Stephen Colbert’s resident Melania Trump impersonator paid a hefty price for bringing her comical take on the first lady to The Late Show viewers after MAGA followers leaked her address online.
Laura Benanti appeared on The Downside with Gianmarco Soresi podcast, where she revealed she learned her personal information had been circulated in a threatening email blast.
“This right-wing psychopath wrote sent an email blast to all of his people, being like, ‘Hey’—not only my impression, but things I had said and political organizations I was a part of—and he was like, ‘Let her know what you think of her.’ And then put my f---ing address.”
Benanti was a recurring guest on The Late Show starting in 2016, where she performed her spot-on Melania Trump impression. She continued to appear as the first lady, complete with exaggerated accent and pouty lips, through the end of Colbert’s run on CBS, drawing the ire of Trump’s supporters.
“I had to literally move,” she revealed.
“We had to move from our apartment that we owned into a rental, and then the pandemic happened. We moved to New Jersey. So we were paying f---ing rent and a mortgage.” The move wasn’t only necessary for her own safety, but for her family’s, she explained: “Someone took a picture of me walking my daughter to school.”
The Tony-winning Broadway star returned to parody Melania Trump three times in 2025, and then twice this past year. In February, she appeared to mock the first lady’s million-dollar vanity documentary. For her last visit to the show in April, just before the show aired its last episode in May, she appeared again in a cold open sketch titled “A Message From First Lady Melania Trump.”
Benanti considered not coming back after her address was leaked.
“I don’t think I would have done it,” if she knew that would happen, she said. She only found out that she had been doxxed by chance. “I had a driver who also did security,” she explained. “And he was MAGA… He was a part of this newsletter—he received emails from this guy!”
“He texted me, and he was like, ‘This is what’s going on,’ and ‘What are we going to do?’ And I was like, ‘You tell me. These are your people!’” Benanti added, “He was so upset that they would do this, and I was like, ‘This is what I’m talking about!’”
The “scary” ordeal led her to pause her appearances on the show for a while. “We all sort of were like maybe we don’t do it for a little while, and then, and then it just felt like I was being a coward,” she said.
“I do think, in some ways, political satire is a public service. I can’t tell you the amount of people who come up to me who are like, ‘Thank you, I need that.’”
