"There were weird silver linings": How Sarah Silverman worked through grief to still make us laugh

Many of the headlines related to the debut of Sarah Silverman's latest stand-up special "Someone You Love" in late May noted the ways that Silverman wasn't trying to make headlines. It's not as if she ever has over her 30 years in the comedy game, although she's certainly fueled her share of outrage over the years. But she's aware of the expectations some attach to new comedy specials from one of the "greats," as she somewhat jokingly refers to herself in the special.

"Someone You Love," though, operates with clear and simple aims. First, it fulfills Silverman's contractual obligation to produce a special for HBO, her fourth in 18 years. Second, it is earnest in the way it pokes at its targets while consciously refraining from provoking the audience — a change from the supposedly "equally opportunity offender" comedy she and her peers plied in the early 2000s.

But if you know what was happening in Silverman's life while "Someone You Love" came together, the relative gentleness of the special takes on a new weight. In the weeks before Silverman's special premiered on Max she lost both her stepmother Janice and her father Donald Silverman, who died within days of each other.

The special was in post-production when they died, enabling her to include a dedication to them in the end credits. Its creation, however, occurred while Silverman's parents were ill and she was splitting her time between road gigs and spending time with them. Knowing this adds another level of tenderness to "Someone You Love" – it is funny, but it's also a work that was created by an artist who is grieving.

Don't take that the wrong way, Silverman still loves filthy humor and poop jokes. She opens with a bit that praises the loyalty of Jewish mothers by imitating one proudly bragging about her daughter's standout performance in a hardcore porn flick.

From there she takes on antisemitism, a classic target that is unfortunately always relevant,along with the anti-choice movement and other facets of religious extremism from a place of not comprehending the inconsistency and obsessiveness driving them.

Along the way Silverman also looks inward, wondering aloud whether her jokes might have sold out her culture for laughs.

This ruminative turn is nothing new. Her short-lived Hulu series "I Love You, America" sought out people from the opposite side of the partisan divide from a place of understanding.

From there she launched "The Sarah Silverman Podcast," providing a direct line between her and fans seeking her advice. Silverman does her best to counsel and comfort them without turning whatever they share into a punchline at their expense. And she reflected that sense of trust and vulnerability to the audience by sharing some of her final recordings of conversations she and other loved ones had with Donald before he passed away.

Watch Sarah Silverman episode of "Salon Talks" to hear more about her approach to this comedy right now, along with the new expectations the public tends to assign to a comedian's work, and her recent experience of guest hosting "The Daily Show."

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

This is different from "A Speck of Dust," because it is more of a kind of loose "hangout with Sarah" versus a stand-up special.  Was that by intention?

No. I have very little intention. It's not that I never think about the big picture because I do. This is my fourth special in 30 years or 18 years since my first special. I never think to do a special until somebody asks me and I'm like, "Do I have the material?" This one was part of a deal I made before the pandemic, and then all of a sudden they were like, "It's time," so a lot of the writing happened on the road, which is how a lot of comics do it but not usually how I do it. It was really interesting and it felt more immediate and . . . I don't know. Sorry, my brain just turns off. I have no short-term memory right now.

No, that's OK.

It's like menopause and grief. I'll be talking and then I just have no idea what the question was. [This special] is more of a hangout. It's more loose. I think because I do so few specials, there's more of a palatable change because I'm older and different, and my existence is different, and the world around me is different, and the things I've learned and implement and the work I do has changed, and that's the effect of that. That's more for you/the audience to observe. But I'm just in it, so I don't see as much.

I know these words aren't adequate, but I'm so sorry, and my condolences for the loss of your parents. Tell me if I'm wrong with the timeline, but when you were putting this special together, you were in the throes of that, so watching it knowing that, it took on a different tone for me.

Well, as I was putting the set together, I was on the road for three months, and my stepmother had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but I had no idea my parents, both of them, let alone her, would be gone so soon. I thought it would be a couple of years or something. From diagnosis to her passing was four months, exactly almost. But the first three were not as dire as that final, so when I came home, it was right into being with them in their apartment with my sisters. 

