He gave me an answer. He was very, very generous. Yeah, I think he liked it. He was like, \u2018That was great.\u2019 I was like, \u2018You\u2019re my muse.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Though she\u2019s graduated from checkups with Dr. Love (brag), the health-obsessed Cohen is still in regular touch with the team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cI emailed them a bunch over the years, being like, \u2018Can I do a cold plunge?\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, sure.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Can I go on a roller coaster?\u2019\u201d She can. What isn\u2019t she allowed to do?<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cCocaine,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a huge part of my life [before], but.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">She shrugs. After all, what can you do but laugh?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cReally, right after it happened, I didn\u2019t think about it a lot because I was just distracting myself,\u201d says Cohen. But now, \u201cit is interesting to be in a place of constantly thinking about it. Usually, what comes forth is extreme gratitude. Like, holy shit! I cannot believe it wasn\u2019t worse. I\u2019m so lucky. That\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a638749ec02306e29d250d6\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/Cat%20Cohen%20BROAD%20STROKES%20at%20the%20Lucille%20Lortel%20Theatre%20%E2%80%94%C2%A0photo%20credit%20Matthew%20Murphy.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}