Fresh Air - Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Silverman's father and stepmother are buried under one tombstone that reads: "Janice and Donald, who loved to laugh." The loss was a starting point for Silverman's "cathartic" Netflix comedy special, PostMortem. She spoke with Terry Gross about their final days, finding the joy in grief, and she reflects on the boys' club of the comedy scene when she was starting out.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Terry gross I'm happy to say that comic writer and actor Sarah Silverman is back for a return visit Her stand-up comedy is always original brave and funny 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 She regrets a few jokes. She told in the past and later apologized for. She has a new surprising comedy special which I'll tell you about in a moment but first more about Sarah. She was a writer and featured performer for one season on Saturday Night Live. She played a writer on the Larry Sanders show. From 2007 to 2010 she starred in the series The Sarah Silverman Program.

From 2017 to 2019 she hosted the Hulu series, I Love You America, in which she had conversations to help her understand people she didn't necessarily agree with. She's been in several movies, and she's a regular on the animated series Bob's Burgers. She recently roasted her friend Conan O'Brien at the Kennedy Center ceremony, at which he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American humor. Her memoir, The Bedwetter, was adapted into an off-Broadway musical.

It was recently reworked, played at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and she's hoping it will move to Broadway. Now she has her fifth comedy special. It's called Postmortem. Toward the beginning of the special, she's talking about sexual fantasies and sex talk. Not surprising territory for her. And then she quietly makes an abrupt turn to this. Oh my dad and my stepmom Janice both died last May nine days apart and oh that one needs work. 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 and most recently about an hour of new material so let's do this. Sarah Silverman welcome back to Fresh. I think this is a very

meaningful and funny special and I'm grateful that you did it. Oh man, thank you. Thanks. Sarah, I don't remember you ever doing anything as emotional as this new special. What made you think about doing a special about your parents' death? Oh well, it wasn't something that I sat and thought about and decided. It was, um, my last special was coming out as they were dying. And so after they passed and I started doing stand-up again, I was at zero again, which is where I'm at right now. 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, and I had just, I had come straight from cleaning out their

apartment with my sisters. And 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, that was the starting point for starting over again with my stand-up. And it just grew and grew and built from there. Did you use anything from the eulogy in the comedy special? Oh, yeah. Did you tell the Jeff Ross story in the eulogy? Probably, probably, yeah.

Just like all the funny stories about, oh, you know, people came to say goodbye as my dad was dying and Jeff Ross, who's the, the hilarious roast master general. He was very close with my parents. And he came in and he's comfortable with this stuff. He's very comfortable with it. There was no awkwardness with him walking into my dad's bedroom as he was dying, you know. And he said, Schleppie, you know, everyone called my dad Schleppi since before I was born. He said, Schleppi, I got bad news for you. I don't think you can be my emergency contact anymore. He laughed and it was so sweet.

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 because I knew he'd be excited to see Jeff, and captured that. So, you know, the thing I love about the special one thing I love is the credits. 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, that they are talking and laughing and it's so sweet. It's just so sweet.

And there's great photos of your parents in there too and of your sisters. Yeah, so the thing about giving a eulogy is like you really wanna do it. And at the same time, it feels like 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 and then and then you wonder if you can get through it without totally breaking up and weeping. Yeah, yeah. There was so much time for sobbing and tears while they were dying. It was just

so hard. And, you know, I have three sisters and nieces and nephews. You know, we really shared the burden of it all and we're 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. 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. But my parents were so funny and such characters and loved to laugh. It was on their tombstone,

they were kind of buried together and they have one tombstone. And my sister Susan, who's a rabbi, thought of what we wrote at the top, which was, you know, Janis and Donald who love to laugh, you know. And 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, it's when you realize those stories are finite, you know, that it gets sad again and you, you know, like this whole tour was so cathartic, you know, in that way. But I remember crying at my mom's when my mom died 10 years ago. Because Janice is your stepmother. She's the one who died nine years apart from your father.

Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, all that stuff, and we were talking before this a little bit, just, you know, 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. And then it's when you get 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, well, my mom died, you know, like is hard to say. The tour was interesting because the first half of it was I dreaded going on stage.

