Sarah Silverman Gets the Last Laugh in 'PostMortem'

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Speaker 2 This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross.
The Emmy Awards will be broadcast live September 14th. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hearing from some of the nominees.

Speaker 2 Today we have comic, writer, and actor Sarah Silverman.

Speaker 2 Her latest comedy special, called Postmortem, is nominated for two Emmys, Outstanding Variety Special and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special.

Speaker 2 Her stand-up comedy is always original, brave, and funny.

Speaker 2 Whether it's talking about sex, abortion, being Jewish, racism, or just daily life, she's willing to take risks to make a point and make it funny.

Speaker 2 She regrets a few jokes she told in the past and later apologized for them. She was a writer and featured performer for one season on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 2 She played a writer on the Larry Sanders show.

Speaker 2 From 2007 to 2010, she starred in the series The Sarah Silverman Show and from 2017 to 2019 hosted the Hulu series I Love You, America, in which she had conversations to help her understand people she didn't necessarily agree with.

Speaker 2 She's been in several movies and she's a regular on the animated series Bob's Burgers.

Speaker 2 Earlier this year, she roasted her friend Conan O'Brien at the Kennedy Center ceremony, at which he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Speaker 2 Silverman's memoir, The Bedwetter, was adapted into an off-Broadway musical. Her Emmy-nominated comedy special, Post-Mortem, is streaming on Netflix.

Speaker 2 Toward the beginning, she's talking about sexual fantasies and sex talk. Not surprising subject matter for her.
And then she quietly makes an abrupt turn to this.

Speaker 3 Oh, my dad and my

Speaker 3 But they really did and I was really close with both of them and my dad was my best friend and they both gave me so much

Speaker 3 and most recently about an hour of new material. So let's do this.

Speaker 2 Silverman's father and stepmother died in May 2023, and they really did give her an hour of new material. Her stepmom had pancreatic cancer.
Her dad had kidney disease.

Speaker 2 The special is funny, emotional, and always surprising.

Speaker 2 Sarah Silverman, welcome back to Fresh Air. I think this is a very meaningful and funny special, and I'm grateful that you did it.

Speaker 4 Oh, man, thank you. Thanks.

Speaker 2 Sarah, I don't remember you ever doing anything as emotional

Speaker 2 as this new special. What made you think about doing a special about your parents' death?

Speaker 4 Oh, well, it wasn't something that I sat and thought about and decided. It was

Speaker 4 my last special was coming out as they were dying. And

Speaker 4 so

Speaker 4 after they passed and I started doing stand-up again, I was at zero again, which is where I'm at right now.

Speaker 4 So the only material was what was going on in my life, which was, you know, I remember going to Largo, the club out here that I work at.

Speaker 4 And I had just, I had come straight from cleaning out their apartment with my sisters. And

Speaker 4 so that was just what I was talking about. And, you know, I had spoken at my dad's eulogy.
And of course, there were a lot of funny things in there because he was hilarious. And I, so I kind of.

Speaker 4 That was the starting point for starting over again with my stand-up. And

Speaker 4 it just grew and grew and built from there.

Speaker 2 Did you use anything from the eulogy in the comedy special?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you tell the Jeff Ross story in the eulogy?

Speaker 4 Probably, probably, yeah. Which is like all the funny stories about,

Speaker 4 oh, you know, people

Speaker 4 came to say goodbye as my dad was dying and Jeff Ross, who's the, of course, the hilarious Roastmaster general, he was very close with my parents. And he came in, and he's comfortable with this stuff.

Speaker 4 He's very comfortable with,

Speaker 4 there was no awkwardness with him walking into my dad's bedroom as he was dying, you know. And he said, Schleppy, you know, everyone called my dad Schleppe since before I was born, you know.

Speaker 4 And he said, Schleppe, I got bad news for you. I don't think you can be my emergency contact anymore.

Speaker 4 He laughed, you know, and it was so sweet.

Speaker 4 And I tell that story in the special and miraculously, because it's not like I was shooting video a lot on my phone, but I had videoed it from my phone when he walked in, just, you know, because I knew he'd be excited to see Jeff and captured that.

Speaker 4 So, you know, the thing I love about the special, one thing I love is the credits.

