Actress Carole Cook Jokes About a Trump Assassination

Carole Cook, the 94-year-old actress with a long career on stage and screen, made a joke Sunday night suggesting that President Donald Trump should be assassinated, telling an interviewer from TMZ, “Where is John Wilkes Booth when you need him?”

TMZ was asking Cook about a recent performance of the Broadway musical “Frozen,” when an audience member tried to disrupt the show by holding up a banner supportive of the president. Timothy Hughes, who plays the wise troll Pabbie in the musical, immediately grabbed the banner and tossed it aside.

Cook, who was interviewed outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, told TMZ that she had not heard about the incident and then followed up with her comment about Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.

Her husband, Tom Troupe, also a veteran actor, was standing next to her. Troupe said, “He killed presidents,” to which Cook immediately replied: “Don’t say that. They’ll get me for that. They won’t see — no. Where is he when you need him?”

She was then asked, “So we need to kill President Trump?” Troupe laughed. Cook said, “Why not?”

The Secret Service typically investigates threats against the president, even if they are indirect, and Mason Brayman, a spokesman for the agency, said Monday, “The Secret Service is aware of the comment.”

“While we do not confirm or comment on the absence or existence of specific investigations we can say that we investigate all threats against the president,” he said.

Last year, comedian Kathy Griffin was visited by the Secret Service after she was photographed holding a mask that looked like Trump’s severed head.

Eminem, on his most recent album, “Kamikaze,” released late last month, said the Secret Service visited him after his appearance at the 2017 BET Awards, when he performed a song that criticized the president and mused about dropping hot coffee on him.

A representative for Cook did not respond to a request for comment Monday. But on Sunday night Cook did not seem fazed by the possibility of a Secret Service visit. In the video posted by TMZ, after making the Booth comment, she said, “Will that get me in trouble?”

The TMZ reporter said, “I don’t know, it might.”

Cook answered: “Will I be on the enemies list? My God, I hope so. Just keep me out of jail. Or maybe not.”

Cook is still an active performer. In June, she made her New York cabaret debut at Feinstein’s/54 Below, after performing the same show in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Her credits are numerous, including a part in the original Broadway cast of “42nd Street” in 1980 and many television appearances including “The Lucy Show,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” She also played Grandma Helen in the classic 1984 film “Sixteen Candles.”