Moments after President Biden announced on Sunday that he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race, Allison Reese’s phone began flickering with text messages.
“Excited for you!” one read.
“I hope this is going to be good for the country, but also for you,” went another.
A third: “You’re about to be so famous.”
Ms. Reese, 32, who lives in Los Angeles, is not a presidential hopeful or a political operative. She is a comedian known for her impression, since the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, of Vice President Kamala Harris. With Mr. Biden’s endorsement on Sunday, Ms. Harris became the leading contender for the Democratic nomination.
Ms. Reese puts on pearls and a distinct vocal affect for the satirical sketches she posts on TikTok, where she has more than 200,000 followers, as @alienreese. Her account gained another 10,000 of them on Sunday after she began riffing on the news.
“It’s been a weirdly crazy day,” said Ms. Reese, who is also a television writer and host of the podcast “The N’Kay Hour,” in an interview on Sunday night. “I can’t imagine what Kamala’s actual day was like.”
At American comedy institutions like “Saturday Night Live,” an impressionist’s career can soar or sputter alongside a candidate’s political prospects: Tina Fey won an Emmy for her parody of the vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2009; Dana Carvey played a handful of presidents including George H.W. Bush. President Biden has been portrayed by a rotating cast of actors including Jason Sudeikis, Jim Carrey and Mikey Day.
Ms. Reese first stepped into the role of Ms. Harris during an “S.N.L.” showcase, which is essentially an audition for the show’s creator Lorne Michaels, in the summer of 2019, the year Ms. Harris first sought the Democratic nomination for president.
“I was like, wow, as a half-Black woman, when am I ever going to get the chance to use this skill?” Ms. Reese said. “I can do a lot of different vocal impressions, but it was never applicable to me.”
The voice took a couple of tries to get right. Ms. Harris’s delivery is musical with a touch of vocal fry, Ms. Reese said. She lifts the pitch of a phrase when she feels it is important, and splits long words into equally enunciated syllables.
And then there is her laugh: a cascading peal that arrives unpredictably, sometimes midsentence. “It’s like, you’re surprised to have laughed, and then you’re really settling in to enjoying that you’re laughing,” Ms. Reese said.
The impression did not ultimately land Ms. Reese a spot on “S.N.L.,” which recruited its former cast member Maya Rudolph to play Ms. Harris during the primary. But Ms. Reese kept developing the character in comedy showcases and in 2021 began posting videos as the vice president on social media.
Ms. Reese has played Ms. Harris reacting to the Republican primary debates and former president Donald J. Trump’s indictment. She has done multiple takes on Ms. Harris’s now-famous rhetorical question, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”
“You’re better at Kamala than Kamala is,” a commenter wrote on one of her videos.
The impression earned Ms. Reese the attention of the comedian Billy Eichner, who cast her in his 2022 movie “Bros.” She appeared as the vice president on a 2022 episode of “Lovett or Leave It,” the comedy spinoff of “Pod Save America.”
As her profile has grown, Ms. Reese has taken heat from both sides of the political spectrum. “A popular comment is, ‘I can’t stand her, you nailed it,’” Ms. Reese said. Fans of the vice president sometimes comment that the exaggerated, jokey impression diminishes Ms. Harris’s intelligence.
“It is a very difficult time to do these impressions,” Ms. Reese said. “You can’t just be like, ‘I’m being a silly goose!’ You have to be intentional and thoughtful, because some people take it very seriously.” She added that it was never her goal to make the vice president appear unintelligent.
Ms. Reese hopes the vice president does secure the nomination, for reasons both personal and professional. “I think she’s got a good head on her shoulders,” Ms. Reese said. “I don’t agree with everything, but who would?”
Like any good politician, Ms. Reese has her own circle of trusted advisers. She reached out to a friend who does an impression of Mr. Biden about filming a video in which he passes the baton.
And she will be watching closely for Ms. Harris’s next moves. “A thing will happen, and I’m like, all right, get the wig,” she said.