Speaker 4 You know, if you keep the sound on and watch through the credits, there's a lot of Easter eggs and you see that video and he even says a joke beyond that, you know that they are talking and laughing and it's so sweet you know it's just so sweet there's great photos of your parents in there too and of your sisters yeah so um the thing about giving a eulogy is like you really want to do it

Speaker 2 and at the same time it feels like well it must have felt for you like you were doing a comedy special or putting on a show when maybe you just wanted to grieve on the other hand it gives you a chance to like live in the memory of the person or people that you lost.

Speaker 2 And then you wonder if you can get through it without totally breaking up and weeping.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 There was so much time for sobbing and tears while they were dying. It was just

Speaker 4 so hard. And, you know, I had, I have three sisters and nieces and nephews.
You know, we really shared the burden of it all and

Speaker 4 were able to go through it together. You know, so many people as I toured the country, you know, would say, I was the only, I'm the only child and I realize how lucky I am.

Speaker 4 And of course, speaking at a funeral is tough, but there's, I always find funerals so joyful because, well, I mean, first of all, most of them are for comedians.

Speaker 4 But my parents were so funny and such characters and loved to laugh. You know, it was on their tombstone, you know, they were kind of buried together and they have one tombstone.

Speaker 4 And my sister sister Susan, who's a rabbi,

Speaker 4 thought of what we wrote at the top, which was, you know, Janice and Donald, who loved to laugh, you know. And

Speaker 4 so it's, you know, I feel like funerals and Shivas can be so joyful, you know, and sharing all those stories. It's that

Speaker 4 it's when you realize those stories are

Speaker 4 finite, you know, that

Speaker 4 it gets sad again. And you, you know, like this whole Torah was so cathartic, you know, in that way.
But

Speaker 4 I remember crying at my mom's when my mom died 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 Because Janice is your stepmother. She's the one who

Speaker 2 died nine years apart from your father.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, all that stuff.

Speaker 4 And we were talking before this a little bit, just, you know, there's, there's kind of so much joy and relief in the funeral and thereafter because you're all together with the people who love this person and you're sharing stories.

Speaker 4 And then it's when you get back back into normal life and you're like in line at the grocery store that you just kind of crumble into tears, you know, like just saying the words like, oh, well, my mom died, you know, like is hard to say.

Speaker 4 The tour was interesting because the first half of it was,

Speaker 4 I dreaded going on stage. I dreaded sledging through all of this because I hadn't figured it out totally yet.
I hadn't found all the laughs.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of kind of, I mean, just this is kind of story jargon, but like laying pipe to be able to tell the whole picture, but not knowing what goes where. And

Speaker 4 it was hard, you know, and it hurt more. And then as I figured it out how to tell the story and how to digress and how to keep it funny and moving, it became.

Speaker 4 really a joy to go out like where I couldn't wait to tell this new crowd about these people.

Speaker 2 You were with your father and stepmother when she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. So I want to play a clip from your special postmortem about your father's reaction.

Speaker 4 Well, let me just say we weren't with them. They were in Florida at the time.

Speaker 4 But what we would do is whenever they would go to the doctor once they got older, we would have them record it on their voice memo app on their phone and post it to our family WhatsApp chain

Speaker 4 so that we could listen to it and make sure everything was being taken care of. And that's how we heard the appointment where she was diagnosed.

Speaker 2 Okay. So this clip starts with you talking about Janice's reaction, your stepmother's reaction to the news and what she has to say to the doctor.

Speaker 3 Their individual reactions to this news, I'm still listening, you know, and Janice is just,

Speaker 3 her reaction, is so Janice. You know, she just goes,

Speaker 3 Well, I'll just do everything you tell me, and I'll just do every single thing you say, and I'll fight it.

Speaker 4 And it was just so her.

Speaker 3 And then my dad's reaction was the craziest thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

Speaker 3 I'm not kidding. You just hear him go,

Speaker 3 I'm alone!

Speaker 3 Then he goes,

Speaker 3 I'm a widow!

Speaker 3 I know my mother, Bethann, is out there somewhere going, it's widower.

Speaker 4 But mom,

Speaker 3 it was so crazy.

Speaker 3 I'm the designated dad whisperer, and I was tasked with calling him.

Speaker 3 And I had to say, Dad, you cannot talk that way in front of your alive wife.

Speaker 4 You have to pull your shit together, okay?

Speaker 3 This isn't about you. This is about Janice.
You have to take care of Janice.

Speaker 4 You have to focus. You can't like fall down right now.

