Left-wing comedian and actress Sarah Silverman revealed last week that producers fired her from a movie she was set to co-star in after discovering a photo of her in blackface, which stemmed from a comedy sketch in 2007.
Silverman told The Bill Simmons Podcast last week that she lost a role in a movie — which she did not name — after producers discovered a photo of her donning blackface for a sketch on The Sarah Silverman Program. She did not dispute their decision but said she was disheartened because she has “devoted” her life to “making it right.”
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part,” she said on the podcast. “Then, at 11 p.m. the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.”
“I didn’t fight it,” Silverman continued. “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 has expressed regret for the sketch, telling GQ last year that “it makes me feel yucky” and that she is “not that person anymore.”
The Wreck-It Ralph star also said it was “totally racist out of context.”
She told The Bill Simmons Podcast that she “knew there was racism” at the time of the sketch and wanted to “illuminate that in some way in comedy.” However, she “didn’t know that cops were killing black people and unarmed black teenagers on the regular.” It was that narrative, she said, that changed her “forever.”
The controversial sketch focused on Silverman’s character trying to figure out if it was more difficult to be Jewish or black.
“I look like the beautiful Queen Latifah,” she said in the sketch:
Despite the comedian’s status as a liberal, she is concerned by the left’s growing tendency to embrace “canceled culture.”
“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,” she said.
“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,” Silverman explained. “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.’”
Actor, rapper, and TV host Nick Cannon called out Silverman earlier this year for her past use of blackface.