I dreaded sludging through all of this because I hadn't figured it out totally yet. I hadn't found all the laughs. 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 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, I mean moving along, you know, but it became really a joy to go out like where I couldn't wait to tell this new crowd about these people. 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. Well, let me just say we weren't with them. They were in Florida at the time. 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 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. Okay. So, this clips starts with you talking about Janice's reaction, your stepmother's reaction to the news and what she has to say to the doctor. Their individual reactions to this news, I'm still listening, you know, and Janice is just, her reaction is so Janice, you know,

she just goes, well, I'll just do everything you tell me, and I'll just do every single thing you say, and I'll fight it. And it was just so her, and then my dad's reaction was the craziest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I'm not kidding, you just hear him go, I'm alone! was the craziest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I'm not kidding. You just hear him go, I'm alone! Then he goes,

I'm a widow! And he was, I'm a widow! I know my mother Bethann is out there somewhere going, it's widower, but mom. It was so crazy. I'm the designated dad whisperer, and I was tasked with calling him, and I had to say, Dad, you cannot talk that way

in front of your alive wife. You have to pull your sh** together, okay? This isn't about you. This is about Janice. You have to take care of Janice. You have to focus. You can't like fall down right now. 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 wanna be in a world without my Janice. I just don't wanna be here without her. 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. And I mean, I didn't know that was going to come true.

Obviously this is not a time to say I told you so. By the way, all true. I mean, it's like the truest special. And I don't even find that appealing to say like everything I say is completely true. But it's, and obviously there are some just pure jokes in there. But my family, they always know to take everything with a grain of salt, but they were just like, everything you said really happened. It's so crazy. So you've witnessed two deaths that were very different. Your stepmother who had pancreatic cancer and died, you know, with pain. Your father who had a kind of kidney disease where

there isn't pain. 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? Well, he was never diagnosed. He just like, he wouldn't go back to the hospital and we respected it. And without that, 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. I mean, we'd joke about it. Dad goes first. Janice has a whole second, you know, next chapter. And, you know, in many years she would go and this threw us all for a loop, you know. And I think his ultimate decline was when she passed. It was, 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, 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 if he can't charm the people around him, it makes him feel terrible. Like if he's not adored by every caretaker, he's miserable and hospitals are filled with people who are really busy and overworked. And it's just the beeping and the, you know, the noises and the alarms and the, it just, there's nothing peaceful about it. And the helplessness.

It's better to be helpless at home with loved ones around you. Surrounded by his family. I mean, at one point 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. 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. 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? I mean listen listen, 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. I mean, how do you prepare for suffering? You worry. You pack a bag. You just worry a lot and you get preoccupied. That's how you prepare. You don't accomplish anything.

You just think about it and worry. Yeah, I have all the worry I need. And really, my biggest challenge is shedding that because it's one, I think worry can make you sick. And you know, that's why you say I'm worried sick. And I don't know what it accomplishes. If there is anything to do to prepare, yeah, I'm on board with that. But the dread and worry are punishments we seem to give ourselves that, for time where we could be not doing that, we could be doing anything else but that.

And you gotta like be as healthy as you can, take care of yourself, floss. Death creeps in through the gums, Terry. And you know, this is such wasted precious time to fill it with dread of death and sickness, you know. 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. Listen, I haven't mastered it. But I'm absolutely in practice for hopefully the rest of my life. I, you know, I mean, I'm always learning, trying to figure out techniques to mitigate

dread, worry, obsession. You know, I remember one night being just dreading the next day of, you know, stuff I had to do or, you know. It was actually just a podcast I was recording, but I was planning on, I had written something I really wanted to talk about that was stressful. And it was a Sunday night and I was laying with my boyfriend, we were watching our favorite show, whatever it was at the time, and it just came over me and just consumed me and I was able to go, hold on a second. Am I okay in this moment?

Well, not only was I okay, it was like my favorite thing to do of all time, Sunday, snuggling in bed, watching TV. And what a waste. Why would I ruin it with worrying about the next day? I was prepared for the next day. I had done everything. I had mitigated anything that I, you know, could wake up the next day and not be prepared. I was prepared. It felt like a great relief to go like, oh yeah, no, I can just be in this, be in my body right now and enjoy this. And it's so often

that 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. 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 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 and how did you handle that? Because it's uncomfortable.

So tell us how you dealt with that. 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. And and I just asked him, you know, know dad is this horrifying for you and he goes no As soon as he said no, he was like, I don't care then I was able to you know to just do it and Not everyone in the family could do it

But I you know, there are a few of us that were fine doing it. And it, you know, it very quickly becomes, I think, 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. And as soon as you start doing it, it really just feels like care. And that's, you know, great. 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. And it won't be horrible because you will be taken care of, hopefully, the people that took care of you. And it's, you know, to say it's an honor sounds corny, but 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 care for him, to keep him clean. We learned how to move him up with the sheets and the towels. And the whole family, we all showed up and 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 hard, but it wasn't horrifying. It was something I was really happy that I was able to do. I need to reintroduce you again. So let me tell everybody that my guest is Sarah Silverman. She has a new comedy special called Post Mortem. It's streaming on Netflix. We'll talk more after we take a short break.

