Sarah Baker makes a small part count without demanding that the scene stop for her. We value that restraint in an ensemble, though her work also gives us reason to wish she were handed more to do.
Fi1m perspective
In Key & Peele (2012), Sarah Baker lets a small part stay small. Alongside Paul Walter Hauser, Leslie David Baker and Matt Jones, she helps the sketches work without competing for attention. We enjoyed that restraint, especially in a programme that sometimes repeats a joke once too often. The supporting cast gets on with the business of a sketch; the stage links tend to explain it to us first.
Her early ensemble work included Mitzi Huggins in The Campaign (2012) and Sonia in Go On (2012–13), before Vanessa in Louie (2014) brought wider notice. That guest part gave her an extended monologue, and with it considerably more to do. It is a useful counterexample to the smaller appearances: she need not be confined to helping somebody else's scene along. We would like her to be given that much to do more often.
Tammy (2014) is a warning against recommending a film simply because it contains actors we like. Baker plays Becky in Ben Falcone's comedy, with Melissa McCarthy supplying warmth and Susan Sarandon some welcome mischief. Neither makes up for the shortage of laughs, the slack pace or the clumsy serious scenes. This is not a film to seek out for Baker: the cast is appealing, but the writing gives us too few reasons to spend an evening with them.
Christopher Guest's Mascots (2016), in which she plays Mindy Murray, is a more natural setting for her ensemble skills. The later television work gives her longer stretches with a character, as Sheryl Hutchins in Young Sheldon (2017–24) and Mindy Kominsky in The Kominsky Method (2018–21). Yet The Kominsky Method also illustrates the limitation: its supporting women have less to do than its central men. Try Key & Peele for Baker's unshowy contribution, then Louie for a part that asks more of her.
Biography
Sarah Baker is an American actress and comedian. She trained in improvisational and sketch comedy at The Groundlings and began appearing in film and television in the early 2000s.
She is known for recurring and guest roles in series including The Office (2005) as Josie, Modern Family (2009) as Shirl Chambers and Twins' Mom, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013) as Kylie, Bones (2005) as Kim, Young Sheldon (2017) as Sheryl Hutchins, Big Little Lies (2017) as Thea Cunningham, and Key & Peele (2012) as Barista. Film credits include Sweet Home Alabama (2002) as Dix, The Campaign (2012) as Mitzi Huggins, and A Simple Favor (2018) as Maryanne Chelkowsky. She has a main role as Mindy Kominsky in The Kominsky Method (2018–2021), for which she received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for ensemble performance in a comedy series. Her guest appearance in Louie earned a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination.
