Latest news with #Postmortem
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sarah Silverman Says She Was ‘F–ing Ignorant' to Think She Could ‘Say the N-Word' During Stand-Up Because She Was ‘Liberal': ‘Looking Back, My Intentions Were Always Good'
Sarah Silverman is opening up about her past use of racial slurs in her stand-up and how she's shifted to less offensive material in the years since. In a recent sit-down with Rolling Stone, the comedian said she once felt she could use slurs while performing stand-up because she was 'playing a character' and knew her real intentions were 'always good.' However, upon reflection years later, she now sees the error in her thinking. More from Variety Sarah Silverman Says Working at 'SNL' Makes 'You Feel Like a Piece of S-- and You're Terrified'; Conan O'Brien Saved Her Career After 'SNL' Firing Sarah Silverman Gets Personal About Death in Trailer for Netflix Comedy Special 'Post Mortem' (EXCLUSIVE) Sarah Silverman Sets Netflix Comedy Special 'Postmortem,' About the Death of Her Parents 'I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, 'We are all liberal so we can say the n-word. We aren't racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff,'' Silverman explained. 'I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were fucking ignorant.' Silverman was heavily criticized for appearing in blackface during a 2007 episode of her show 'The Sarah Silverman Program.' She also caught heat from Asian American activist groups for using Asain slurs in her material. Silverman has since apologized for such incidents and now sees herself as more 'PC.' However, she maintains that her move away from offensive humor was not out of fear of upsetting the masses. 'I don't think of myself as being PC out of fear,' Silverman says. 'Some people got mad at me for apologizing. I only did that because I was sorry. That's a really great rule of thumb: Only apologize when you're sorry. Always apologize when you're sorry.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sarah Silverman Says She Was ‘F–ing Ignorant' to Think She Could ‘Say the N-Word' During Stand-Up Because She Was ‘Liberal': ‘Looking Back, My Intentions Were Always Good'
Sarah Silverman is opening up about her past use of racial slurs in her stand-up and how she's shifted to less offensive material in the years since. In a recent sit-down with Rolling Stone, the comedian said she once felt she could use slurs while performing stand-up because she was 'playing a character' and knew her real intentions were 'always good.' However, upon reflection years later, she now sees the error in her thinking. More from Variety Sarah Silverman Says Working at 'SNL' Makes 'You Feel Like a Piece of S-- and You're Terrified'; Conan O'Brien Saved Her Career After 'SNL' Firing Sarah Silverman Gets Personal About Death in Trailer for Netflix Comedy Special 'Post Mortem' (EXCLUSIVE) Sarah Silverman Sets Netflix Comedy Special 'Postmortem,' About the Death of Her Parents 'I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, 'We are all liberal so we can say the n-word. We aren't racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff,'' Silverman explained. 'I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were fucking ignorant.' Silverman was heavily criticized for appearing in blackface during a 2007 episode of her show 'The Sarah Silverman Program.' She also caught heat from Asian American activist groups for using Asain slurs in her material. Silverman has since apologized for such incidents and now sees herself as more 'PC.' However, she maintains that her move away from offensive humor was not out of fear of upsetting the masses. 'I don't think of myself as being PC out of fear,' Silverman says. 'Some people got mad at me for apologizing. I only did that because I was sorry. That's a really great rule of thumb: Only apologize when you're sorry. Always apologize when you're sorry.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
When and where to watch the new comedy special
Sarah Silverman: PostMortem OTT Release Date - The queen of dark comedy is all set to drop her brand-new comedy special Postmortem, and trust us, this one's not your regular laugh-a-minute set. It's personal, it's raw, and yes, it's still hilarious in a very 'only Sarah can pull this off' kind of way. When is it coming out? Sarah Silverman: Postmortem will start streaming on May 20, 2025, exclusively on Netflix. This comedy special is a deep dive into love, loss, and how to cope when the people you love most are suddenly gone. In 2023, Sarah Silverman tragically lost both her father and her stepmother within just days of each other. And instead of running away from that pain, she decided to take it to the stage. Silverman unpacks what it's like to mourn people you love and still manage to laugh about the absurdity of it all. From awkward funeral moments to dealing with family drama to the guilt and grace that grief brings, she's baring her soul. And she's making us laugh while doing it. Who is Sarah Silverman? Sarah Silverman is one of the most fearless and sharp-witted comedians in America. She was born on December 1, 1970, in Bedford, New Hampshire. She grew up in a Jewish family and started performing stand-up comedy when she was just 17. After a brief and not-so-great stint as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live in the early '90s (she was let go after one season), Sarah began carving her own path, one stand-up gig at a time. Her big break came in 2005 with the release of her first stand-up film, Jesus Is Magic. Sarah, then, went on to create and star in The Sarah Silverman Program (2007–2010) on Comedy Central, where she played a fictional version of herself. The show was a hit with fans of edgy, alternative comedy. She's also done several stand-up specials that earned her critical acclaim: We Are Miracles (HBO, 2013) — Won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing — Won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing A Speck of Dust (Netflix, 2017) — Nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards — Nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards Postmortem (2024) — Her latest and most personal special, dealing with the recent loss of her parents Aside from stand-up, Sarah's been in films (Wreck-It Ralph, School of Rock, I Smile Back), written a memoir (The Bedwetter), hosted her own Hulu series (I Love You, America), and even done political activism. For more news and updates from the world of OTT and celebrities from Bollywood and Hollywood, keep reading Indiatimes Entertainment.