I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. Great conversation makes for a great party. But how do you ask the questions that really make the room come alive? Well, here at LifeKit, we've got you. What is a path you almost took but didn't? On our latest episode, how to ask the magical questions that'll make your party sparkle. Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR. Your father eventually became what you call like your best friend, but when you were growing

up he had a lot of rage. What did he rage at and what did he do when he was overcome by rage? You know, he said to Susie, my one sister who has children, she has five children, 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. He really struggled with rage, not physical rage, but you never knew what mood he was going to be in, who he was going to like scream at in public. You know, this was in our young years. 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. 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, you know, like screaming. And where did it come from? I think a bunch of things. One, he was horribly physically abused by his father, just beat up all the time. And my dad actually said that

their neighbor and best friend once asked him, you know, Max, why do you beat Donald Soe? And that my grandfather said, I can't help it, which is just so haunting. And you know, listen, I'm sure it's generational trauma. 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, to 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 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. You know, I mean, he married my mom.

I mean, they couldn't have been less alike, but I think trauma brought them... Danielle Pletka What are you talking about, your biological mother here? Beth Ann O'Hara, my mother, who 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. 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. But once she became a part of him, they were married, you know, when she was 19 and he was 23 or something, 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 the shame around having creative desires, but feeling he must be pragmatic and take over his father's business of being in sales. I think that made him awful to her. Oh, you're an artist? Is that what you call yourself an artist? I've seen that repeat in my own life to a degree. When I wrote my book, The Bedwetter, I was really, and I suggest, you know, not that everyone write a book,

but that everyone become like a detective in their own lives and their childhoods looking back, because I realized a lot of things. 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.

They became almost army buddies. 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. Were you afraid of him because of all the rage? 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. But I was witness to it. Listen, he was amazing and hilarious and he was always funny, but there was always like this side of him that we were scared of. A lot of this is actually more expressed in, which has become almost a companion piece in my mind, the musical, The Bedwetter, where he really saw, my mother was in bed a lot 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. So if the phone rang, we rushed to turn the TV off. God forbid it

was him and he could hear that we were watching TV. So your father owned a discount women's clothing store called Crazy Sophie's Outlet. He did his own TV commercials. Radio ads. Radio ads. Okay. I'm not sure if I asked you this before, but can you describe the clothes that he sold? 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 and it had like Levi's and you know kind of cool clothes

at the time and 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. That store closed and he opened Crazy Sophie's Factory Outlet and that was his store that and it had a little more off brand. 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, Jabot, Ze Catherici, you know, like ad like, you know, Unicorn, Jaboz, Zee Cavaricchi, you know, like, I don't know. 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.

Did he bring them 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... When he had the other store it was like he had great clothes. I remember all the fads, the like, eyes on over another eyes on. It 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. This is what I'm going to wear at my first New York City audition. I was in eighth grade. I was going to be an adult and wear that. Danielle Pletka Did he expect you to work in the store? Julie Bader No, yeah, I worked. I didn't work in the store. My older sisters did. My sisters, Susan and Laura did, and Jodine and I did not. We were younger. But I do remember, we went to, Jodine and I, they had us go to Hebrew school for one year 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 very Jewish. You know, Suzy said, who's a rabbi now, you know, 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 grew up. Yeah, pretty much in Bedford, in Manchester, the big city. There were a couple temples, and we went to, we hated it. We went to Hebrew school for one year, and it was in Manchester where my dad's store at the time was. 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, we'll ruin our dinner. And one day we pooled our money together, and we bought a large McDonald's fries and wolfed it down 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? How do you know? And you're not gonna believe this, Terry, how he knew. Salt in our mustaches. It could have been a soft pretzel. True. We probably had that unmistakable McDonald's smell. Oh, I know the smell you mean. Yeah. My guest is Sarah Silverman. Her new comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air.

Your father wanted to be a writer. Did you ever read anything he wrote? Oh, I feel so guilty. I started reading a few of them. He had a few self-published novels and bless my niece, Aliza, who read every single one of them, and it meant the world to him. And you know, my other sister's the same. 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. They were, and this is, I'm such a hypocrite 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 I know he was a sexual

being, but it was just gross. We just thought it was gross and we just couldn't and I feel so guilty about it. There's one thing I feel pretty guilty about, but I didn't. So he wanted to be a writer, but instead had a factory outlet women's clothing store. 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. Did he feel bad that he gave up his dream and not want you to give up yours? That could be it, maybe. I will say as a rare story for a comic, my parents totally believed in me. 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. And so my first year of college, I had all my classes and I was a drama major at NYU. And 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 mid-tone at like 8 a.m. And I was falling asleep during my classes and teachers were getting mad and I was horrified. This is not me at all. You know the thought that I would be sleeping in class I would, you know, is very reminiscent of being at sleepovers as a bedwetter. I would pinch myself to stay awake. 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 per semester. And my dad paid the rest and I felt so guilty 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 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, I believe in you. I believe that what you're gonna do, you don't need a diploma. And if you wanna 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? I think my rent was $350.

