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The world may be in tumult, but at least one thing remains constant: Sandra Bernhard is returning to Joe's Pub for her annual cabaret show at the end of December. The Divine Sandra has been a pop-culture fixture for more than four decades, ever since playing the deranged fan who kidnaps a talk-show host in Martin Scorsese’s prescient 1981 satire The King of Comedy. She's always been one of a kind, with a persona that blends ironic detachment and sincere sentiment. Her latest set, titled Shapes & Forms, begins its 11-show run on the day after Christmas and builds to a pair of special performances on New Year’s Eve; alongside comedic monologues and observations, she will sing hits by Lionel Richie, Cat Stevens, Lana Del Rey and more.
We chatted with her in late November, as the results of the Presidential election were just sinking in.
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Hello, Sandra!
Hello. How are you?
I'm doing fine. I guess.
We all are. Yeah. Oh, Lord have mercy.
I know, I know. Well, we'll have a lot of opportunity to sample the Lord's mercy in the next four years.
Exactly. Well said.
So you're doing another New Year's show at Joe’s Pub.
Yes, I'm doing yet another new show. It's called Shapes & Forms, which was the name of my mother’s art studio. We drove across the country when I was 10 years old, and my mom was an abstract artist, so she was always taking in the terrain. As we drove through New Mexico, and it was all these red rocks and canyons and boulders, she was like, “Oh my God, look at all these shapes and forms.” So when we arrived in Arizona and she finally opened her studio, she called it The Shapes and Forms. I've always liked to tip my hat to my mom.
I knew that your mom was an artists because you mention it in Without You I'm Nothing. Not for nothing, that is an album that, at a certain point in my life, I could have recited from memory from beginning to end.
Amazing. I love that.
And I don’t mean the movie—I mean the original live album, which for some reason isn't on Spotify.
It isn't? That's weird.
I don't think so. I have it on CD. In fact, I have an extra copy of it on CD, just in case it breaks or someone steals it.
You know what, I may nab that from you, because I don't know where my copies of it are. And it should be on Spotify.
That show has been so influential—and the movie that you made of it, also. There are all these comedy specials happening now that have high concepts in terms of how they use the audience or how they're filmed, and everyone's like, “Oh, this is a cool new thing.” And I wanna say, Well, no, look at this movie from 1990.
I don't think anything anybody's doing right now really is even applicable to what that was, because it was really a narrative in its own way. It had an arc. It wasn't just a comedy special, it was a film about delusional white people thinking that they invented the whole idea of entertainment and music—and of course, the whole point was the black audience was sitting there going, “She's a crock white bitch.” That was the through line. I don't think anybody would even think of doing something like that now, because if you’re doing a special on Netflix or anywhere, you have just an hour to do it. The last special I did was on HBO [in 1998], I'm Still Here... Damn It!, and that was a more traditional, straight-ahead special. Which was good—I mean, the material's good, it's all good. But to have the opportunity to make a film where you're accomplishing many different things is almost unheard of, you know? So that was a rarefied experience. Really.
One thing that’s unusual about the movie is that you take away the support of the audience, which is what often lifts a comedy special; they’ll cut to an audience member howling with laughter, and you’re cued to laugh along. But the audience in your movie is silent and hostile. That feels edgy even today—the way you undercut your own performance.
Correct. Correct. And that’s why I say it was more of an acting performance than just a stand-up comedy performance. We took the original show and recalibrated it for a film. John Boskovich—who was my collaborator at the time, and who directed it—had a lot to do with that, so I can't take all the credit. But we loved the idea of subverting the form.
I was sort of frustrated the first time I saw it, because I loved the album so much and I knew where all the laughs were, so I was like, Why not let us have those? But when I watch it now, I really admire how strange it is.
Yeah, exactly. Good. That said, what I'm doing now is live and it is contingent upon the audience enjoying it as much as it is about me: You know, constantly honing new material and new music and fine-tuning where we're at culturally. That’s an evolution every year, and it never stops. We think, “Oh, we’ve finally arrived at the place that we've worked so hard to be at,” which is equality and acceptance. But we're not there yet. So now we've taken another big step backward—and it’s sort of, like, Okay, that's where we're at. But it's not where I'm at, and it's certainly not where my audience is at. We forge ahead.