Speaker 3 And he said, I know, I know. And then he started sobbing.
And I've really never heard him do that, you know. And he goes, I just, I don't want to be in a world without my Janice.

Speaker 3 I just don't want to be here without her.

Speaker 3 And I just, I wanted to console him, and I looked for something to say. And I said, Well, you know, statistically, you won't.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 3 I didn't know that was going to come true.

Speaker 4 I obviously, this is

Speaker 4 not a time to say I told you so or anything.

Speaker 4 By the way, all true. I mean, it's like

Speaker 4 the truest special.

Speaker 4 And I don't even find that appealing to say like everything I say is completely true, you know, but it's, and obviously there are some just pure jokes in there, but my family, you know, they always know to take everything with a grain of salt, but they were just like, Everything you said really happened.

Speaker 4 It's so crazy.

Speaker 2 So you've witnessed two deaths that were very different. Your stepmother who had pancreatic cancer and died with pain.
Your father who had a kind of kidney disease where there isn't pain.

Speaker 2 There's death but not like physical pain. So two different examples of what death is like.
And one of them took four months and your father's death, like how long after he was diagnosed did he die?

Speaker 4 Well, he was never diagnosed. He just like he wouldn't go back to the hospital and we respected it.
And without that,

Speaker 4 his body just got worse and worse. He was always the sick one, you know.
I mean, he had his marbles 100%, but he was always in and out, and that was always our family plan.

Speaker 4 I mean, we would joke about it. Dad goes first,

Speaker 4 Janice has a whole second, you know, next chapter. And, you know, in many years, she would go.
And

Speaker 4 this threw us all for a loop, you know.

Speaker 4 And I think his ultimate decline was when she passed. It was

Speaker 4 he just was done and he had gotten some blood work and the doctor said, you know, this, he needs to be in the hospital. And we just, he just wouldn't go.
And we

Speaker 4 even the doctor said, I get it, you know, like, just let him go in peace. And, you know, you're at the hospital.
It's, it's, if he can't charm the people around him, it makes him feel terrible.

Speaker 4 Like, if he's not adored by every caretaker, he's, he's miserable. And hospitals are filled with people who are really busy and overworked and

Speaker 4 it's just the beeping and the

Speaker 4 noises and the alarms and the, it just,

Speaker 4 there's nothing peaceful about it.

Speaker 2 And the helplessness. It's better to be helpless at home with lovely house.

Speaker 4 Surrounded by his family. I mean at one point

Speaker 4 When he got out of the hospital, we basically broke him out and had to sign a thing that said, we understand you think he should stay, but we're going to take him.

Speaker 4 And because we knew Janice had limited time and we brought him and put him into bed next to her and they held hands until she was gone. They were still holding hands.

Speaker 2 So I'm wondering how both of those stories that you witnessed affected your own view about death and what you most fear about it or if it alleviated any fears.

Speaker 4 I mean, listen.

Speaker 2 When I say death, I mean end of life and how you face the end of life and what kind of like suffering to prepare for.

Speaker 4 I mean, how do you prepare for suffering?

Speaker 4 You worry about

Speaker 2 you get preoccupied. That's how you prepare.
You don't accomplish anything. You just think about it and worry.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I have all the worry I need, and really my biggest challenge is shedding that.

Speaker 4 Dread and worry are

Speaker 4 punishments we seem to give ourselves that

Speaker 4 for time where

Speaker 4 we could be

Speaker 4 not doing that. We could be doing anything else but that.
And

Speaker 4 you got to like be as healthy as you can, take care of yourself, floss.

Speaker 4 Death creeps in through the gums, Terry.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, this is

Speaker 4 such wasted, precious time to fill it with dread of death and sickness, you know.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, you've dealt with depression over the years. So it's surprising to hear somebody who's dealt with depression talking so confidently about not worrying.

Speaker 4 Listen, I haven't mastered it,

Speaker 4 but I'm absolutely in practice for hopefully the rest of my life.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 I'm always learning, trying to figure figure out techniques to mitigate dread, worry, obsession. You know,

Speaker 4 I remember one night being just dreading the next day of, you know, stuff I had to do.

Speaker 4 It was a Sunday night, and I was laying with my boyfriend or watching our favorite show, whatever it was at the time. And it just came over me and just consumed me.

Speaker 4 And I was able to go, hold on a second. Am I okay in this moment?

