Three years ago, Rosie Holt thought she was on the verge of something big. The comedy play she starred in, The Crown Dual, received rave reviews and was all set to tour America for six months. Then Covid happened and instead Holt ended up holed up with her parents in Bath.
Becoming bored and frustrated, to pass the time she started tweeting little clips of herself pretending to be a toadying loyalist Tory MP defending the government. Before she knew it she was a social media sensation. Many who should have known better were convinced she was genuine. Philosopher Anthony Grayling called her as a “bald-faced emetic”. Writer Philip Pullman tweeted that he was “aghast”.
Two years after going viral, Holt is still coming to terms with her side hustle making her a star: “It’s just really surreal.” She knew something was up when she checked her phone the morning after tweeting her clip in which she said she had a statue of Stalin in her garden and was bombarded with texts from friends who knew it was a brilliant joke. As for those taken in, Holt can only draw one conclusion: “I’m just saying that they’re stupid.”
It is easy to see why they were duped though. The friendly, thirtysomething graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art perfectly embodies the right wing automatons wheeled on to television to defend the latest government indefensible. In the middle of the Partygate scandal her straight-faced Parliamentary parody quickly tied herself in positively existential knots over the Sue Gray report: “Your guess is as good as mine: I don’t know whether I attended the party”.
Holt’s rapid response clips have regularly notched up over six million views. When there is a new topical story fans have started to rush to Twitter eager to see what she has to say on the subject. Her Twitter following has risen from 3,000 to over 250,000 and has seen Holt pivot from resting actor to busy government critic. “I try and release a video weekly. It depends on what’s going on.”
In these febrile times she must be so spoilt for choice she could probably release one hourly. Last week, however, she had no time to post a clip in response to the no confidence vote because she was recording a brand new podcast, NonCensored. Before it came out it was already number two in the charts: “I don’t even know how that’s possible!” she laughs.
NonCensored gives Holt a chance to move beyond quickfire soundbites. She plays shock jock Harriet Langley-Swindon, maybe not a million miles from Julia Hartley-Brewer. “You get these people who are sort of pushing a narrative and omitting certain facts to fit their narrative. People are elevated for their opinions, not their expertise.” Langley-Swindon is constantly trying to stir up controversy and generate clickbait headlines, talking about “wokey lefties” and asking such burning questions as: “Is Love Island too woke?”
It must be a truly discombobulating time to be a satirist when the reality often feels like a bad comedy. Holt gets the tone just right in her tweets. No funny wigs, no wry smirks to camera, cleverly splicing her lines with footage of real questions from real presenters when they interviewed real politicians. “You want to keep it realistic. Not just imitate what they’re saying, but expose that what they’re saying is ridiculous.”
Holt watches how stories unfold before she strikes, like a comedic cobra, tuning in to see the usual suspects wheeled out to protect the PM: “They’re told they have to defend this point of view. And they are thinking on their feet. And I think that there’s something inherently funny about that.” She researches each issue too and when relevant picks the brains of her brother Charlie, who is a campaigns lawyer for Greenpeace.
She clearly pays particular attention to Nadine Dorries: “She is so fervent. I think she really does adore Boris and wants to defend him until the end. But I think she is ridiculous. We are used to crazy people on the backbenches but not in Cabinet positions. As someone who works in the arts I find it offensive that she is Culture Secretary and she doesn’t even understand how Channel 4 works.”
Holt is also currently working on her debut solo live show, A Woman’s Hour, previewing in London before heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The show will include a range of characters, and so that nobody can accuse Holt of bias (she says she “sort of leans to the left”) they will come from across the political spectrum.
There is her nameless Tory MP, and Langley-Swindon, plus a female Russell Brand-type character blurting out theories, an MP’s wife dealing with a sex scandal, a left-winger who is nervous of saying the wrong thing and an unforgiving, hard-line socialist. “That’s the plan at the moment. It could all change.”
After Edinburgh however, Holt is not quite sure what she will do. She still considers herself to be an actor as much as a comedian and jokingly asks – maybe with a subtext of seriousness – if I can mention in this article that she is available for acting work. She clearly has range. In The Crown Dual she played the Queen, Princess Margaret, Prince Charles and a corgi.
For now, though, she graciously accepts the mantle of queen of social media satirists and having completed a few initial try-outs and seen that audiences find her funny onstage, she is looking forward to more shows and fleshing out her creations: “I don’t want to disappoint people. There is lots of good will there and I don’t want to let anyone down. I’m also aware that a couple of years ago I’d have killed for this exposure.”