It moved up to $450 at one point. And he didn't have to pay for college anymore. It really worked out. By the time I would have graduated college, I was a writer at Saturday Night Live. And I never needed money from my parents. And I was financially independent from then on. 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. So getting onto 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. So you were a huge success followed by not getting renewed. Right, right.

How did that collision of big success, oops, failure, how did you process that? I mean, I think the whole year was such a boot camp. It prepared me for so much. You know, I remember thinking, and it was, I really enjoyed it being there. I was terrified, but I did well in some areas. I really am impressed that Lorne Michaels saw anything in me because I look back at me at 22 and I wasn't, my brain hadn't fully developed yet. There are pieces of me there, but I was not a good writer.

I wasn't, and he saw something. I think that he's good at that. 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, am I still in show business? And I had a lot of men around me in comedy who were like, you don't know what you want,

you could end up being a nurse. And of course for them, that was their calling and I just thought, you. There's nothing I'd ever wanted to be but this. It had always been the plan. And it was a lot more of a boys' club back then. It's really grown and it's beautiful. Let me stop you there. 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? Yes. And I was great at it. And I was praised for it. And you could see early articles about me, oh, she's one of the boys. And that was something to achieve. And it's so interesting looking back at how dated and sick and sad and wildly sexist and accepted all of that was. Yeah, so what did you have to do to become part of the Boys club? Well, you know, it was easy for me because it is my natural. I love poker.

I love sports. You talk about sex. I swear. I talk about sex. You know, so all these things conveniently fit into what was kind of acceptable in a way. But the female experience was not. I do remember comics who I loved and looked up to, who were male, would say, Sarah, you can't talk about women's stuff 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. 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 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. You started it with that. I was like, thank you. 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 and 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 all these grownups, 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 a lot of men that were comics because that's who I was around. 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. But the guy comics could sleep with waitresses, servers and women in the audience. And it's just very interesting to look back on it from the world we're in now. It's so interesting because in your new special, Post-Mortem, 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 of it. Sweatshirt. Sweatshirt, yeah. And it all fits well, but it's not exactly clothes that you'd wear to sexualize yourself. Yeah. Well, I mean, it wasn't a conscious thing to 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. It's so funny. I don't know why this is, but all of this came together while I was on the road. So, the sweatshirt I bought at a used clothing store on the road. I was thinking about what I wanted to wear and I just had this inspiration that I wanted to look like a single woman, maybe in the late 70s on moving day. She's moving from one apartment to the other.

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 rota about it, you know, something. And I love a kind of late 70s feel, tends to be my aesthetic. I suppose I could draw connections to that. It's about transition. 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? Yeah.

I didn't put a lot of thought into it in terms of like, that was just my inspiration for it. I didn't, the special before that, I ended up wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and an old cardigan that I bought again at a used store. For that special, I got a suit and I got it tailored and it was like a three-piece brown corduroy suit. And I just 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 I

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

This is Fresh Air. Mothers have a way, or at least mothers of a certain generation, have a way of focusing on their children's hair or how they look. And you have a story about that, and you have a couple of stories. When your mother, your biological mother, was dying in 2015, what did she say about your hair?

It's funny. I was sitting with her, and we were in New Hampshire, that's where I'm from. And I did not know it was gonna be the last time I would see her, but I knew this was towards the end. And I was saying goodbye to her. I was heading to Logan Airport in Boston. And I was holding her hand and she was looking up at me and she smiled and then she had this concerned look on her face and she reached up and she said, your hair, it's so dry.

Was that the last thing she said to you? 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 the ultimate mother-daughter encapsulation, I think. I think Susie, my oldest sister had a similar, she said something to Susie the last day, was something like,

sweetheart, do you even own a brush? These are the things she's focusing on in her last moments. But yeah, she was something else. And your stepmother was really into makeup and jewelry. She had makeup tattooed on her face, I think lipstick and eyeshadow? I think eyeliner and lip liner. It actually aged very well. With no makeup, just a clean face. She looked gorgeous.

And of course, you're not big on makeup. Was that frustrating for her? Did she try to make you wear makeup? She had that with Suzy. When Suzy 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. But less with me.

But in my career, she did not always like my outfits. And if I wore something she liked, if I wore a dress or I had a makeup-y, glam look, oh, she loved it. She loved it. But she accepted that I had the aesthetic I have. She was married to my dad. Sarah Silverman, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you again. And I'm sorry about the loss of your parents.

Thank you. Thank you. So be well and thank you. Thank you so much. Sarah Silverman's new comedy special, Postmortem, is streaming on Netflix. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne Marie Boldenato, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundy, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Thea Challener directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.