This former 'Seinfeld' actor is 83 and a TikTok star -- due to a good friend who's greater than 50 years youthful

Editor’s Observe: This text is a part of Muricas News’s Undivided sequence, which chronicles how People of very completely different backgrounds have discovered frequent floor. On this sequence, which runs by means of the midterm elections, we profile unlikely friendships between individuals of differing ages, races, religions and cultures.

Muricas News  — 

Annie Korzen begins auditions with an announcement most individuals wouldn’t anticipate from an 83-year-old:

“Hello, I’m Annie Korzen. I reside in Los Angeles. I’m 5’3”. And I've nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok.”

It nonetheless amazes Korzen, an actor who describes herself as a longtime bit participant who’d struggled to seek out a big viewers. Now her TikToks have greater than 8 million likes and hundreds of supportive feedback. And none of it will have occurred, she says, if it weren’t for an surprising friendship with somebody who’s greater than 50 years youthful.

“Regardless that we have now completely completely different backgrounds in each means attainable,” she says, “we actually are soulmates.”

Mackenzie Morrison, 31, says she felt drawn to Korzen the second they first met at a charity occasion.

Korzen was magnetic – a grasp storyteller who may make a roomful of individuals giggle. She had an impeccable sense of fashion. And she or he beloved thrift procuring – a pastime Morrison additionally adores.

“While you meet one other thrifter, you converse the identical language very naturally,” Morrison says.

“She’s very a lot into discovering the deal. And I like once you discover one thing simply so odd and attention-grabbing there’s nowhere else you could find it besides should you have been thrifting. … That’s what naturally drew us collectively.”

The day they met, neither one in every of them realized a wealthy friendship was taking root.

“Nobody anticipated us to be so shut,” Morrison says.

Their shared love of classic style quickly led to a partnership reselling a few of their favourite thrifting finds on-line.

However it will be greater than a yr earlier than they launched into a undertaking collectively that each ladies describe as “life-changing.”

For years, Korzen was greatest recognized for showing in a number of episodes of Seinfeld as Doris Klompus, a neighbor in Jerry’s mother and father’ Florida rental complicated. Extra lately, she’s appeared on “Jane the Virgin” and “Pen15,” and he or she’s shared her storytelling expertise on tour with The Moth.

However for essentially the most half, the bigger viewers she craved eluded her.

“I’ve all the time been a bit participant,” she says. “I’m the one who is aware of easy methods to get fun on one line.”

At some point, Korzen advised Morrison she’d been occupied with making an attempt to construct a following by posting movies on Instagram.

Morrison steered her good friend towards TikTok as an alternative and provided to assist shoot and edit the movies.

Neither one in every of them imagined how profitable their foray into TikTok would turn into – although Morrison says there was little question in her thoughts that it was the proper platform for Korzen.

“Once we began, it was actually similar to two youngsters operating round her home, making movies. There was no plan. We have been simply laughing and having a lot enjoyable,” Morrison says.

That was in April 2021. And it wasn’t lengthy earlier than a TikTok began gaining steam that featured Korzen speaking about how engaged on Seinfeld modified her life. In a matter of weeks, she went from having simply eight followers to just about 200,000.

Korzen and Morrison found they share frequent values, pursuits and an analogous humorousness. The age hole is the obvious distinction between them. However it’s not the one one. Korzen describes their unlikely friendship as “the world’s oddest couple.”

Korzen is from New York. Morrison is from Los Angeles.

Korzen’s hair is purple and wild. Morrison’s is brown and straight.

Korzen grew up in a secular Jewish household. Morrison was raised Christian.

However Korzen says the most important distinction between them is one thing deeper.

“I’m the primary technology (youngster) of very poor immigrants. I grew up in a Jewish ghetto within the Bronx. … I all the time really feel, on this nation, wherever I'm going, I’m an outsider,” she says.

Morrison’s household’s roots in the USA return for generations. And in her, Korzen sees a way of belonging that she’s by no means felt.

In a column she wrote about their relationship, Korzen described Morrison as “tall,” “skinny” and “model-beautiful.” She described herself as “brief” and “average-looking.”

“I all the time knew I used to be not fairly,” she advised Muricas News in a current interview. However making TikToks with Morrison, she says, has modified her perspective.