Being on the road, I was able to kind of pretend it wasn't happening, but it got realer and realer. Then I came home and I canceled shows obviously. It was just all hands on deck and we were consumed with sadness. It was just very all-encompassing, but there were weird silver linings, like being together. Just all of us being together and being so close and going through it together. I have three sisters, and two nieces and a nephew came, and it was heartbreaking and wildly sad, but kind of beautiful, and there was laughter and all this stuff. 

That couldn't have been part of your question. Oh, so the special isn't wildly touched by it other than knowing that my stepmom was sick and going through chemo, and we were all constantly in contact. It's like, we have family Zoom every Sunday, and we have Silverman United WhatsApp. . . . We have WhatsApp chains with the whole family and then just the sisters and then just the sisters without the one we're talking about. I mean, we're just so up each other's a**es and in a beautiful way. So, it's not within the fiber of the special, but you watching it knowing what happened in the moments between, takes on a new [meaning]. 

In post, dedicating it to them once they had passed, and it all happened so fast, so I watched it back when it premiered and then when that came up, it was like, "Oh my God. So many things happened all at once." After the funerals, which were nine days apart, we were coming back to the mortuary, like, "Do we get a punch card? Is there free coffee?" It just seemed like we were regulars. But there was relief because it was so intense, not euphoric by any means, but just a sense of relief. And then also just being with family and the shiva of it all. But then going back to normal life, it felt good to go into normalcy. But now, we were all on the sisters' chain this morning, it's just hitting us in all kinds of different ways. I mean grief takes care of itself. We can't control it, right?

It comes in waves and we just never know when it happens. The reason I wanted to ask that is that for me, it struck a different level of intimacy. There's always a level of partnership that I've noticed between the comic and the audience. 

I hope this isn't a whiplash transition, but you talk a lot in your work about antisemitism. This one was very interesting to see this level of both going into these subjects where you're joking about Hilter and say "'My Struggle,' is that not the most Jewish title you've ever heard?" . . . What was your approach to forming that part of your stand-up?

Well, I think just talking about the paradox of me on my podcast, talking without jokes or punchlines about antisemitism and being earnest, and then being on stage and making basically Jewish jokes, very base, and then talking about the hypocrisy of it and trying to find some kind of way to see it in the best light for me, was a fun, I don't want to say journey, but I like blending heady stuff with aggressively dumb stuff because that's me, and maybe everyone to a degree.

It just felt honest in a way, to call myself out on it. I'm a total hypocrite. I think hopefully everyone can see that in themselves to a degree. We're different people at different times when surrounded by different elements.

With certain specials, there are expectations of things being said to make headlines and subsequent reactions. I'm particularly referring to John Mulaney or your friend Dave Chappelle. I'm wondering how you feel about that idea of call and response and controversy and whether that figured it all into the material of "Someone You Love." 

I don't court controversy. I don't look for it in terms of publicity. But this didn't happen with ["Someone You Love"] at all, and maybe you're saying, "Hey, maybe you could have gotten headlines," but that stuff has so little to do with me in terms of journalism or news outlets or gossip outlets or whatever the outlets are, whether they're heady New York Times stuff or Page Six, whatever, it is about clicks because that's how their revenue stream works now.

Anything that can be made into a headline will be made into a headline, and then you read it and there's nothing really there. But people don't read past the headlines. Often I don't myself, admittedly. But boy, when I do, I understand it in a whole new way.

With Chris Rock, he had an entire set before he got to the issue of the slap. As a comedian, when you see this happening, regardless of your material, what is your impression of how you believe the culture is communicating with comedy or how they're consuming the comedy?

There's the participation of the audience in the moment and then there's the participation of the audience online subsequently.

There's the discourse, yes. Do you ever think of your work as contributing to a discourse? Do you think that that is changing our relationship with comedy? Do you feel like it's changing our expectations for a comic and their work and their sets?

I have grown to believe that comedy dies in the second-guessing of your audience and what they want. As someone who is a comedian and feels an onus to comedy, I don't try to predict what people are looking for and try to give it to them or predict how they might react and then change what I do according to that. I still think if I did that, it's still art, but it's not how I do it.

