Sarah Silverman: I was fired from film after blackface photo resurfaced
Sarah Silverman has said she was recently fired from a film after producers unearthed a still of her in 2007 wearing blackface for a comedy sketch.
Guesting on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Silverman said that she was let go the day before shooting on her scenes was due to start because of the photo, taken on the set of The Sarah Silverman Show.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part,” she said, “then, at 11pm the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.
“I didn’t fight it. They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real, real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”
Silverman did not name the film but discussed “cancel culture” with Simmons, saying that the current climate had left her feeling fearful. “I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it,” adding that she dubs it “righteousness porn”.
“It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once, everyone is, like, throwing the first stone,” she continued. “It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.’”
Silverman has previously expressed mixed feelings concerning the sketch, telling GQ last month that at the time she was praised for the sketch, which enormously increased her profile.
“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 any more. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person any more.”
In 2015, she called it her most “regrettable joke”, yet said criticism of the image was based on a lack of information.
“There’s a still of me on Twitter in blackface and it’s totally out of context and I tweeted it when Twitter was new and the people who followed me watched that show and it was from that show,” she said. “Now it’s forever there and it looks … it’s totally racist out of context and I regret that
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