As executive producers of Sarah Squirm: Live + in the Flesh, SNL cast member Sarah Sherman‘s debut comedy special, Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein had a firm mandate.
“They were like, ‘Cut the f*cking RFK Jr. jokes, bro, Cut the airplane jokes,'” Sherman recalls. “‘Just freak sh*t only.'”
Undoubtedly, Sherman delivers the goods in the special — a gonzo body-horror variety hour headlined by her “cartoon character” alter ego Sarah Squirm that is gorgeously designed and most assuredly unlike any special you’ve seen.
A self-described “maximalist,” Sherman’s special is a reflection of her long-time fascination with the grotesque nature of the human body. A pastiche of all her influences, from Ren & Stimpy and Looney Tunes to John Waters and Rich Zim, that embraces “experimental ambition” and all kinds of “weird effing crap.” Merging art and comedy practices cultivated during her days in Chicago’s underground scene, the hour is “tactile and DIY and touchy-feely slimy,” the goal being to shock people, even as that task has become more difficult amid our current “AI slop culture.”
As a comic, Sherman explains in today’s episode of the Comedy Means Business podcast, she loves being “a brat” or “little menace” – “needling” and repelling people, with an eye toward winning them back by show’s end. It’s a high-wire act she doesn’t always pull off, she admits, which can lead to her “bombing like Oppenheimer” — particularly with audience members unfamiliar with her work outside of Saturday Night Live.
Sherman has now completed five seasons at the famed late-night sketch show, and only now feels that she’s even beginning to grasp the job of performing there, particularly when it comes to work outside the confines of Weekend Update. She’s coming out of Season 51 “feeling like roadkill,” she jokes, admitting to the belief that it was only very recently that she nailed a sketch on the show for the first time.
In conversation with Deadline, Sherman explains which sketch that was, opening up about awkward social dynamics as a newcomer to 30 Rock, how long she’ll remain with the show, and why it only gets “more anxiety-inducing the longer you’re there.”
Sherman also discusses why she was nervous to commit her first hour special to tape, Eric André as a Heaven-sent supporter, and why she feels “unfit for the times that we live in.”
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