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I stole material from my dad's funeral!' Sarah Silverman on her outrageous and tender show about her parents' demise
'There was one night,' says Sarah Silverman, describing a recent standup gig, 'when I hid notes for myself all over the stage. I'm a stoner: I don't want to have to remember what happens next. And I was in a pretty heavy part of the show, looking down at my notes. It was taking a few seconds, so I said sorry to the audience – and they all started applauding! Because they thought I was overcome with emotion and apologising for it.' She might well have been. The special in question, Postmortem, is about the death of her father and stepmother. But it's not that kind of show. 'Probably I should've just gone with it,' says Silverman, recalling the moment with a shudder. 'But I was like, 'Oh no, no! I'm not crying!' A lot has changed for Silverman since her 00s wonder years, when this butter-wouldn't-melt controversialist became the world's most essential standup. You'd never have expected that Sarah Silverman (her real self hidden behind all the rape, race and religion gags) to wear her grieving heart on her sleeve. Thoughtful, goofy and cheerfully unguarded as she speaks via transatlantic Zoom, the 54-year-old celebrates the turnaround, saying: 'I am so glad that I am not on-brand from 20 years ago!' And yet – she's still very much not crying. This may be the most personal show Silverman has ever made, but perhaps the best way to describe it is as a synthesis of the comic she was and the comic she's becoming. Or, as she describes the show, it's 'relatable but with cum jokes'. Postmortem is now Britain-bound and is Silverman's contribution, more or less accidental, to a genre familiar to UK comedy audiences: the oft-derided 'dead dad' show. 'My parents were dying,' she recalls. 'I was living in their apartment and taking care of them. So when I went back to standup, the first material I tried out was stolen from my eulogy at my dad's funeral. I thought, 'There's funny stuff in here!'' She's right: the show is an outrageous, tender and incorrect love letter to her stepmother and her beloved dad Donald, AKA Schleppy, who died within a fortnight of each other two years ago. It's about the last months of their lives, their dying moments, and the gallows gags that bubbled up over that period, uninvited but irresistible. It's got sex jokes, Hitler jokes and wisecracks about monetising your parents' demise. Touring it across the US has been 'a nice way of keeping them alive', says Silverman, although, after London, 'it'll be time to put it to bed'. Other 'dead dad' shows – David Baddiel's leaps to mind – raised questions about ethics: do comics have the right to parade their family's most intimate moments across the stage? Silverman breezily dismisses that concern. 'Dad and Janice would've loved it. If he'd been alive, my dad would've been head-to-toe in the merch. He used to be like, 'Somehow it came up in conversation that you were my daughter.' And I'm like, 'Maybe it was the T-shirt, the sweatshirt, the hat you're wearing, from all the shows I've been on – maybe that was a bit of a tipoff?'' This is the dad, by the way, who taught Sarah to swear aged three – an experience she blames for her lifelong addiction to 'this feeling of extreme approval from adults, despite themselves, [which] made my arms itch with glee'. That was the impulse behind the gags that defined her prime ('I want to get an abortion, but my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving') and the controversies that followed, as when, in 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, Silverman – joking but deadpan – accused US talk-show host Joe Franklin of raping her. But, as Postmortem reveals, she's not that comedian any more, or not only that comedian. This is partly, she says, because her persona back then was consciously 'ignorant-arrogant' – and that's 'less charming in the days when our president is that'. She has publicly disavowed some jokes she cracked back then, particularly one sketch on The Sarah Silverman Program that she performed in blackface. 'Some comics are like, 'Never apologise.' My rule is, 'Always apologise when you're sorry and never apologise when you're not.' It's so simple – I felt sorry.' But she doesn't see those apologies as shaming: she sees them as growth. 'I like being a part of the world around me, learning new stuff and being changed by it. Comics who are still doing that thing or voice or personality they had when they got famous, that's such a bummer. To be the same person creatively as you were 20 years ago doesn't feel like success to me.' To cite one example of change, if not growth, she's currently playing a lot of Call of Duty. And then there are her food choices. 'I never liked beets,' she says. 'I couldn't even put them in my mouth. But I enjoy them now. Sometimes it's like, 'What the fuck – I like beets now? I'm that guy?' But we grow, we change.' Silverman learned that lesson back in her imperial period, when she had to go back to square one and write new material after her 2005 special Jesus Is Magic conquered the comedy world. 'I was scared. I didn't want to have to bomb on stage again. I had a real identity crisis.' She credits Chris Rock with showing her the way. 