Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt may hold sway in the James S. Brady briefing room in the White House, but on TikTok, actress Lisandra Vazquez holds domain with her impersonation of the 27-year-old official.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt may hold sway in the James S. Brady briefing room in the White House, but on TikTok, actress Lisandra Vazquez holds domain with her impersonation of the 27-year-old official.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt may hold sway in the James S. Brady briefing room in the White House, but on TikTok, actress Lisandra Vazquez holds domain with her impersonation of the 27-year-old official. Hailing from Puerto Rico, Vazquez, 39, began her acting career at 18, a dream which she told The Irish Star, she had wanted to pursue ever since she was a child.

“I’ve always known that I wanted to do performing in comedy and stuff like that since I was a little kid,” she said. “But I don’t think many people have an understanding of how to get into that kind of business, especially if your parents aren’t in the arts. My mom is a paediatrician and I’m from Puerto Rico. Nobody in my family does this.”

“So it’s just, so when I graduated high school, I went to college and then I started taking acting classes,” she added. “So this was when I was 18 years old, and then I started like, okay, cool. I want to do this. So then I moved from Tampa to Orlando. I eventually got my SAG card there.”

Hailing from Puerto Rico, Vazquez, 39, began her acting career at 18, a dream which she told The Irish Star, she had wanted to pursue ever since she was a child. (Image: instagram/@lisandravcomedy)

In 2019, Vazquez, who starred opposite Amanda Bynes in the movie Sydney White, moved to Georgia, got into standup comedy and has since thrived. “Georgia is a very good state to be in if you want to be in a kind of grassroots political state,” she said. “I do sketches and stuff for the internet during the day, and then I do stand-up at night.”

Vazquez told the Star that impersonating Leavitt was almost a no-brainer. “Well, she’s the mouthpiece of the administration. So, as a character, it makes sense as to why it functions as a good series. It’s not just because she’s kind of a captivating person — even though she’s evil to me — I do think that she is a captivating character study.”

Vazquez told the Star that impersonating Leavitt was almost a no-brainer(Image: tiktok/@lisandravcomedy)

“There’s a lot to grab onto in terms of her mannerisms, how she snaps back at people,” Vazquez adds. “So it’s a fun character to play, but also in the grand scheme of things, she is the piece that allows me to take all of the news that’s happening and just funnel it through that character … she’s kind of fun to play.”

According to Vazquez, her favorite bit she does in every video is snapping at a fake Kaitlin Collins. “She doesn’t even do it anymore. But I love keeping the bit,” Vazquez laughed.

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According to Vazquez, her favorite bit she does in every video is snapping at a fake Kaitlin Collins. (Image: tiktok/@lisandravcomedy)

When asked about how the MAGA community has responded to her exaggerated impersonation of the Trump official, Vazquez revealed that she has gotten some angry Trump supporters in her DMs.

“I’ve gotten some death threats via messages, but let’s just report them,” she said nonchalantly. “They’re not seriously going to come find me. I don’t think.”

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When asked about how the MAGA community has responded to her exaggerated impersonation of the Trump official, Vazquez revealed that she has gotten some angry Trump supporters in her DMs(Image: tiktok/@lisandravcomedy)

The conversation then turns to how Vazquez gets into character. “I notice patterns, she said. “And I’m a trained actor, so I will look at that. And I just, since I’ve been doing it for so long, you can see, and if you look back that this gets, I’ve refined it over time, and I’ve just gotten my a hundred hours in, you know what I mean? My 10,000 hours of her, I’m getting them in, and it’s just so now, I’m so used to doing the character that I can add new nuances all the time”

Vazquez adds that she recently received flak for including long, rattling breaths in her videos. However, the actress simply stated, “I’m not being mean. I’m exaggerating this character. And she’s fine. She’s literally, she’s winning. She’s the press secretary of the United States at 27 years old.”

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“The breaths is funny to me because she really is breathing hard,” Vazquez said. “A lot of people think she might be, but I mean, I can’t speculate as to whether or not she’s pregnant or not. And we shouldn’t speculate on that. But there are people who are like, ‘oh, that’s an early sign of pregnancy.’ And so it’s like, okay, well, that’s something interesting to watch.”

Vazquez told The Irish Star that she uses a mix of her own wit as well as some of the real Leavitt’s briefings to make sketches seems so realistic. “So I wake up at seven every day. So I’ll take my notes for what happened in the news. I do bullet points of what happened in the news the night before I go to bed. I set my alarm for seven. I get up and I do a skeleton,” she said.

“I do watch all the press briefings, so I’m able to see what her updated language ticks are,” she explains. “There’s just a lot of isms that she has that as long as I incorporate those, I can kind of guess what she’s going to say.

Vazquez is not shy about her impersonation. With her 100th press briefing coming up on Wednesday, Vazquez said that she has tagged Leavitt in every single video. “In her mind, she probably thinks that I’m obsessed with her,” she laughed.

“When you’re in character, you have to believe it in order to really sell it,” she when asked how she keeps a straight face. “And so when I’m performing it, I have to really be grounded in the fact that I believe what I’m saying.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Leavitt video without a cross. But don’t worry—Vazquez makes sure you know that her Leavitt has one. ‘Some days it’s very clear what I need to do. Some days I have some that are evergreen, ones that I’ve created, and I have a little stockpile of things that are very easy to use,” she said.

“Sometimes it’s really easy. One time when Jeff Bezos said that he was going to include the Trump tariffs on Amazon, I had an Amazon box that I cut up, and I made that,” she added. “When the Chinese tariffs were a really huge thing. I had a show that night next to a Chinese restaurant. I was like, how much for a bunch of Fortune cookies … So then what I’m saying is I need a hot glue gun sponsorship.”

It comes as no surprise that Vazquez has earned the of people for seemingly making fun of Christianity. “Obviously, you can assume that I’ve gotten some feedback from MAGA Christianity,” she explained.

“And I understand that one could think that I’m mocking the cross and I categorically am not mocking the cross. I’m mocking the people that utilise the cross as a tool for control,” she added. “Because real Christians, I would say real Christians,” as people who actually exemplify the characteristics that Jesus did. Grace, they want to help the poor and all that stuff like that, and kindness. Those folks get it. And they are a fan of what I’m doing to showcase, to highlight the hypocrisy of it all.”

Vazquez, who does impersonations of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tulsi Gabbard and Paula White, said that she loves the feedback she gets from her fans. “I didn’t start it with the intention of it becoming at least a hundred-part series. I don’t think one does that,” she reminisced.

“I get messages all the time from people being like, ‘sometimes this is the only time I smile in a day’. ‘I look forward to your briefings because you make me feel like I’m not crazy,’” she added. “And so it’s become, for me, more than just creating satire and putting some content on the internet. It’s become a way to help people feel not alone.”