Comic Sarah Silverman

Fresh Air

NPR

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

As a kid, Silverman says, the fact that she wet the bed was her "deepest, darkest shame." Decades later, she wrote about the humiliation in her 2010 memoir The Bedwetter — now adapted into a musical. The comic talks with Terry Gross about the songs, cringing at some of her old jokes, and satirizing the Left in I Love You, America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is comic, actor and writer Sarah Silverman.
0:06.7	She's known for breaking taboos, often to mock sexism, racism, and extremist politics and religion.
0:13.6	She now has second thoughts about some of her earlier comedy, wondering whether when she was trying to mock racism,
0:20.1	she didn't understand her own limited perspective as a white person.
0:24.2	We'll talk about that later.
0:26.0	Silverman has broken a big personal taboo from her childhood.
0:29.6	She was a bedwetter. It was a nightly occurrence until about the age of 16.
0:34.7	It was especially humiliating during sleepovers with friends, and the summer she spent at Sleepaway Camp.
0:41.0	She wrote about that in her 2010 memoir titled The Bedwetter.
0:45.1	Now that book has been adapted into an off-brought-way musical,
0:48.6	she collaborated on it with songwriter Adam Schlesinger,
0:51.9	who co-founded the band Fountains of Wayne, wrote the title song for the movie That Thing You Do,
0:57.1	The Songs for the Romcom, Music and Lyrics, and the TV series Crazy X Girlfriend,
1:02.5	and what may be the best song that ever opened the Tony Awards ceremony,
1:07.0	Broadway, it's not just for Gays anymore.
1:10.4	He was one of the very early COVID victims and died April 1st, 2020.
1:15.6	The songwriter David Yazbeck completed writing the songs.
1:19.6	The Bedwetter officially opens June 7th at the Atlantic Theatre Company in Manhattan.
1:24.4	Sarah Silverman, welcome back to Fresh Air. I've really been looking forward to talking with you again.
1:30.4	You were on our show in 2010 after the Bedwetter memoir was published, so congratulations on…
1:36.1	Yeah, that's right.
1:36.8	…and congratulations on adapting the most humiliating experience of your life into musical.
	...

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