Latest news with #WestHollywood
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kelly Osbourne showcases her slender frame in jeans and pricey Chanel accessories as she heads for dinner
Kelly Osbourne showcased her slender frame in blue jeans on Thursday as she headed out for dinner with pals in West Hollywood. The TV personality, 40, who is the daughter of rock legend Ozzy and TV star Sharon, looked incredible as she teamed her stylish ensemble with a casual black T-shirt. She layered a black zip-up hoody over her shoulders and sported a pair of black Chanel loafers, which retail for $1,661. Keeping with the Chanel theme, the TV personality toted her essentials in a two black quilted Chanel cross-body bag, consisting of a medium sized bag and a small bag, and the medium size retails for $5,741. To complete her look, she styled her blonde locks in a chic updo and rocked a pair of cat-eye-shaped glasses. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the Daily Mail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The TV personality, 40, who is the daughter of rock legend Ozzy and TV star Sharon, looked incredible as she teamed her stylish ensemble with a casual black T-shirt The star, who has been on a weight loss journey, first addressed her dramatic transformation in April last year. She revealed she 'doesn't know where it came from' as she addressed claims that she had used Ozempic. She told Extra: 'I know everybody thinks I took Ozempic. I did not take Ozempic. I don't know where that came from. My mum took Ozempic.' Kelly explained her weight loss was prompted after developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy. She said: 'I had gestational diabetes, and I had to lose the weight I gained during pregnancy. Otherwise, I was at a higher risk of actually getting diabetes, which I did not want. 'I cut out sugar and carbohydrates and I rapidly lost weight.' She also revealed she'd been getting a total tone-up treatment that combines EMFACE and EMSCULPT NEO to sculpt her face and tighten her body. Kelly added: 'I had the baby and my stomach got so many stretch marks, and the skin, it looks like it lost its elasticity.' While she didn't use Ozempic herself, her mother Sharon (pictured in March) did, and Kelly has been supportive of the drug as she spoke candidly about it on their family podcast in April While she didn't use Ozempic herself, her mother Sharon did, and Kelly has been supportive of the drug as she spoke candidly about it on their family podcast in April. She said: 'I made some comments about Ozempic recently where it was like 50 per cent of the people hated it, 50 per cent of the people liked it. 'But the truth is, my opinion used to be the same as the people who didn't like it until I met somebody who lost weight from Ozempic and it changed their life. She added: 'They explained to me how it took the mental obsession with food away and from that reprieve allowed them to dig deeper through therapy and really figure out who they were and how life-changing it was for them. Following the information, she said: 'It completely changed my opinion on it so I'm like yeah, it's great. 'If there's a medication out there that can help people lose weight then what's so bad about it?'
Sky News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News
Kid Cudi says Sean 'Diddy' Combs broke into his house and 'messed with his dog'
Kid Cudi has told a court Sean "Diddy" Combs broke into his home, "messed with" his dog and opened some of his Christmas presents during a break-in in December 2011. The 41-year-old rapper was giving evidence on day nine of the trial, after briefly dating Diddy's former girlfriend Cassie the same year. Cassie and Diddy dated for 11 years, from 2007 to 2018, and Cassie has testified the rapper physically abused her during most of their relationship. Cudi described Cassie phoning him early one morning, sounding "stressed, nervous and scared", telling him Diddy had "found out about us". He said Diddy later called him from his home and told him, "I'm here waiting for you". After dropping Cassie at a West Hollywood hotel, Cudi said he returned to his home and found no one there, but said his dog had been locked in the bathroom. He described his pet later becoming "jittery and on edge all the time". He also said someone had opened Christmas presents he'd bought for his family. While Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said he initially wanted "to fight" Diddy, he later thought through "the reality of the situation," and called the police to report the break-in. Earlier this week, Cassie finished giving four days of evidence, becoming emotional at times, and testifying that Combs had threatened to blow up Cudi's car and hurt him after he learned she was dating him by looking at messages on her phone during a "freak off". Prosecutors say Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, forced women to take part in days-long, drug-fuelled sexual performances known as "Freak Offs" from 2004 to 2024, facilitated by his large retinue of staff. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty. The rapper faces five criminal counts: one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial: Day 9 - As it happened The month after the break-in, Cudi's Porsche was firebombed in his drive, with a hole cut into the roof and a Molotov cocktail dropped into the driver's seat. Cudi said he realised he had to talk to Diddy, before things "got out of hand," meeting up with Diddy, who he said was weirdly "calm" and staring out the window with his hands behind his back "like a Marvel super villain". Cudi says Diddy told him he had still been dating Cassie during his relationship with her, with Cudi replying: "[Cassie] told me you were broke up and I took her word for it." Shaking hands at the end of the conversation, Cudi said he asked Diddy about "burning" his car, and Diddy replied, "I don't know what you're talking about". Cudi later said he believed that to be a lie. Cudi says he saw Diddy once a few years later at Soho House in Los Angeles with his daughter, and Diddy told him: "Man, I just want to apologise for all that bullshit". During his cross-examination, the defence suggested Cassie had been "living two different lives", and "played" both Cudi and Combs. Cudi concluded his time on the stand, saying his relationship with Cassie ended because he wanted "to give her space" and "the drama was too out of hand". Celebrity make-up artist Mylah Morales also gave evidence, describing a fight between Cassie and Diddy in 2010, which she says left Cassie with a "swollen eye, busted lip, and knots on her head". Morales said while she had heard the row, she hadn't physically seen it as she wasn't in the room. She told the court, "I feared for my life", explaining that she took Cassie to her apartment for several days to recover, but that Cassie refused to go to hospital as she was afraid of Diddy's reaction. The defence attempted to damage Morales's credibility by listing her TV appearances, which included programmes on CNN, and with Don Lemon and Piers Morgan, attempting to paint her as attention-seeking. The day also saw Combs's former assistant George Kaplan complete his testimony. He talked about two occasions when he had been asked to carry cash for Diddy, who he said never paid for things himself in the moment, recalling one time in 2015 when he looked after $50,000, and another when he was asked to pick up $10,000. Kaplan described seeing "regular" physical violence between Cassie and Diddy, including an incident in 2015 with whisky glasses on a private plane, when he heard glass breaking and saw Diddy standing over Cassie in the plane's central aisle. He says he also saw Diddy hurling "decorative apples" at another of his girlfriends, Gina, late the same year, handing in his notice the following month. Also known throughout his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs turned artists like Notorious BIG and Usher into household names, elevating hip-hop in American culture and becoming a billionaire in the process. Diddy has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since September and faces at least 15 years or possibly life in prison if convicted. The trial is set to last for around six weeks in total and will go into its third week next week.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kid Cudi says Sean 'Diddy' Combs broke into his house and 'messed with his dog'
Kid Cudi has told a court Sean "Diddy" Combs broke into his home, "messed with" his dog and opened some of his Christmas presents during a break-in in December 2011. The 41-year-old rapper was giving evidence on day nine of the trial, after briefly dating Diddy's former girlfriend Cassie the same year. Cassie and Diddy dated for 11 years, from 2007 to 2018, and Cassie has testified the rapper physically abused her during most of their relationship. Cudi described Cassie phoning him early one morning, sounding "stressed, nervous and scared", telling him Diddy had "found out about us". He said Diddy later called him from his home and told him, "I'm here waiting for you". After dropping Cassie at a West Hollywood hotel, Cudi said he returned to his home and found no one there, but said his dog had been locked in the bathroom. He described his pet later becoming "jittery and on edge all the time". He also said someone had opened Christmas presents he'd bought for his family. While Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, said he initially wanted "to fight" Diddy, he later thought through "the reality of the situation," and called the police to report the break-in. Earlier this week, Cassie finished giving four days of evidence, becoming emotional at times, and testifying that Combs had threatened to blow up Cudi's car and hurt him after he learned she was dating him by looking at messages on her phone during a "freak off". Prosecutors say Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, forced women to take part in days-long, drug-fuelled sexual performances known as "Freak Offs" from 2004 to 2024, facilitated by his large retinue of staff. Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty. The rapper faces five criminal counts: one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Sean 'Diddy' Combs trial: The month after the break-in, Cudi's Porsche was firebombed in his drive, with a hole cut into the roof and a Molotov cocktail dropped into the driver's seat. Cudi said he realised he had to talk to Diddy, before things "got out of hand," meeting up with Diddy, who he said was weirdly "calm" and staring out the window with his hands behind his back "like a Marvel super villain". Cudi says Diddy told him he had still been dating Cassie during his relationship with her, with Cudi replying: "[Cassie] told me you were broke up and I took her word for it." Shaking hands at the end of the conversation, Cudi said he asked Diddy about "burning" his car, and Diddy replied, "I don't know what you're talking about". Cudi later said he believed that to be a lie. Cudi says he saw Diddy once a few years later at Soho House in Los Angeles with his daughter, and Diddy told him: "Man, I just want to apologise for all that bullshit". Read more: During his cross-examination, the defence suggested Cassie had been "living two different lives", and "played" both Cudi and Combs. Cudi concluded his time on the stand, saying his relationship with Cassie ended because he wanted "to give her space" and "the drama was too out of hand". Celebrity make-up artist Mylah Morales also gave evidence, describing a fight between Cassie and Diddy in 2010, which she says left Cassie with a "swollen eye, busted lip, and knots on her head". Morales said while she had heard the row, she hadn't physically seen it as she wasn't in the room. She told the court, "I feared for my life", explaining that she took Cassie to her apartment for several days to recover, but that Cassie refused to go to hospital as she was afraid of Diddy's reaction. The defence attempted to damage Morales's credibility by listing her TV appearances, which included programmes on CNN, and with Don Lemon and Piers Morgan, attempting to paint her as attention-seeking. The day also saw Combs's former assistant George Kaplan complete his testimony. He talked about two occasions when he had been asked to carry cash for Diddy, who he said never paid for things himself in the moment, recalling one time in 2015 when he looked after $50,000, and another when he was asked to pick up $10,000. Kaplan described seeing "regular" physical violence between Cassie and Diddy, including an incident in 2015 with whisky glasses on a private plane, when he heard glass breaking and saw Diddy standing over Cassie in the plane's central aisle. He says he also saw Diddy hurling "decorative apples" at another of his girlfriends, Gina, late the same year, handing in his notice the following month. Also known throughout his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs turned artists like Notorious BIG and Usher into household names, elevating hip-hop in American culture and becoming a billionaire in the process. Diddy has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since September and faces at least 15 years or possibly life in prison if convicted. The trial is set to last for around six weeks in total and will go into its third week next week.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kathy Griffin debuts bold new look with wig at Hustler book signing after frail appearance sparks fears
Kathy Griffin stepped out in West Hollywood on Wednesday with a striking new appearance — just days after sparking concern with a shocking frail look. The 64-year-old comedian turned heads last week when she was spotted on a walk in Malibu, looking almost unrecognizable in her first public sighting since undergoing a hysterectomy in early April. Griffin's gray pallor and visibly thinning hair left fans stunned — some comparing her ghostly complexion to the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump she infamously posed with in 2017, a photo that nearly destroyed her career. But on Wednesday, the former sitcom star was practically unrecognizable in a different way. Wearing a vibrant red wig, full glam makeup, and flashing a wide smile, Griffin posed confidently at a book signing event for Hustler®: 50 Years of Freedom, celebrating the infamous adult magazine. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. She leaned into the risqué theme with a revealing black corset top and a Hustler-branded bomber jacket, happily posing with the book's author — Hustler founder Larry Flynt's widow, Liz Flynt. Later, Kathy was spotted playfully kicking up her heels before sliding into her car as she left the event. The high-spirited display was a world away from her Malibu outing, where her signature bright red hair hung loose around her shoulders, contrasting sharply with the jarring paleness of her skin — and where her receding hairline and visible scalp issues suggested a bald spot or condition. Known for her biting humor and criticism of Republicans, the Catholic League and celebrity culture, Griffin has opened up about her history of health struggles, starting with a binge eating disorder as a teen. She has also been open about her extensive history with cosmetic procedures, including breast augmentation, a nose job, lip tattooing, a botched LASIK surgery in 2003 that left one eye partially blinded, and life-threatening complications from a 1999 liposuction. She's also battled mental health struggles, especially after the notorious 2017 photo showing her holding what appeared to be Donald Trump's severed head sparked intense backlash. At the time, Trump condemned the image on Twitter, saying, 'Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11-year-old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!' Donald Trump Jr. added fuel to the fire during a Good Morning America interview, declaring, 'She deserves everything that's coming to her.' Amid the controversy, Griffin, her elderly mother, and her terminally ill sister received death threats, marking one of the darkest chapters of her tumultuous career. The Trump administration went further, placing Griffin on its no-fly list and prompting a Justice Department investigation lasting over two months to determine whether her photo amounted to a conspiracy to assassinate the president — a probe that ultimately led nowhere in legal terms. Still, the image caused her career to nosedive, at least temporarily. Talk shows and theaters canceled her appearances, and CNN ended her annual stint co-hosting its New Years Eve show with Anderson Cooper from 2009 to 2017. 'I wasn't canceled,' she told the New York Times. 'I was erased.' Griffin ended up apologizing for the Trump effigy, posting on Twitter that, 'I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people, it wasn't funny, I get it.' She financed and produced 'Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story,' a 2019 documentary about the Trump photo and how it changed her life. Meanwhile, her anxiety and chronic back pain triggered a pill addiction, which spiraled into severe depression and an attempt to end her life in 2020. Then in 2021, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, even though she never smoked. A surgery to remove half of her left lung damaged her vocal cords, causing her to undergo at least one more operation to improve her ability to speak. Griffin came forward on social media in 2023 to say that her cancer fight and years of Trump backlash contributed to extreme post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and caused severe anxiety attacks that at times had her writhing in bed for eight hours. She talked about the ordeal in a video posted to her TikTok account. She said at the time that she managed her anxiety partly by pushing herself to do daily tasks such as feeding her dog or taking walks. Griffin took small, but brisk steps on her recent trek in Malibu wearing a gray top, black leggings and designer purse. Such details are the kind of fodder she has used in her brand of caustic comedy aimed at everyone from Barbara Walters to the Octomom to Jesus Christ. Raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Kathleen Mary Griffin attended acting school and launched her acting and comedy career in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her supporting role on the Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan and starring role in Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List — winner of two Emmys for Outstanding Reality Show — marked her big breaks on TV. She was a regular on late night talk shows, has performed in 20 stand-up comedy specials on HBO, Comedy Central and Bravo, and has appeared in 45 movies. Griffin finalized her divorce from marketing executive Randy Bick in January after four years of marriage.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Comedy Is the Relief Valve': How Sarah Silverman Survived Grief and Backlash
Sarah Silverman has a shy side. No, really. For years, she avoided doing a podcast because she didn't want to ask her friends to be on another comedy show. Then, during the pandemic, Silverman came up with a solution. She made her fans the guests. Now, listeners call in to The Sarah Silverman Podcast and leave voicemails for 'your pal Sarah,' and then the NYU dropout provides counsel. Today, she sits in a West Hollywood studio in jeans, Converse, and a vaguely military-flight-jacket thingy on top. Her jet-black hair is piled up high, and her face is framed by oversize reading glasses. Now 54, she exudes a sexy homewrecker of Shaker Heights vibe. More from Rolling Stone Sarah Silverman on Being 'SNL' Cast Member: 'You Feel Like a Piece of Sh-t' Lorde: 'I'm an Intense Bitch' Inside the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD Her advice to callers can be serious — a month ago, she sympathized with a transgender woman who thought she had to leave the country with Trump back in office — and graphic (Silverman answered a question on menopausal hormone replacement by gleefully detailing how she lets her partner insert hormone suppositories into her vagina). The calls can also be stupid, like when a man who is 49 but says he looks 35 complains that he can't get respect for the road he's traveled. Silverman has no patience with him. 