“That is the primary time in my life I’m being referred to as stunning. They (commenters) say ‘You’re beautiful.’ ‘You’re stunning.’ ‘I like your outfit.’ ‘I like your hair.’ ‘I like your model.’ ‘I like you.’ ‘You look so nice,’” Korzen says. “I've by no means heard this in my life, particularly not in Hollywood.”

And having a wider following on TikTok, she says, is altering the way in which Hollywood sees her, too.

“Mackenzie created this factor for me the place I stroll out on the street and folks come as much as inform me how a lot they love me. That’s a giant deal in my life. … And it’s given me a special form of focus creatively and professionally,” Korzen says.

She’s getting extra writing alternatives and auditions for extra necessary roles.

“I’m getting referred to as in for sequence common, which has not occurred earlier than,” Korzen says, “and I’m certain it’s as a result of producers say, ‘Hey, that is somebody who may deliver us an viewers.’ They usually’re proper.”

Korzen has mentioned she’d love a job like Andy Rooney as soon as had on “60 Minutes,” complaining about no matter she needs as soon as every week. And certainly, typically her TikToks might be simply as curmudgeonly as Rooney’s segments as soon as have been. She’s gotten hundreds of thousands of views with a query a few Krispy Kreme donut (“Was it crispy?” she asks) and, extra lately, with a rant about hard-to-eat salads (“That's NOT engaging,” she says after shoving a big forkful of leaves into her mouth).

In her TikTok bio she as soon as described herself as “The Cranky New Yorker,” however a lot of her movies are much less grouchy and extra – as some commenters have put it – “the grandma you want you had.”

Korzen additionally shares recommendation on model (“be enjoyable and colourful and energetic”), procuring (“don't store retail”) and relationships (“don’t search for a mirror picture of your self”). She reveals embarrassing moments, just like the time she acquired caught mendacity throughout an audition many years in the past. And she or he tears up when speaking about her grandson.

A lot of the TikToks are shot inside her Los Angeles dwelling. Typically they function her 84-year-old husband, Benni Korzen, an artist and movie producer who received an Oscar for 1987’s “Babette’s Feast.” And even when he’s not onscreen, Benni’s work are sometimes hanging within the all the time daring and brightly coloured background.

However it’s uncommon for Morrison to seem within the TikToks. To her, Korzen is – and ought to be – the star. And she or he trusts Korzen will know what to say and easy methods to say it.

“I really feel like I’m like Oz. I’m behind the digital camera,” she says, smiling.

However her canine D.D. (brief for Diesel Duke) has appeared quite a few occasions. And in lots of movies, Morrison’s giggle bubbles up within the background. What Korzen says usually catches her abruptly.

It doesn't matter what subject she tackles, Korzen says the responses have been overwhelmingly optimistic – usually coming from a youthful technology of followers that she by no means imagined would join together with her.

Morrison’s assist has been a key ingredient. “I perceive nothing about TikTok. Mackenzie compelled me into it. … I can barely ship a textual content. I can barely take a selfie,” Korzen quips in one in every of her early movies.

However over the previous yr and a half, the buddies say they’ve realized rather a lot and located a successful technique collectively.

Recording classes that final two hours about as soon as every week generate about 20 potential TikToks. Korzen will provide you with an inventory of concepts beforehand. However she retains her feedback unscripted, they usually by no means re-record a phase.

By all of it, she says, she’s realized to belief Morrison’s instincts.

“I have a tendency to simply say no matter involves thoughts. And I'd do a TikTok, and afterwards, Mackenzie will go, ‘I don’t assume so.’ She’s conscious of sure sensitivities – ‘You may’t say that, it’s physique shaming.’ ‘You may’t say that, it’s divisive.’ We attempt very laborious to keep away from the ugly. She’s so tuned right into a technology that I’m completely blind to,” Korzen says.

“I do know that she's going to maintain me secure, that she’s very protecting of holding me out of hazard. So we have now – like in any friendship, proper? – we every have sure strengths that the opposite wants.”

Once they’re not making TikToks collectively, all Morrison has to do is look contained in the closet of her Hollywood condominium to be reminded of what Korzen has given her.

Korzen usually picks out garments for Morrison when she’s thrift procuring.