Speaker 4 Not only was I okay, it was like my favorite thing to do of all time. A Sunday, snuggling in bed, watching TV.
And it's so often that

Speaker 4 we dread and we waste all this time dreading. And then even the thing we're dreading, if we say, am I okay in this very moment? We tend to be okay.

Speaker 2 So one of the things that you talk about is something that I think a lot of adult children of parents who are dying or very ill have had to deal with.

Speaker 2 And that's the awkwardness for you as a daughter when your father was no longer capable of using a toilet or a commode of helping him with the urine bottle and not just handing it to him but really truly helping him with it.

Speaker 2 And how did you handle that? Because it's uncomfortable. So tell us how you dealt with that.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, one, it was just necessity, you know. But two, yes, the awkwardness.
He was completely conscious and has his marbles totally and his humor.

Speaker 4 And, and I just asked him, you know, I go, dad, is this horrifying for you? And he goes, no.

Speaker 4 As soon as he said no, he was like, I don't care.

Speaker 4 Then I was able to,

Speaker 4 you know, to just do it. And

Speaker 4 not everyone in the family could do it, but I, you know, there were a few of us that were fine doing it. And it, it, you know, it very quickly becomes, I think,

Speaker 4 I don't know, I'm not worldly enough, but my guess is this is a very American kind of cultural thing that we sexualize, you know, nudity and all this stuff so much that it becomes taboo to just care for a loved one in necessary ways.

Speaker 4 And as soon as you start doing it, It really just feels like care. And that's, you know, great.

Speaker 4 All that stuff I tried to explain to the audience towards the end, I go, you're thinking I could never do this. You will.
A lot of you have, and I promise you will.

Speaker 4 And it won't be horrible because you will be taking care of, hopefully, the people that took care of you. And it's,

Speaker 4 you know, to say it's an honor sounds corny, but

Speaker 4 it kind of is. And I guess that depends on the care they gave you and what that relationship was.
But in this case, I was very grateful to be able to

Speaker 4 care for him, to keep him clean.

Speaker 4 We learned how to

Speaker 4 move him up with the sheets and the towels. And

Speaker 4 the whole family, we all showed up and

Speaker 4 just kind of bunked in the, you know, slept on couches and air mattresses and just did it. And it was a team effort and it was

Speaker 4 hard, but it wasn't horrifying. It was something I was

Speaker 4 really happy that I was able to do.

Speaker 2 My guest is comic actor and writer, Sarah Silverman. Her comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix.
It's nominated for two Emmy Awards. We'll hear more of the interview after a break.

Speaker 2 I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Your father eventually became what you call it like your best friend, but when you were growing up, he had a lot of rage.

Speaker 2 What did he rage at, and what did he do when he was overcome by rage?

Speaker 4 You know, he said to Susie, my one sister who has children, she has five children,

Speaker 4 and she recalled him saying, you know, I'm a better parent than my father was, and you will be a better parent than I am. And hopefully that's always true, you know.

Speaker 4 He really struggled with rage, not physical rage, but you never knew what mood he was going to be in,

Speaker 4 who he was going to like scream at in public. You know, this was in our young years.

Speaker 4 He wasn't an alcoholic, he didn't drink, but from friends who had alcoholic parents, it feels similar, where the mood is going to depend on what, how he is when he comes home.

Speaker 4 My parents got divorced when I was young. When he would come to pick us up, boy, if we weren't out the second he honked, it was like an unhinged, like, Sarah,

Speaker 4 you know, like screaming. And what did it come from? I think a bunch of things.
One, he was

Speaker 4 horribly physically abused by his father, just beat up

Speaker 4 all the time.

Speaker 4 And my dad actually said that their neighbor and best friend once asked him, you know, Max, why, why do you beat

Speaker 4 Donald so? And that my grandfather said, I can't help it,

Speaker 4 which is just so haunting. And, you know, listen, I'm sure it's generational trauma.

Speaker 4 But also, like with my dad's rage, he was, again, a much better parent. You know, my dad's dad made him call him Mr.
Silverman.

Speaker 4 I'll give you an example. He was a great dad.
He just got much, much better as he got older. And he really grew.
Zoloft didn't hurt, but he was a man in a lot of pain.

Speaker 4 You know, I mean, he married my mom. I mean, they couldn't have been less alike, but I think True.
We're talking about your biological mother here. Bethann O'Hara, my mother, who

Speaker 4 was abused by her mother. And, you know, I don't think they ever talked about it, but I think subconsciously that drew them together.