'Well, you sound old, and your questions are boring. Is that something?' Her producer cues up another voicemail. 'Hi, Sarah, Amanda Knox here. Yes, that one. My question has to do specifically with tragedies — or, I guess, comedy around tragedies. I went through a whole tragic experience myself, wrongly convicted, imprisoned, all of that, and one of the ways that I have coped was to make jokes about it.… But when I have made jokes, some people have laughed, and some people have called me a psychopath for daring to make any kind of comedy out of the tragedy I went through. And I guess my question is, 'Is someone like me allowed to be funny?' Thank you.' Silverman pauses to confer with her podcast staff. Is this the Amanda Knox of tabloid fame, wrongly convicted of murdering her roommate in Italy in 2007? They confirm that the voice matches up. They resume taping. 'Yeah, comedy is the relief valve,' says Silverman. 'On one hand, there is a time and a place for it. But on the other hand, the worst and most inappropriate place for it is kind of the place for it, too.' Silverman smiles for a second, possibly remembering her own tragedy-plus-time childhood featuring her father's philandering, her bed-wetting, and a brother who died before she was born. Those experiences had led Silverman to describe her younger self as 'cunty and judgmental,' but she has matured into something more substantial that has her producing the best comedy of her career. She gives Knox permission to do the same. 'You kind of called the devil on your shoulder for advice on it,' says Silverman. 'You've been through a lot, and comedy is kind of like the flower that comes up through the pavement. It emerges in the darkest spaces. It's a crack of light, but also highly subjective, so something that is a relief for one person maybe is triggering for another. You can't please everyone.' Silverman shrugs. 'I hope that helps. I'm going to assume it probably did not.' She is probably wrong. 'Comedy is kind of like the flower that comes up through the pavement.' GETTING OLD SUCKS. You ache in the places where you used to play, as Leonard Cohen said. Your kid's buddy asks him why his 'grandfather' is walking him to school. Also, the people you love die. Sarah Silverman knows this better than most. It's been more than 30 years since she became part of the American cultural landscape with NSFW jokes like, 'I was raped by a doctor, which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.' She isn't that girl anymore, although she can still describe her boyfriend giving her a facial that resembles Hitler's mustache. In May 2023, she lost her father and best friend, Donald, and her stepmother, Janice, nine days apart. Her new Netflix stand-up special, PostMortem (premiering May 20), contains some filth but is mainly a valentine to loved ones past. On an overcast afternoon, clad in a baseball cap and hoodie, Silverman gives me a tour of the photos on the wall of her Los Angeles living room as her two rescue dogs, Mary and Sibby, linger nearby. Her mom, Beth, smiles down from a frame, wearing her favorite overalls. Beth died in 2015, but Silverman still has her overalls. There's one of Silverman with her boyfriend, Rory Albanese, a producer for Jimmy Kimmel (himself an ex and longtime friend), and other snapshots featuring various combinations of her three sisters and their children, scattered between L.A., Australia, and Israel. She narrates her personal history in the small voice that has told 1,001 jokes about fucking. 'OK, that's me and Rory. This is my sister Laura and my niece Aliza.' She pauses by a photo of herself wearing a mustache, a Nazi uniform, and a smirk on her face. 'That's me as Hitler backstage on Conan.' She moves on. 'OK, this is my best friend, Tall John, at poker. He's 6'10' and always wears this shirt of mine that he bought on Etsy when we play poker.' There's one man who appears in more photos than others, and that is her father, Donald 'Schleppy' Silverman. In one, Donald wears a Pride shirt and a goofy grin outside of the Airport Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire. Silverman's voice trails off as she looks at her dad. 'He was my best friend, my buddy.' She makes an edit. 'Well, he wasn't my best friend until I was older. He was not physically abusive, but he had uncontrollable rage.' Silverman then turns her frown upside down. 