I'm affected by the world, and part of that world is my audience or other people's audience, and I'm affected by the discourse of all the topics that are going on and the social politics of the world, and that changes how I think and how I communicate. So in that way, yes. But certainly not in that director way. I'm very bad at art and commerce. I mean, I could be worse. I'm not that bad. I own a house. But I've never been very good at figuring that stuff out. I just do my own thing and put it out and see what happens and talk to people like you to try to get the word out.

You were recently on "The Daily Show" as a host for a week, and you were the third most popular host in terms of ratings. Did you realize that?

I did not realize that. That's very exciting. 

What do you think about that role? Do you consider yourself in the running for that and what would be the significance in your opinion of a woman being in that role?

There are so many people who would be great in filling those shoes, and I really had a blast doing it. The first day was crazy, but as the week went on, I was like, "Oh, I get this." I really loved it. I felt like, "Oh, I could thrive doing this. I really understand this job." It was such a lesson in immediacy and comedy. Which is funny because I'm a stand-up, but I'm a slow honer. Sure, on my podcast it's fast and loose, but it seems loose and immediate, but I'm thinking about tiny little articles and things and stitching things together more meticulously than it looks.

With "The Daily Show," the executive producer Jen Flanz sits there and you're there with the writers and you're working on stuff, and if you're onto something but you're trying to tweak it, she'll go, "Use it or move on." She's watching the clock. It's so thrilling because she just keeps you on track, and it's really kind of that "the perfect is the enemy of good." But you have to go with stuff and just do it or cut it or make big decisions fast and move on. That just makes me think of the song "Move On" from that Sondheim musical, "Sunday in the Park with George," which is all about art and that stuff. The lyrics to that really makes me think of this.

But anyway, it was really exciting. I thought, "Ooh, I would love this." But I really don't think I could do that for an indefinite amount of time. I don't have the stamina of most people. Actually, my mother is this way too. I can go, go, go, and then I need a lot of rest. I really love doing odd jobs. I love acting. I love my podcast. I love stand-up. I love all these different things I get to do. And a job like that, for me, I know Trevor [Noah] would go off for the weekends and do stand-up. I can't do that. I would need to be in silence and rest for the other days. 

I mean, no one offered me the job. But thinking about it, I don't think I could do it, even though I think I would love it. If I were younger maybe, or on a different trajectory, but I like doing other things more. If it was a finite amount of time, I think I'd love it though. Which was that, and it was great.

So it sounds like you did it for fun, mainly.

Yeah. Yeah. And that probably was the reason why it went well. What matters most is when you s**t the bed, but when you're just like, "Ah, this is so fun. Oh, cool. What an experience," it tends to go well because you don't have these things fighting you in your head.

One of the things that I'm writing about in addition to writing about your special is the history of women in late night comedy. One of the [shows] that I reference is "I Love You, America." Did your experience of doing "I Love You, America," where you're doing talk variety, not necessarily late night because it's streaming, did that inform your expectation of going in for "The Daily Show"? 

Yeah. I mean, nothing was a crazy surprise. I know a lot about that process, but it was that process on a daily level. It's the same and totally different in terms of there's something special in not being able to tinker with the minutiae of things. And the Hulu show, we did. It was a weekly show and we had lead up time to be working on stuff, so there was a lot of time to tinker on every little thing. And there's something really that I didn't learn until doing this.

When I guest hosted "Jimmy Kimmel Live" a couple times and being around that, that's also very immediate. It's the same. But that probably more informed the speed of it. The Hulu show informed kind of the process, but faster. But it was its own thing and it's such a well-oiled machine. And so jumping into it, I was able to be pretty prepared for what it would be like. My boyfriend also ran the show for several years with Jon Stewart, so he had lots of tips, and his ex-wife is Jen Flanz, who runs the show now, which is funny because he writes for "Jimmy Kimmel Live" now. But yeah, there was so much I learned about comedy really in that kind of high-octane version of it.

Unless a show is created for a woman, there haven't been any women substantially in the running for the legacy shows, except for "The Daily Show" when there was a turnover between Jon and Trevor. And this is a seven-decades-old format. 

