Meryl Streep drinking a martini in her bathrobe is all of us during lockdown

Leave it to Meryl Streep to make something ordinary like drinking in your bathroom (totally acceptable shutdown behavior) into a remarkable internet phenomenon.

That’s just what the Oscar winner (and newly anointed shutdown heroine) managed to do this weekend—taking part in Stephen Sondheim’s virtual birthday concert, Take Me to the World, while wearing a plush terrycloth robe and chugging a fresh martini.

The Sunday night special, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the opening of Sondheim’s Broadway show Company, featured celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda singing the composer’s most beloved tunes and raised money for the organization Artists Striving to End Poverty.

For her part, Streep joined actresses Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald for an alcohol-soaked rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch," also from Company. The three of them swigging their glasses and tossing it back to each other on a raucous Zoom sing-along, which is still available online (Streep’s song is at 1:58). While Baranski poured herself a glass of wine and McDonald clutched a sealed bottle of an unidentified white spirit as part of their performances, Streep—like the committed thespian she is—made herself a vodka martini with a twist as she sang.

Hitting every note, she shook her elegant cocktail with precision and poured it into a classic martini glass, a perfectly spiraled lemon rind already waiting. The other ladies nursed their adult beverages, but not Streep. Just as her grand finale approached, she knocked back her martini and chugged it ‘til the very end. Empty glass in hand, she paused, glanced at the screen and delivered her last line, an improvised lyric that basically sums up most of our experiences in lockdown: “I’m already drinking, dear.”

Meryl, we can relate.

I can rest in peace now OMG pic.twitter.com/z9gRw9e2Br

— academy award da glenn close🥀 (@iheartstreep) April 27, 2020

Here’s the Meryl martini quarantine gif I didn’t know I needed until tonight. #Sondheim90Concert pic.twitter.com/llcO0OGHAK

— Michelle Collins (@michcoll) April 27, 2020

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