'He shed that. Age, enlightenment, and Zoloft were an excellent combination for him.' SILVERMAN TELLS TWO STORIES about her dad, both of which are true. One is happy. The other features unfathomable darkness and is depicted comically in Silverman's memoir, Bedwetter, and the still-developing Bedwetter: The Musical, with music by the late Adam Schlesinger. The happy tale is told in PostMortem, a joyous remembrance of Schleppy as a wisecracking man who ran Crazy Sophie's Factory Outlet in Concord, New Hampshire, just north of Bedford, where the Silvermans were the only Jewish family. That's the Donald who was madly in love with his second wife, Janice. The Donald who hams it up in sporadic appearances on Sarah's comedy specials and series. The Donald who taught Sarah her first swear words at three. It's the Donald who was charming enough to persuade his ex-wife, Beth, to regularly cut his toenails and was so afraid of pain that he left the cardiogram stickers on his belly until they fell off naturally rather than experience the mild agony of pulling them off his hairy stomach. 'Everyone says their dad is unique, the best,' says Albanese, who started dating Silverman after they became online friends playing Call of Duty during the pandemic. 'But Donald really was unique.' Albanese tells me a story about Donald getting a tattoo with the name of his wife on his right butt cheek when he was 80. True to form, Donald howled at the pain. 'I was telling my parents the story, and Donald was there,' says Albanese. 'And he says, 'You want to see it?' And he stands up and just pulls out his right ass, right in the restaurant. That's Donald.' But Schleppy traveled a long, tortured road before becoming a mensch. Much of it is detailed in Bedwetter. 'My dad had a heartbreaking childhood,' Silverman tells me. 'His dad beat the shit out of him every day, just mercilessly. He had a younger brother who wasn't touched. His father made the kids call him Mr. Silverman.' Donald was sent away to Christian school, where he was beaten up repeatedly, simply for being the sole Jew. His only solace was Jewish summer camp, where he made friends who he stayed in touch with his entire life. After high school, Donald found a kindred spirit in Beth Ann, Sarah's mom, who was also abused as a child. The couple moved to Bedford and started a family that eventually begat four daughters and a son. The union wasn't a happy one. Donald was repeatedly unfaithful and belittled his wife's artistic side. (She was a painter, and in PostMortem, Silverman recounts how her mom would do dramatic readings of movie times for a local cinema.) 'She was more of a free spirit than my dad, who wanted to be a writer but instead took over his father's store,' says Silverman. 'Once they were married and she became a part of him ego-wise, he pounded that out of her and made fun of her. He humiliated her and felt she was lazy because she was in bed a lot. That was before people knew what depression was.' There was more sorrow. Five years before Sarah was born, her mom won a cruise on a game show, and the couple left their infant son, Jeffrey, home with Donald's parents. The baby died when part of his crib collapsed on him. Jeffrey was never spoken of. One day, her grandmother was driving a five-year-old Sarah and her three older sisters to breakfast and told them to buckle up their seat belts. 'Yeah, we don't want to wind up like Jeffrey,' said Sarah. The car went quiet, and her grandmother began to weep. Sarah rarely brought up her brother again. Silverman suffered with bed-wetting until she was 15, stressing about sleepovers and packing diapers for the summers when her dad forced her to go to camp. 'He thought since he had such great memories of it, I'd have the same,' says Silverman. 'But I just dreaded it.' 'My dad had a heartbreaking childhood. His dad beat the shit out of him every day, mercilessly.' Her father eventually took her to a psychiatrist who prescribed her Xanax. Soon, she was taking 16 tablets a day. Impossibly, it got worse. The doctor hanged himself one day while Sarah was waiting for an appointment to begin. Then, Donald and Beth split up. Sarah's sisters went to live with him while she stayed with their mom. 'They had an ugly divorce where my dad spread horrible rumors that she was crazy and I wasn't safe in the house,' remembers Silverman. 'And it wasn't true.' Donald turned the corner when he met his second wife shortly after his divorce. Gradually, tensions eased between her parents, and they both remarried. 'Once they were separate entities and she wasn't a part of his own self-loathing and he dealt with his shit, he could see her as this woman he had wonderful kids with,' Silverman says. As a kid, Sarah had been the family cutup and sang on a cable-access talent show. She went to NYU at 18 and immediately fell in love with stand-up, handing out flyers for a comedy club and working her way up from open mics to $20 gigs. Her dad eventually made her a deal: He would pay for her room and board for three years if she wanted to drop out of college and pursue comedy. Silverman had early success, becoming a Saturday Night Live writer at 22, but was fired after one season, at least partially because she playfully threw a pencil that stabbed Al Franken in the forehead. She wasn't happy. 