So when you're putting together a show, do you explicitly address recent political narratives? Or are things like that refracted in some other way?
I'll address it at the top of the show as a throwaway, and then dive into the material, which is not reflective of it at all. Because so much of my work is anecdotal and emotional and personal. I'm not George Carlin—I would never spend an entire performance going off on the political scene. To me, it's just too boring. No matter what's going on around me, I still wanna craft a piece that has some intrinsic personal value to me.
And that keeps evolving, right? I mean, your '80s persona was very cutting. And by the early 2000s you had mellowed out a bit—you were doing yoga and you had a child, and your approach to life seemed very different. Where do you find you've shifted to now?
It's never really a conscious thing for me. It’s just sort of a natural metamorphosis as life goes. I've been with my girlfriend for 25 years, and that's informed a lot. She's very funny—very dry and kind of brilliant—and we bounce off of each other. So I end up getting a lot of ancillary material from her. It's never some big pronouncement of where I'm at now. I'm still me: Layers get peeled away, some layers get added on, and away we go. You just keep rolling. I've always been on my track, on my path, and that's where I've stayed. I've never really veered off in terms of what I expect of myself and what I expect of the world. And I think that's a good thing, because your narrative remains the same throughout your career.
The King of Comedy is the moment where most of the country first really saw you. The character is so extreme, and your commitment to it is so unnerving. You were quite young but you seem so confident and fully formed in that performance. Was it daunting as a newcomer to work with people as big as Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis and Martin Scorsese?
Well, I'd been performing since I was 19. I turned 26 on the night that I started shooting King of Comedy. So I'd already been in the trenches of the comedy world and Hollywood for six or seven years. That's a long time. I didn't go to college. My life was never carefree, which is fine, because it was always fun. But I went to work. I was a manicurist. I worked in Beverly Hills. I was always around much older people; I was fascinated by women who were married and had families, and I got a lot from that experience. So I already had a certain amount of confidence and self-assurance that I knew what I was doing. I was relatively plucked out of obscurity, but not completely—I'd done the Richard Pryor show, I'd done several little bits in other films and some TV work. And I'd performed almost every single night since I was 19. So it was easy for me to commit to a character, because it was just a natural evolution for me.
I was just thinking about you during that period recently, actually, because Teri Garr died, and the two of you were tentpoles of David Letterman’s show in the 1980s—two of the guests who had the spikiest, most unconventional relationships with him by television standards.
Yeah, it was amazing. It was amazing what you could do back then. Because it was late night—it was like the wild west of late-night shows. It was just fun and cheeky and sexy and crazy. But even when I did Johnny Carson a couple times, it was still kind of wild. Yes, you went on to promote things, but that wasn't the gist of it. You wanted to entertain the viewing audience. You wanted to engage the host. Sitting with Johnny Carson, sitting David Letterman, that was the height of glamor and fun. It was sort of the ultimate cocktail party and everybody watching was included. And people gathered to watch it! It wasn't like, “Well, I'll get to it when I get to it,” or “I'll watch highlights on YouTube.” That was it. You tuned it in that night, and that was it. Otherwise you might not get to see it again, because it didn't exist anywhere else. So that was also the excitement of it—knowing that it was so vibrant and of the moment. You just wanted to bring everything to it, ‘cause it was another outlet for your work and your point of view. So I loved that. I loved that and I miss that.
You had your own version of a chat show for a moment, right? The Playboy spoof on HBO?
Sandy after Dark. There was only one episode. It was supposed to be more—it was supposed to become a regular show. But HBO wasn’t ready for it or something. It was too crazy for them.
But you had such cool people on it. Like Lypsinka!
That was great. She had taken all these clips, which is what she does, so I would be talking to her and she'd answer with the voices of old movie stars, which is so genius. I thought it was absolutely amazing, but everybody got a little bit edgy about the whole thing.
I don’t want to dwell on your influence, but there’s been a resurgence lately of performers who also combine music with their comedy—people like Bridget Everett and Cole Escola and John Early, who’ve come out places like Joe’s Pub and Ars Nova. Whose work was an influence on you?
