Sarah Silverman said she’s “horrified” when she looks back on a sketch she did in 2007 decked out in blackface.
“Comedy by nature is not at all evergreen. So if you’re doing it right, you look back at your old stuff and you’re horrified,” the 47-year-old comedian explained in a GQ interview Wednesday about her skit on “The Sarah Silverman Program.”
(Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Trevor Project)
“I don’t stand by the blackface sketch. I’m horrified by it, and I can’t erase it. I can only be changed by it and move on,” she added, while admitting it made her “famous.”
“I was praised for it! It made me famous,” she continued. “It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don’t get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person anymore.”
“I’m just fundamentally different,” Silverman shared. “You have to take a chance and go with where you are and what is funny to you now. When comics really establish a thing and they get famous for it, a lot of them are really terrified to change. Then they become caricatures of themselves.”