'I caught rage from my dad, an uncontrollable rage,' says Silverman. Two things changed her life: Zoloft and Garry Shandling. After being fired from SNL, Silverman scored a part playing a misunderstood filthy comedy writer on The Larry Sanders Show, Shandling's classic send-up of the talk-show game. He invited her along with some other friends to his Malibu home. Silverman was so new to L.A. that she thought Malibu was in Hawaii, not 30 minutes up the Pacific Coast Highway. Soon, she was joining Shandling and his friends in his regular pickup basketball games. Shandling, a follower of Buddha and New Age advice guru Eckhart Tolle, shared wisdom with Silverman about suffering. 'He was always searching, because he was tortured,' she says. 'He really passed on that experience, hard lessons he learned in hard ways, that he just gave us on a silver platter. There was pain you had to experience, and there was some pain that could be avoided.' MANY OF SHANDLING'S LESSONS centered around having empathy in both your own life and in your comedy. It took decades for that to sink in with Silverman. In her 2005 special, Jesus Is Magic, she is finishing a bit on undersize humans preferring to be called little people rather than midgets when she perhaps unwittingly puts her finger on American comedy's predilection of punching down for laughs. 'I'll tell you why we make fun of midgets,' she says in the special. 'We're not afraid of them. That's what it boils down to, you know? I mean, I had a joke with the word n—-r in it that I thought was so edgy and hip.… I was at this one club doing my show, and I looked in the front row and the whole table is Black people or African American people … and I didn't do it because I was afraid of them.' Silverman pauses. 'And I ended up changing that joke to ch–ks, so, you live and you learn.' Silverman's riff was standard fare for much of her career. She has been pilloried for doing an episode of her first television show, The Sarah Silverman Program, in blackface, and protested by Asian American groups for her use of the aforementioned slur on Conan. She regrets all of that. '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,'' says Silverman. ''We aren't racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff.' 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 devoted an episode to her blackface incident on her Hulu show, I Love You, America, in 2018, and also apologized for cruel jokes she'd made about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in earlier years. 'I don't think of myself as being PC out of fear,' says Silverman. '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.' Silverman's face brightens. 'Always apologize when you're sorry.' Silverman's relationship with her friend Dave Chappelle is instructive. In 2019, she introduced Chappelle when he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Last November, she found herself in Ohio on election night and watched the returns in despair with him. 'As the night went on, he was saying, 'She's still going to get it. There's still a way,'' she says. 'He was doing the desperate math in his head that we all did.' 'Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were fucking ignorant.' In between those two events, in 2022, Chappelle did an SNL monologue riffing on antisemitic social media posts by Kanye West and NBA star Kyrie Irving. On her podcast, Silverman described her friend's monologue as 'hilarious and brilliant and winning and charming and wildly antisemitic.' Silverman eventually plays a clip from the monologue where Chappelle makes a fantastical leap, claiming that Jewish Americans holding West and Irving accountable for their racism were scapegoating Blacks: 'This is where, you know, I draw a line,' Chappelle says. 'I know the Jewish people have been through terrible things all over the world, but, but, but, but you can't blame them on Black Americans. You just can't.' Silverman came back at him. 'He kind of, like, Jimmy Stewart stutters at the end, to give it a little folksy truth-telling charm,' said Silverman. 'But fuck, the idea [that] calling out massively influential zillionaire superstars for posting lies and promoting hatred of Jews is 'the Jews blaming their troubles on Black Americans' is fucking insane. I can't believe I have to say this.' When we talk, Silverman isn't interested in relitigating the issue, but it goes to a larger concern of hers that traces, in a way, back to her dad — how men channel confusion and depression into rage. She describes it in the context of the anger she sees many men direct toward the transgender community. 'Men have been raised to not be able to feel, not be able to express themselves,' says Silverman. 