As much of America continues to self-quarantine, the propensity to go stir crazy increases with each passing day. Celebrities are no different: bored out of their minds while sitting at home indefinitely. Maybe they are ceaselessly launching Instagram Lives just for some human connection. Maybe they’re teasing us with some quarantine writing session. Most likely, they’re sitting in their very large homes, marathoning movies until their eyes glaze over. Relatable! Celebs Are Bored highlights the absurd, inane and mundane decisions made by people who have an unexpectedly large amount of free time.
We’re learning something new this quarantine: if you let performance-driven celebrities sit alone in their houses for too long, they’ll start to act on their own accord. No, literally, they’ll start to act.
Take Aubrey Plaza and Sarah Ramos – two comedians who, like any self-respecting scholars of parody, have watched Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 film Showgirls, a beautiful trash-fire of a movie that killed the NC-17 rating as well as Elizabeth Berkley’s career. It’s also become one of the defining cult classics of the past 25 years (second only to The Room, maybe), and if you’re a fan of big, hammy acting combined with Nineties Las Vegas sleaze, you should know every line.
The scene from Showgirls where they drink champagne & talk about doggy chow starring me & @evilhag pic.twitter.com/9p875XU3Mi
— Sarah Ramos (@sarahramos) April 9, 2020
While holed up in their homes, Plaza and Ramos decided to reenact one of the most iconic Showgirls moments, where the ineffable Cristal Connors (played by Gina Gershon and her crocodile teeth) has a very, very strange heart-to-heart with Berkley’s Nomi Malone during a power lunch at the Grand Canal Shoppes.
Plaza gives an impressive rendition of Gershon’s ode to doggie chow and to Nomi Malone’s big naturals, while Ramos delivers what may be the best Elizabeth Berkley impression I’ve ever seen. On top of that, the fact that they filmed this entire scene – perhaps, in a movie chock-full of smut, the most intimate one of all – while quarantined in separate houses is beyond admirable. You might call it insanity. I call it inspiration.