Speaker 4 And my mother was an artist, and she was creative, and she was kind of free. And I think my dad was drawn to that because that was everything he wanted.

Speaker 4 but once she became a part of him they were married you know when she was 19 and he was 23 or

Speaker 4 and she was part of his identity then he no longer could admire that he had to have disdain for it because it was a part of him and he had disdain for his own self and and the shame around having creative desires but feeling he must be pragmatic and take over his father's business of being in sales.

Speaker 4 And I think that made him awful to her. You know, oh, you're an artist.
Is that what you call yourself an artist?

Speaker 4 And I've seen that repeat in my own life to a degree, you know. And

Speaker 4 when I wrote my book, The Bedwetter, I was really...

Speaker 4 And I suggest, you know, not that everyone write a book, but that everyone become like a detective in their own lives and their old and their childhoods looking back, because I realized a lot of things.

Speaker 4 I saw a lot of patterns. But he, right around the time I graduated high school, he was in a great relationship.
He was on anti-anxiety meds, and he became really close with my mom.

Speaker 4 They became almost Army buddies.

Speaker 4 They had been through so much together and shared this family and just went from, when they were married, I don't remember them even sharing a smile, truly, but becoming just best friends, you know.

Speaker 2 Were you afraid of him because of all the rage?

Speaker 4 Yes, I was afraid of him. I was terrified he'd be mad at me.
And I didn't really get any of that from him.

Speaker 4 But I was witness to it.

Speaker 4 Listen, he was amazing and hilarious and he was always funny.

Speaker 4 But there was always like this side of him that we were scared of. You know, a lot of this is actually more expressed in

Speaker 4 which has become almost a companion piece in my mind, the musical, The Bedwetter, where he really saw, you know, my mother was in bed a lot.

Speaker 4 And of course, we saw that as lazy, and now we understand that it was depression. And so he was terrified that we'd become, quote unquote, lazy.

Speaker 4 So if he, if the phone rang, we rushed to turn the T V off. God forbid it was him and he could hear that we were watching T V.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus: So your father owned a discount women's clothing store called Crazy Sophie's Outlet.

Speaker 2 He did his own TV commercials. I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 Radio ads. Radio ads.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if I asked you this before, but can you describe the clothes that he sold?

Speaker 4 He actually originally had a store that was his father's called Junior Deb and Varsity Shop. And he took that over.
He actually made it a chain.

Speaker 4 And it had like Levi's and, you know, kind of cool clothes at the time.

Speaker 4 But it originated, it was more like sold brownie and cub scout uniforms and all the stuff that you might need for school and clothes.

Speaker 4 That store closed, and he opened Crazy Sophie's Factory Allen, and that was his store that, and it had a little more off-brand.

Speaker 4 He had some designer stuff. He would list all the brands like in a garbled New England accent, you know, radio ad, like, you know, Unicorn, Jabo, Z Cavarici, you know, like, I don't know.

Speaker 4 He didn't have like kind of the big brands like Levi's. And it was, you know, just kind of discount women's clothing.

Speaker 4 Did he bring him clothes that he expected you to wear, but you didn't want to wear them? No, we wore it. We wore whatever.
We weren't big clothes people. I mean, yeah, I had the,

Speaker 4 when he had the other store, it was like he had great clothes. I remember all the fads, the like.

Speaker 4 Izod over another Izod was a big thing at one point or knickers. I had like gray corduroy knickers and a coral sweater.
And I remember saying to my mom, take a picture of this.

Speaker 4 This is what I'm going to wear at my first New York City audition. You know, I was in eighth grade, like, like I was going to be an adult and wear that.

Speaker 2 Did he expect you to work in the store?

Speaker 4 I didn't work in the store.

Speaker 4 My older sisters did.

Speaker 4 My sisters, Susan and Laura, did, and Jodine and I did not.

Speaker 4 We were younger. But I do remember we went to, Jodine and I,

Speaker 4 they had us go to Hebrew school for one year in in third grade I was in third grade she was in fourth grade and we didn't know from this you know we were not

Speaker 4 very Jewish you know we we as Susie said who's a rabbi now you know we we just thought being Jewish meant being a Democrat because that's how we were different in New Hampshire you know but yeah you were the only Jewish family where you where you grew up yeah pretty much in Bedford in Manchester the big city there was there were a couple temples and we went to we hated it We went to

Speaker 4 Hebrew school for one year and it was in Manchester where my dad's store at the time was.

