Silverman first received national attention in the 1993–94 season of Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a writer and featured player. She was fired after one season because only one of the sketches she wrote survived to dress rehearsal, and none aired. Bob Odenkirk, a former SNL writer explained, “I could see how it wouldn’t work at SNL because she’s got her own voice, she’s very much Sarah Silverman all the time. She can play a character but she doesn’t disappear into the character — she makes the character her.”6 Silverman states she was upset when SNL fired her via fax. She parodied the situation when she appeared on The Larry Sanders Show episode “The New Writer” (1996), playing Sanders’ new staff writer, whose jokes are not used because of the chauvinism and bias of the male chief comedy writer, who favors the jokes of his male co-writers. She appeared in three episodes of Larry Sanders during its last two seasons.
Silverman was a featured performer on the HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show (1995-97). She made TV program guest appearances on Seinfeld, in the episode “The Money”; (1997) on Star Trek: Voyager, in the two-part time travel episode “Future’s End”; (1996) on Greg the Bunny as a series regular (2002); and on the puppet television comedy Crank Yankers, as the voice of Hadassah Guberman (2003, 2007). She had small parts in the films There’s Something About Mary, Say It Isn’t So, School of Rock, The Way of the Gun, Overnight Delivery, Screwed, Heartbreakers, Evolution, School for Scoundrels, and Rent, playing a mixture of comic and serious roles. Her stand-up comedy act, a one-woman show, was released in 2005 as a feature film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic. As part of the film’s publicity campaign, she appeared online in Slate, as the cover subject of Heeb magazine, and in roasts on Comedy Central of Pamela Anderson and Hugh Hefner. In 2005, Silverman played a therapist in a skit for a bonus DVD of the album Lullabies to Paralyze by the band Queens of the Stone Age. Silverman also appears at the end of the video for American glam metal band Steel Panther’s “Death To All But Metal”.
Silverman guest starred in a second season episode of the USA cable program Monk as Marci Maven. She returned in the sixth season premiere and for the 100th episode of Monk. According to the audio commentary on the Clerks II DVD, director Kevin Smith offered her the role that eventually went to Rosario Dawson, but she turned it down out of fear of being typecast in “girlfriend roles”. However, she told Smith the script was “really funny” and mentioned that if the role of Randal Graves was being offered to her she “would do it in a heartbeat.”
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Silverman parodied sketches from Chappelle’s Show, replaying Dave Chappelle’s characterizations of Rick James and “Tyrone”, as well as a Donnell Rawlings character based on the miniseries Roots. The parody addressed a popular rumor that Silverman was the planned replacement for Chappelle after he left his popular television show.
In 2006, Silverman placed #50 on Maxim Hot 100 List. In 2007, she placed #29 and appeared on the cover. She made the cover of The Observer in the United Kingdom, with an article naming her “the world’s hottest, most controversial comedian”.
In June 2007 she hosted the MTV Movie Awards. During her opening act, she commented on the upcoming jail sentence of Paris Hilton, who was in the audience, “In a couple of days, Paris Hilton is going to jail… As a matter of fact, I heard that to make her feel more comfortable in prison, the guards are going to paint the bars to look like penises. I think it is wrong, too. I just worry she is going to break her teeth on those things.” In September 2007 she appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards. Following the comeback performance of Britney Spears, Silverman mocked her on stage, saying: “Wow, she is amazing. I mean, she is 25 years old, and she has already accomplished everything she’s going to accomplish in her life.”
In January 2008 she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to show Jimmy Kimmel, her boyfriend, a special video. The video turned out to be a song called “I’m Fucking Matt Damon”, in which she and Matt Damon sang a duet about having an affair behind Kimmel’s back. The video created an “instant YouTube sensation”. Kimmel responded with his own video a month later with Damon’s friend Ben Affleck, which enlisted a panoply of stars, to record Kimmel’s song “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck”. On September 13, 2008, Silverman won a Creative Arts Emmy for writing the song “I’m Fucking Matt Damon”.
In October 2008, Silverman visited the United Kingdom to promote the release of The Sarah Silverman Program on Paramount Comedy, but her media and stage performances failed to impress audiences. Her debut stand-up performance at the Hammersmith Apollo was widely panned by the critics and audiences alike. The performance bombed when Silverman’s warm-up act failed to appear and Silverman rushed through a short 35-40 minute set. The heckling audience, who had been charged £40-50 a seat, refused to leave the theatre and Silverman, sporting a pair of after-show slippers, was forced to return to the stage for an impromptu question and answer session. Steve Bennett from comedy website Chortle declared that “minute for minute, there are sex phonelines that are cheaper than Sarah Silverman.”
Silverman sold her idea of a book of humorous essays to HarperCollins for $2.5 million. The Observer reported that David Hirshey was her editor. The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee was released in April 2010. —IMDb