'The only acceptable emotion for some reason is anger. So what happens? They feel shame and that immediately, like sugar getting converted to carbs, that gets converted into rage and outward blame. And that's how they survive. When I see that anger directed at the trans community, at the nonspecific, nonbinary, it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with themselves. It's ego and the terror of 'If that's who they are, then who am I? Where do I fall?'' SILVERMAN ISN'T IMMUNE to reacting emotionally to issues that cut to the bone. She wasn't raised religious but is hyper-aware of her Jewishness and being seen as the other in polite society. In the Bedwetter musical, a 10-year-old Sarah is confronted by her gentile classmates, who taunt, 'You're short and dark and eww-y.' She replies: 'I know what you mean! I'm totally Jew-y! I'm the type of kid that's too Jew-y to ignore!' That hard-to-ignore quality hasn't always worked out well for her. When some critics expressed horror at Bradley Cooper's utilization of a prosthetic nose in his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, her phone rang off the hook with comment requests from reporters, many of whom completely missed that Silverman was in the movie playing Bernstein's sister. She has confessed to feeling no emotional attachment to Israel, but with some of her family living there, the Hamas massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, left her devastated. A few days after the attack, Silverman hastily shared an Instagram post forwarded by a friend, who'd said it was in support of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. In reality, the post suggested Israel had no obligation to provide food and water to Gaza as long as the hostages were being held. Realizing her mistake, Silverman quickly deleted the post, but it had already been screen-grabbed by another user. Silverman immediately received a wave of backlash from friends and critics. She apologized but still seems shook and uncertain about how to deal with the conflict as a comedian. Seeing the reactions to Oct. 7 left her 'stunned,' she says. 'The alienation of liberal Jews was astounding. Everyone's afraid to say anything. I couldn't even imagine doing stand-up. I was scared. And it was Chelsea Handler who was like, 'Get your fucking ass up. Your job is to make people laugh. That's your job.' And I needed that. Boy, I needed it. And then she made me open for her at the Pantages [Theatre]. And it was honestly a gift, because I realize that it's important.' BACK AT THE STUDIO, Silverman ends the show with her trademark goodbye line: 'Dad, we're winding down.' We then move to the lounge, and I ask a question I was too chicken to ask at her house. I tell her I'd written about my own family, never talking about my father after he was killed in a plane crash. I wonder if her parents had ever reached a point where they could talk about the death of her brother Jeffrey. Silverman exhales. 'I'm going to tell you a big bomb.' She begins by telling me that when she wrote her memoir, she was struck by the fact that while her parents had different versions of every issue of their marriage, they spoke the same words in describing how their son died. 'The story was that something happened with the crib, and Jeffrey's little body slid and he got suffocated. But if you look back, there was never a lawsuit with the crib company or anything,' says Silverman. Then, in 2022, the year before he died, Donald Silverman came to see a production of Bedwetter in Manhattan. He watched it five nights in a row. The musical features a scene about little Sarah making her joke about Jeffrey's death and no one laughing. Donald came backstage after the fifth show and told Sarah a different story about Jeffrey and his violent father. 'My dad says, 'I always felt that he was crying or something, and my dad shook him,'' remembers Silverman. ''He shook him in a rage and killed him.'' Silverman's manager gasps from a nearby sofa. The room goes quiet for a moment. 'As soon as he said it, it was like, 'Of course, that's what happened,'' says Silverman. 'His mother always stood by her husband. She watched him beat the shit out of her son. I couldn't ask my mom, because she was dead.' She sighs and then smiles. 'That was my dad,' says Silverman with a laugh. 'We were playing poker once, and he just dropped in that one of the priests at his school fondled him. I was like 'Dad!'' She gives me a 'What are you gonna do?' look. 'He was always dropping bombs.' And that's when I realize Sarah Silverman is very much her father's daughter. This story has been updated to clarify the circumstances surrounding Silverman's sharing of an Instagram post about the Israeli-Hamas conflict. Production Credits Hair and makeup by BRETT FREEDMAN for CELESTINE AGENCY. Digital technician: RYAN GEARY. Photographic assistance: MELISA MENDEZ. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