'He starts over. He's brave enough to go to the Comedy Cellar, where everyone is going to go bananas when he walks in, and fully disappoint them, because he's trying out new shit. 'Is this funny? What's this?' That was inspiring.' It's risky though. 'You lose people. But hopefully you gain people, and some people grow along with you. Some people are like' – she puts on a jock voice – ''Remember when she was funny?!' But that shit's none of my business. All I have is this one life and navigating as I see fit.' If that means surrendering centre-stage to some younger acts, well, there are consolations. Not least that many of them – an extraordinary generation of female American standups, Cat Cohen and Kate Berlant among them – are clearly influenced by peak-era, 'ignorant-arrogant', is-she-for-real? Silverman. 'I've seen legendary comics feel so frustrated,' says Silverman, 'by seeing the next generation take their influence and go further. I saw how it ate at them – and that's no way to live. You should be thrilled that you touched people. The best and most influential things do not hold up 25 years later. Nor should they. Everyone thinks too much about what people are going to think about them when they're dead. Like, who fucking cares? You shouldn't even be thinking about what people think of you when you're alive. It takes so much time and space out of your happiness.' With Postmortem nearing its final bow, Silverman's happiness will now depend on finding something else to do with her time. 'I love odd jobs,' she says – such as acting work, and presenting her popular podcast, in which she plays confidante and agony aunt to the public's questions and concerns. There's the class-action lawsuit she is pursuing against Meta, for allegedly training its AI model on copyrighted books, her own included. And thoughts are turning to what her next standup show might address. 'I had to go on stage and figure out some new material the other night,' she says, 'and it was all about Call of Duty. It didn't go well. I don't have a big Call of Duty fanbase.' Might the state of the American nation figure? 'I'd need an angle on it that's funny,' she says. 'And right now, it's all so disturbing.' She recently attended the prestigious Mark Twain prize being awarded to comic Conan O'Brien, an event that was staged at the beleaguered Kennedy Center, now colonised by the Maga mob. David Letterman called this 'a comedic act of resistance' to Trump. 'It was really special,' says Silverman. It made her think 'maybe we can do something'. More immediately, London beckons – and it's not always been a happy hunting ground for the comic. At her 2008 Hammersmith Apollo performance, the then 37-year-old was booed when she left the stage after only 45 minutes (or 50, as she still insists). 'I didn't know they expected, like, two-hour shows in England,' she says now, gamely reliving the experience for this interview. 'I'm not well travelled. I was so depressed. It made me just go, like, 'Fuck England!' But I'm over it. I get excited to come back now.' With, I assume, three-and-a-half hours of material prepared, just in case? 'It's still just an hour,' she says. 'Maybe a little over.' Committed to change Silverman may be, but on her terms and no one else's. Postmortem is at the London Palladium on 28 April. Tickets from
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sarah Silverman looks to provide Hawaii residents laughs during difficult times
HONOLULU (KHON2) — If you're in need of some laughs, the remedy is coming up this weekend as world-renowned comedian and actress Sarah Silverman is here in the islands for two dates. She will host her Postmortem tour Friday night at the Hawaii Theatre in Honolulu and Saturday at the Castle Theatre on Maui. Lawmakers take aim on e-bikes following 'egregious civil disobedience,' in Ewa Beach 'I think laughs, a drop of humanity, and a good time,' Silverman told KHON2 about what fans can expect. 'I just more than ever feel compelled to be silly and funny and hopefully give some relief. That said, the tour is called Postmortem, and to be honest, the show is about my parents dying. They died nine days apart, but it is just the funny parts.' Much of Silverman's genius in the comedy world is being able to find levity in difficult topics and conversations, and masterfully finding punch lines that land and bring people together to share laughter.'I think that's where comedy is born really, and I think that's where comedy thrives is in the darkest corners of humanity,' she said. 'If you look at any cultures that have been through horrible trauma comedy always finds a way because that's how we cope, and it keeps us healthy and alive.' As Silverman plays on Maui, the hope is that many who are still reeling from the catastrophic fires on the valley isle can find some joy in the show, as others who feel overwhelmed with world events. 'I think the common denominator is we're all connected; we're not very different from each other at all, and I think that when we're divided there are other powers that are at work keeping us divided, but when we're in a room together it's always different.' Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news You can catch Silverman Friday night at Hawaii Theatre at 8 p.m., and Saturday at Castle Theatre on Maui at 7 p.m. Tickets can be found here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