I was influenced by the great entertainers: Liza Minnelli and Sammy Davis Jr. and the whole Vegas Rat Pack and Mitzi Gaynor—people who walked on stage and kind of did it all. Not that I’m a dancer, but that was really where I was coming from. But I was postmodern so I was turning it upside down. I was going to entertain you in a new way, but with an old-fashioned sensibility. I loved people who entertained. I loved Mary Tyler Moore, I loved Cher, I loved Carol Burnett and Carol Channing. I loved Tina Turner. I love people that just did it. Mama Cass did it.
I'm a major Mama Cass fan.
I mean, what a huge loss. God only knows what she would've become. She was so great. So these are some of the influences on me, that I just took essences of. You kind of extract pieces and bits of contemporary performance and entertainment and you meld it into what works for you. And that's what I did. Unconscious or unconscious. I wasn't looking at them and saying, “Oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it this way.” That's what was in my kishkes and my DNA.
The people that you've mentioned just now are mostly singers who may also do some funny stuff—jokes and patter and sometimes special material. Do you think of yourself in that way? As predominantly musical sets?
No. Not at all. I mean, my material stands on its own and I could do it without music, but I love the whole show. I wanted to be just a singer, but I also had so much to say that that wouldn't have been satisfying either.
Have you seen Oh, Mary!? It’s really funny. And it's cabaret-themed!
I know. I know. I'm sure it's wonderful. I’ve just got too much on my plate right now. And I don't run out a lot; I kind of keep things low-key, just pacing myself, getting ready for these shows and day-to-day life. I've never been a person who runs to things, you know? I'll try to see it when I can, but right now I don't have time.
I’d be especially curious to hear what you think of John Early's recent HBO special, Now More Than Ever, because I think that it owes a particular debt to Without You I’m Nothing, including pseudo-documentary interviews.
So many people borrow. Sometimes it's better if I don't see something like that, because it just sort of pisses me off and irritates me.
To be clear, he’s not ripping you off! But he’s been very forthcoming about his admiration of you and the influence you’ve had on his work.
Okay, then find a new way to do what you do. You know, I loved Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler, but other than when I very first started—when I was doing my impressions of them—I eventually took my love for them and went in my own direction. You don’t verbatim take people’s acts.
Oh, he’s not doing that—he is definitely doing his own thing. He’s not pretending to be you! It's more like he’s in a line that includes you.
All right. Fair enough. I'll check it out. I’ll check it out.
There’s one part of the Early special that is particularly in line with classic Sandy style: a full-on cover of a Neil Young song. In the context of his act, which is often a tongue-in-cheek send-up of self-regard, it’s an unusual moment of sincerity that you don't quite know how to process. And in your shows, there's a similar tension around the music: Sometimes it seems like you're ironizing and sometimes it seems very heartfelt. Right?
Right! Correct. This is true. Some songs I just love and I wanna do, and I think I do them in a new way that's compelling. Sometimes they're a punctuation, but sometimes they're just fun to do.
And sometimes they’re woven in tightly with the comedy—like the Burt Bacharach sequence in Without You I’m Nothing, which is a tour de force of timing and mood, and seems very much to be using the songs to comment on themselves and on the monologue you're doing. Do you still try to use songs that way?
No, I don't really. I had a whole selection of material back then that really leant itself to that. But it takes a lot of rehearsal and time to do those things. Mitch Kaplan, who's my collaborator and musical director, lives in L.A.; I live in New York. He's super busy; I'm doing other things. I'm not gonna do a one-woman show for six months again. So it's easier just to do what I'm doing, which is to write pieces and sing songs. I've been doing it for too long. I mean, if somebody came along and said, we wanna produce a show for you, and we're gonna pay you a million dollars, I might consider doing that and pay my musicians and rent a rehearsal space—but they're not gonna do that, so it's not realistic. And I don't have the bandwidth to do that anymore.
So what songs are you planning for this new show? I’m not sure if you wanna spoil any of that—
I don't. [She laughs.] I won't and I don't and I never do. Everybody talks, so it'll be out soon enough anyway. And for the show here in New York, I'm just putting together the pieces and the songs and, you know, the puzzle I put together with all of my shows: where little interstitials go and where one-liners go.
And you want an element of surprise.
I always want the element of surprise as much as I can. So just come see the show. That's what I say to everyone: Just come see it.
I know you were on the other coast for a while. What made you decide to come back to New York?