“She actually is aware of my model. It’s fairly easy in comparison with hers. She loves loud, daring colours, and daring jewellery. However for me she's going to all the time discover a easy silhouette,” Morrison says.

She treasures a lacy, white cardigan Korzen picked out.

After which there are the attire.

Morrison was engaged when she first met Korzen, and figuring out their shared love of thrifting and classic style, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Korzen began looking for one thing Morrison may put on on the massive day.

“She was looking for my wedding ceremony gown for a greenback,” Morrison says.

However finally, Morrison broke off the engagement. It was a rocky relationship, she says, that endured by means of the pandemic however ended earlier this yr. With out Korzen’s help, she says, she by no means would have gotten by means of that point. She cut up up together with her one-time fiancé, however she stored Korzen’s attire.

And Korzen stored on procuring.

“She went from shopping for me greenback wedding ceremony attire to love these tremendous horny, shoulder-exposed garments. I've very subdued greenback wedding ceremony attire and plenty of horny, going-out attire,” Morrison says, laughing. “Put them in a row, it reveals my yr in evaluate.”

And it reveals one thing extra highly effective: an everlasting friendship that Morrison says has introduced stability and pleasure to her life.

As the 2 discipline questions on their friendship from Muricas News, Morrison jumps in to ask Korzen one thing she’s been pondering:

“Do you bear in mind what you have been like once you have been 31? Would you be my good friend?”

Korzen solutions with out hesitation: “In all probability not.”

Again then, in 1970, she was working as a piano trainer and taking good care of a younger son.

“I wouldn’t really feel we had something in frequent, and we wouldn’t, as a result of I used to be a really completely different particular person at your age than I'm now. It took me a complete lifetime to seek out myself and to get to be assured about who I used to be,” Korzen says.

“I used to be very uncertain and insecure for many of my life. I didn’t really feel I had any abilities. And once I lastly determined I had abilities, I didn’t really feel they have been appreciated in any means. I’m solely getting that now, once I ought to be lifeless.”

Morrison interjects. “Annie, don’t say that!”

Like they've so many occasions, the 2 associates banter and break down in laughter collectively. However to Morrison, Korzen’s reply underscores how fortunate they have been to seek out one another after they did.

And when Korzen talks about looking for herself, Morrison is aware of what she means.

Morrison as soon as helped begin a document label. She was additionally a private assistant to a Japanese pop star.

Now she’s a contract author. She works on a mayoral marketing campaign. She’s a server at a restaurant. And she or he additionally will get a minimize of Korzen’s TikTok-related earnings, which embody fee for customized greetings Korzen sends to followers through the Cameo web site, gross sales of her husband’s paintings to TikTok viewers and proceeds from a T-shirt that includes Korzen’s viral donut quip.

Requested easy methods to describe her career, Morrison says, “ask me in six months, and I’m going to have a fair higher reply.” She says her current breakup has led to a brand new part of development.

“I’m form of rebuilding myself. … The final six years I used to be form of supporting another person’s life, and now that is my time,” she says.

Seeing Korzen’s fulfilling and really busy life, she says, makes her understand she nonetheless has loads of time to seek out her path.

“Once I was solely hanging out with individuals my age, I used to be consistently evaluating myself to the place they're in life,” Morrison says. “Annie’s given me 40-50 extra years to discover and have enjoyable and be myself. It’s unimaginable. I can’t wait to be 80.”

Greater than a yr after their TikTok collaboration began, Korzen’s account has greater than 350,000 followers and her cranky commentary and life classes have gotten hundreds of thousands of likes. Korzen’s profession has gotten a lift.

And for Morrison, the expertise has introduced one thing she feels is simply as worthwhile.

She treasures the breaks between recording TikToks, when the 2 ladies share tales with one another. She loves the texts they ship one another nearly each night time. And she or he cherishes the particular time when a recording session is completed and Korzen makes some extent of strolling her to her automobile.

“There’s all the time this sentimental, candy, tender second,” Morrison says.

In these moments Korzen usually shares some final little bit of knowledge earlier than Morrison will get into her white Toyota Mirai, typically carrying thrift retailer offers Korzen discovered for her.

As Morrison heads dwelling, she thinks about what her good friend mentioned that day, and the way a lot enjoyable will probably be to share it with the world.