Joan [Rivers], Joan is the only one you can point to that even came close to one of those legacy chairs and because she had the nerve to do what was best for her career, she was blackballed for decades. I mean, wow, that's the male ego at work. Because it made [Johnny] Carson angry. He wasn't angry at [Jay] Leno, but he was angry at her, like she should turn down an opportunity at something he knew she was elite at. And then that Leno carried that on, was odd. And it was wasn't until Jimmy Fallon took over and immediately had her on that he broke that. But the fact that we're pointing still to Joan. I mean, Chelsea Handler, I would say, made room for herself in that and still doesn't get, in my view, reference in that, oddly enough.

As a person in the world, I'm surprised. As someone who knows this industry, I'm not very surprised. But from your perspective, does it surprise you that women haven't been more considered for these roles over the years?

If you look at the big powerhouse women talk show hosts from comedy, it's Ellen and Rosie [O'Donnell], and they're both in daytime. You could say relegated to daytime, but they may have been exactly their lane and they certainly got immense success from it. But it is really odd. 

But also as someone who grew up on late night TV and late night talk shows and also really came into existence in comedy through being guests on there, I'm really appreciative. But objectively, it's beyond a dying form. I mean, is that OK to say?

But I mean, this article is really interesting that you're writing because it comes kind of at the precipice of the death of late night, because I can't promote this special on any late night shows because of the strike, but the truth is, what we see of late night shows are clips from monologues mostly online, and not really celebrity interviews unless something goes wildly awry. 

Everything's going to streaming, and yet topical things haven't reached streaming quite as much. But more than usual, I actually think people watch "The Tonight Show" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on Hulu or Peacock often or something

The last thing I would want is for, not that I don't want women to have a chance in late night, but as it's about to die, to put women to be the ones who are killing it. Whoever's there, it's going to end soon, I think. I mean, I hope not. Or maybe it finds a new way through. I'm really interested to redo it.

One of the things that I loved about "I Love You, America" was the idea of empathy. It came together at this time when the country was just riven in terms of partisanship. But you had this show where part of the idea of approaching topical comedy and different social issues and politics was actually reaching out and finding an attempt to find common ground. I'm wondering, A, has that changed? And B, did you carry any of that experience into making "Someone You Love"?

To a degree, yeah, for sure. When you talked about the loose parts of the special, it's interesting because I did two nights, I shot one show and then the next night at another show. The second night was way looser, and a couple heckled. It was so in the moment and came kind of full circle and was totally something you don't see in specials because it was heckling and I was so excited about it and I was like, "Well, just use the second night. I love the heckles and what happened and the back and forth." It was really neat. And the editor's like, "I don't think you're going to like it." I go, "I know I like it. I was there. It was so in the moment, and you don't see that in specials." 

He sent me the clips of those moments, and it really didn't play. There are a couple of moments that are in there that are cool like that, but there were really big moments were away from the material. But it's so funny, and it's why I think stuff like improv doesn't translate to television or magic even really to it, is because somewhere in the audience's mind, even though they don't know the technicalities of it, they know that things could be edited and changed in post-production, even if they don't understand. And so you don't buy it as much as if it were live and you're there.

And it's almost like, you know that animation that's too real and it creeps people out? It was like that. You just don't buy that it's in the moment, even though the truth was it a hundred percent was. I ended up not including any of it, except for those few moments that you see. And they were kind of talking about the psychology of yelling out in a show and what that really means, which I think, a hundred percent of the time the subtext is, "I exist." Right? 

So I do think, yeah, to a degree I bring stuff from that show into, certainly "Someone You Love," the bit that that is taken from is a kind of bastardized version of that sentiment. But also it informed a lot of how I approach my podcast and just me as a person. It's just really just things I've learned in therapy and things I've learned in dynamic and relationship with others and trying to really implement it in my life, you know? I'm absolutely my best self on my podcast. People go, "Oh, you really have your s**t together." And I'm like, "Yeah, for an hour a week, sure. Yes."

"Someone You Love" is currently streaming on Max.