Well, I never came back to New York. I kept going back and forth to L.A. and I still do. But this is where we have our apartment. And my daughter went to school here, and my girlfriend worked in the magazine world. Now she works at another gig. But this is where her work is. We kind of moved to L.A. but our daughter didn’t wanna live in L.A. and go to high school in L.A., and I’m glad she didn’t. She’s a New York girl. So this is where we anchored ourselves. And I’m happy being in New York, but I love being in L.A. and I go as much as I can.
Part of your L.A. life included a recurring role on Roseanne as one of TV's first gay characters, which the show treated without much fuss. It's hard to explain to the kids today what a big deal that was in the '90s.
That was what was so great about Roseanne at the time. She was just willing to go for broke in every way. Which is why the show lasted so long and was so successful and was populated by such talented actors.
Roseanne Barr herself seems to have gone off the rails in recent years. Do you think that’s a side effect of the same ballsiness that was driving her back then? Or has her ballsiness fundamentally changed?
I really can't and won't weigh in on it, because it's just too MAGA and crazy. And I have no idea what pulled her in this direction, ultimately. So why get into a pissing contest with mean people?
They can be hard to avoid. Mean MAGA people are dominating Twitter right now.
I still post things there for my work and my radio show, Sandyland, but I don't engage with people there. I'm over at Threads now and Substack—and of course Instagram, which is a lot less toxic.
I've been trying. I’ve joined Bluesky, too.
How's that?
It's still kind of in its formative stages, but with the election and everything a lot of people have been leaving Twitter and moving to Bluesky. It’s finally gaining some real traction.
Okay. Well, I'll get around to it one of these days.
It feels like a lot of people are at a loss about how to process their anger or depression about the election and what could happen in the next four years.
There's kind of nothing we can join other than to support the people who are in place—the Elizabeth Warrens and the Hakeem Jeffrieses and Nancy Pelosis and Chuck Schumers and all the great governors who are already mobilizing to put safety nets in place—and to continue to be engaged, to stay on top of it. The government facilitates so much for us, and we have to keep being vigilant about it. And that's all we can do. This is gonna have to play out. A lot of people got real lazy, real complacent, real stupid. So you shrug and go, Okay, you fucking jackasses. Are you for real? And it’ll shift again. We don't have the Senate or the House, but this is the opportunity for sentient Republicans to jump in, or they’ll never have a party again. They won't be toadies for him anymore. This is the last hurrah and the last rodeo. He can't do anything. He can't punish anybody anymore. This will be it. So I think there'll be a gradual groundswell, certainly on the Republican side, where they'll rise up again and say, We're not gonna be complacent and fall into the same thing we did four years ago. And I think he is disintegrating—he is like falling apart, mentally, physically. So it's just ugly theater. It's ugly fucking theater. It's like a clown show of horrors. And away we go! They wanted it, they got it. Now make America great again. Ball’s in your court. Good luck, shitbag.
But what can we do other than shrug?
If you have money, start donating to great places like the Yellowhammer Fund, which supports abortion in the South, and my friend Lizz Winstead’s organization, Abortion Access Front, and all the usual suspects—you know, the LGBTQ groups, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, wherever people are fighting and have infrastructure in place. We have to take the money we gave to Kamala and give it to them, so that we can provide emergency healthcare for women. And go out! Come see my shows at Joe’s Pub. Come see somebody who's worked her entire career to keep entertaining you and engaging you and laying it all out for you. Come be with like-minded entertainers and instead of sitting at home on your machines and looking at the same shit over and over again. Go see Oh, Mary! Go see all the shows. That's what you should spend your time doing right now. Don't go home for the holidays—Christmas dinners and all that horseshit that we all buy into. Don't be around toxic people. Let them have their holiday and you be with friends. Don't get into fights with people. There's nothing to fight about. Just know what you wanna do and what you wanna accomplish— and keep doing it, because it's all up to the individual.
Well, I'm very excited to see your show at Joe’s Pub. I adore you and I'm happy that we got to talk a little today.
Me too. Me too, honey. Thanks. Where do you live?
In the West Village.
Awesome. Love it. I'm sure we'll run into each other.
I hope so. Thank you so much.
Thank you, honey. I'll see you soon. Big kiss. Bye sweetie.
Sandra Bernhard performs Shapes and Forms at Joe's Pub from December 26 through December 31. You can buy tickets here.