Speaker 4 And we would have to walk from Hebrew school after school to my dad's store and we were instructed not to eat anything, you know, or we'll ruin our dinner.

Speaker 4 And one day we had pooled our money together and we bought a large McDonald's fries and wolfed it down

Speaker 4 and got to the store. This is, I swear to God, a true story.
And he looks at us and he goes, you had French fries. And we were just couldn't believe it.
We were like, what?

Speaker 2 How do you know?

Speaker 4 And you're not going to believe this, Terry. How he knew.
Salt in our mustaches.

Speaker 2 It could have been a soft pretzel.

Speaker 4 True. We probably had that unmistakable McDonald's smell.

Speaker 2 Oh, I know. I know the smell you mean.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 My guest is Sarah Silverman. Her new comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix.
We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Your father wanted to be a writer.

Speaker 2 Did you ever read anything he wrote?

Speaker 4 Oh, I feel so guilty. I started reading a few of them.
He had a few self-published novels. And bless my niece, Eliza, who read every single one of them.
And it meant the world to him.

Speaker 4 And you know, my other sister is the same.

Speaker 4 I don't know what that block was because of course we'd do anything for him and we wanted to support him and we wanted him to feel loved all the time. But it was really hard for us to read them.

Speaker 4 They were

Speaker 4 and this is, I'm such a hypocrite.

Speaker 4 as the person that I am in the shows he sat through of mine, but you know, there was like sex scenes and sexuality and, you know, he was a a sexual being, but it was just gross.

Speaker 4 We just thought it was gross and we just couldn't. And I feel so guilty about this one thing I feel pretty guilty about, but I didn't.

Speaker 2 So he wanted to be a writer, but instead had a

Speaker 2 factory outlet women's clothing store.

Speaker 2 But when you were in college, after one year at NYU, I guess he knew you wanted to be a comic and perform, he offered to pay for room and board for you for three years if you wanted to drop out of college.

Speaker 2 Did he feel bad that he gave up his dream and not want you to give up yours?

Speaker 4 That could be it, maybe.

Speaker 4 You know, I will say, as a rare story for a comic, my parents totally believed in me.

Speaker 4 You know, I was a good student kid anyway. I did my homework in, you know, literal and figurative ways, so they weren't, I wasn't a slacker, you know.
I wanted to be a comic. I was out every night.

Speaker 4 And so my first year of college, I had all my classes and I was a drama major

Speaker 4 at NYU. And,

Speaker 4 well, one, I went to class all day. And then I worked passing out flyers for a comedy club from 4 p.m.
to 2 a.m. And then, you know, my first class would be in Midtown at like 8 a.m.

Speaker 4 And I was falling asleep during my classes and teachers were getting mad and I was horrified. This is not me at all.

Speaker 4 You know, the thought that I would be sleeping in class, I would pinch, you know, it was very reminiscent of being at sleepovers as a bedwetter. I would pinch myself to stay awake.

Speaker 4 I just couldn't fight it. And I felt so guilty also because NYU is so expensive.
I had a small scholarship. You know, at the time wasn't that small, but today would sound very small.
I had $1,500

Speaker 4 per semester.

Speaker 4 And my dad paid the rest. And I felt so guilty.

Speaker 4 And they gave me no guilt about it, but that I'm this drama major, that I, you know, I had academic classes, but mostly it was voice and movement and drama. And

Speaker 4 I just thought, geez, that's so much money. And I took a year off.
And when I was returning, my dad called and said, you know, listen, if you,

Speaker 4 I believe in you. I believe that what you're going to do, you don't need a diploma.

Speaker 4 And if you want to drop out, I will pay your rent and utilities for the next three years as if it were your sophomore, junior, senior year. So that saves him a ton of money, right? My rent was $350.

Speaker 4 It moved up to $450 at one point.

Speaker 4 And he didn't have to pay for college anymore. It really worked out.
You know, by the time I would have graduated college, I was a writer at Saturday Night Live and

Speaker 4 I never needed money from my parents.

Speaker 4 I was independent,

Speaker 4 financially independent from then on.

Speaker 2 So you were on Saturday Night Live briefly. It was like one season as a writer and featured performer.
You got very little on the air.

