Sarah Silverman on being addicted to comedy and meeting Trump supporters
Jamie Foxx was born to make people laugh; so was Sarah Silverman. But as the two entertainers share in the revealing latest installment of Off Script, Foxx’s interview series presented exclusively on Yahoo Entertainment, both had similar early-career horror stories about being told they’d never make it.
“You’ll never be cast as someone who deserves love,” Silverman recalls one high-profile Hollywood artist informing her upon auditioning years ago for a dramatic role. That prompts Foxx to recount his own experience being told that he’d be a “slave to television” for the rest of his career. With dozens of award-winning credits behind them, Silverman and Foxx proved the naysayers wrong.
Silverman confesses that she’s had a gift for making people smile since childhood, thanks to her upbringing — “I had one of those crazy dads that thought it would be hilarious to teach his 3-year-old swears” — which first gave her the comedy bug (“It made my arms itch with glee, and I think I became addicted to that”). And while she admits “I bombed so much” over the course of her stand-up career, she’s never been deterred by a challenge, as evidenced by her latest TV series, I Love You, America, in which she travels around the country meeting diverse people — including, as she reveals to Foxx, one Trump-supporting clan that apparently had to Google “Jew” before meeting her.
From singing a rendition of Hair’s “Black Boys” (with Foxx clapping along), to discussing what’s acceptable and unacceptable to joke about in today’s world (“Comedy is a real tough place to judge or say that’s right or that’s wrong. Because it all depends on how funny it is”), Silverman is as candid as ever in her chat with Foxx.
Watch the entire video above, and stay tuned to Yahoo Entertainment for more episodes of Off Script coming soon.