Speaker 2 So getting on to Saturday Night Live, that's what so many comics dream of. You got it when you ordinarily would have still been in college, which is remarkable.

Speaker 2 So you were a huge success followed by not getting renewed.

Speaker 4 Right, right.

Speaker 2 How did that collision of big success, oops, failure, how did you process that?

Speaker 4 I mean, I think the whole year was such a boot camp. It prepared me for so much.

Speaker 4 You know, I remember thinking, and it was, I really enjoyed it being there. I was terrified, I, you know, but I, I did well in some areas.

Speaker 4 You know, I really am impressed that Lauren Michaels saw anything in me because I look back at me at 22 and I wasn't, you know, my brain hadn't fully developed yet.

Speaker 4 There are pieces of me there, but I was not a good writer. I wasn't, you know, and he saw something.
And I think that he's good at that.

Speaker 4 It never crossed my mind that I'd get fired or not picked up or whatever. And so I was really in shock.
And I remember just for months thinking like,

Speaker 4 am I still in show business? You know, and I had a lot of men around me, you know, in comedy who were like, you don't know what you want.

Speaker 4 You could end up being a nurse, you know, and, you know, of course, for them, that was their calling. And I just thought,

Speaker 4 you, you know, there's nothing I'd ever wanted to be but this.

Speaker 4 It had always been the plan. And,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 it was a lot more of a boys' club back then. And it's really grown.

Speaker 4 Let me stop you there.

Speaker 2 Did you have to be a member of the boys' club? Did you have to figure out how to be a member of the boys' club when you started in comedy?

Speaker 4 Yes, and I was great at it. And I was praised for it.
And, you know, you could see early articles about me. Oh, she's one of the boys.
And, you know, and that was something to achieve.

Speaker 4 And it's so interesting

Speaker 4 looking back at how dated and sick and sad and wildly sexist and accepted.

Speaker 4 All of that was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so what did you have to do to become part of the Boys Club?

Speaker 4 Well, you know, it was easy for me because it is my natural.

Speaker 4 I love poker. I love sports.
I picked up some of the swords. You talk about sex.
I swear, I talk about sex. I, you know, so all these things conveniently fit into

Speaker 4 what was kind of acceptable in a way.

Speaker 4 But the female experience was not.

Speaker 4 I do remember comics who I loved and looked up to, who were male, would say, Sarah, you can't talk about

Speaker 4 women stuff

Speaker 4 because the audience might have women in it but they're on dates and they only laugh if the guy laughs the only people to make laugh are the men

Speaker 4 and I have to be honest I accepted that as they were grown-ups to me so what did you self-censor that you would have liked to talk about I mean probably not much because I did end up talking very explicitly about sex but it was because I was young, it was sexualized and probably accepted more because as one podcaster told me when I went on his podcast, you used to be so hot.

Speaker 4 He started it with that. You know, I was like, oh,

Speaker 4 thank you.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I was sexualized and that was a part of my success. You know, but then, you know, of course, I lost my virginity as a comedian at 19.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 like most young people but acceptable for men i fell in love with it oh i love sex what is what is what would it be like with him what would it be like with him and i was very free and very sexual and i was you know at the time very extremely penalized for it and um all these grown-ups you know again i was a kid you know grown men You know, I can't fault them for sexualizing me when I was having sex with, you know, a lot of men that were comics because that's who I was around.

Speaker 4 But it was obviously an insane double standard. I don't blame myself and I'm not ashamed for being extremely experimental and sexual, especially the year I was 20.
Like,

Speaker 4 you know, um

Speaker 4 but the guy comics could sleep with waitresses, servers, and and uh girl women in the audience, you know, and uh

Speaker 4 it's it's just very interesting to look back on it from the world we're in now.

Speaker 2 It's so interesting because like in your new special, post-mortem,

Speaker 2 you are dressed in such a non-sexualized way. You're wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and then a short-sleeved kind of t-shirt on top.

Speaker 4 Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it all fits well, but it's not exactly clothes that you'd wear to sexualize yourself.

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, I mean, I, um,

Speaker 4 it wasn't a conscious thing to

Speaker 4 not look sexual or anything. It's just really more of, one, a reflection of just what I'm comfortable in and who I am.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, it's so funny. I don't know why this is, but all of this came together while I was on the road, you know, so the sweatshirt I bought at a used clothing store on the road.

Speaker 4 I was thinking about what I wanted to wear and I just had this inspiration that I wanted to look like a single woman,

Speaker 4 maybe in the late 70s on moving day. She's moving from one apartment to the other.

Speaker 4 And it was just like, I don't know, that was the aesthetic that I was inspired by for reasons I don't know. You know, there was something kind of rhoda about it, you know, something.

Speaker 4 And I love

Speaker 4 a kind of late 70s feel

Speaker 4 tends to be my aesthetic. And I suppose I could draw connections to that it's about transition, you know.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and also, I mean, to dress up fancy or sexy when you're talking about the death of your parents, it doesn't set exactly the right mood.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, I didn't put a lot of thought into it in terms of like, that was just my inspiration for it. I didn't,

Speaker 4 you know, the special before that, I ended up wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and an old cardigan that I bought again at like a

Speaker 4 used

Speaker 4 store. And for that special,

Speaker 4 I got a suit and I got it tailored and it was like a three-piece brown corduroy suit.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I just,

Speaker 4 at the last minute, just said, this is, it's not comfortable and I don't feel like me in it. There are times when I dress up and I really love it, but it's really something that

Speaker 4 like as a treat more than anything and that I feel the most myself when I'm dressed down. And I think when you're doing a stand-up special,

Speaker 4 it's the most important thing is to feel comfortable.

Speaker 2 Well, we have to take another short break here, so let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah Silverman, her new comedy special is called Postmortem.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Mothers have a way, or at least mothers of a certain generation, have have a way of focusing on their children's hair or how they look.

Speaker 4 And you have a story about that, and you have a couple of stories.

Speaker 2 When your mother, your biological mother was dying in 2015.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What did she say about your hair?

Speaker 4 It's funny. I was sitting with her, and, you know, we were in New Hampshire.
That's where I'm from.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I did not know it was going to be the last time I would see her, but I knew this was towards the end, you know. And I was saying goodbye to her.
I was heading to the to Logan Airport in Boston. And

Speaker 4 I was holding her hand and we were just, she was looking up at me and she smiled. And then she

Speaker 4 had this concerned look on her face. And she reached up and she said, Your hair,

Speaker 4 it's so dry.

Speaker 2 Was that the last thing she said to you?

Speaker 4 That was the last thing she said to me. What does that make you think? I love it.
I wouldn't change it for the world. It was

Speaker 4 the ultimate mother-daughter

Speaker 4 encapsulation, I think, you know.

Speaker 4 I think Susie, my oldest sister, had a similar,

Speaker 4 she said something to Susie the last thing was something like,

Speaker 4 oh, sweetheart, do you even own a brush?

Speaker 4 Like, you know,

Speaker 4 like these things, these are the things she's focusing on in her last,

Speaker 4 you know, moments. But yeah,

Speaker 4 she was something else.

Speaker 2 And your stepmother was really into makeup and jewelry. She had makeup tattooed on her face, I think, lipstick and eyeshadow?

Speaker 4 I think eyeliner and

Speaker 4 lip liner.

Speaker 4 And actually aged very well.

Speaker 4 With no makeup, just a clean face.

Speaker 4 She looked gorgeous, you know.

Speaker 2 And of course, like you're not big on makeup. Was that frustrating for her? Did she she try to make you wear makeup?

Speaker 4 She had that with Susie. When Susie was in college, she'd go, even if you go into the library, just put a little blush on your cheeks.
You never know who you're going to meet, you know.

Speaker 4 But less with me, but in my career, she did not always like my outfits.

Speaker 4 And if I wore something she liked, if I wore a dress or I had, you know, a makeupy glam look, oh, she loved it. She loved it, you know, but she accepted that I had

Speaker 4 the aesthetic I have. You know, she was married to my dad.

Speaker 2 Sarah Silverman, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you again. And, you know, I'm sorry about the loss of your parents.
Thank you. Thank you.
So be well, and thank you.

Speaker 4 Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 Sarah Silverman's comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix. It's nominated for two Emmy Awards.
The awards ceremony is September 14th. Our interview was recorded in May.

Speaker 2 Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about Sudan where 14 million people have been displaced by war and famine, more than in Ukraine and Gaza combined.

Speaker 2 Atlantic staff writer Ann Applebaum will join us and talk about her reporting trips to the region where civil war rages and the collapse of American and other international aid has left millions in desperate straits.

Speaker 2 I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigher.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Boldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.

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