#New yorker bridget everett series#

I like it because I think in my real life, I haven’t dealt with my grief very well. In terms of touching on certain things that might be emotional third rails for you, like loss and grief, do you have to talk yourself into it? And I know that that’s how Sam feels too. Clearly, I’m not eloquent as a person, but when I sing, I feel like I can clearly communicate how I feel. And the way that Sam can connect with people is the same way Bridget can. And so I think that the things that Bridget and Sam share are a desire and desperation to want to be with people, but a fear of it. I waited tables into my forties and didn’t really start to have some success until I was in my forties. And then also sort of sleepwalking through life and being rudderless and not emotionally engaged. So the grief part of Sam is something I can certainly relate to. But there are similar themes to my actual life, for instance, I have a sister who’s passed away. And the idea of going home and…basically, the idea was if somebody like Bridget Everett never moved to New York, right? If I was in Kansas, what would my life could look like? So we kind of took that approach. I think the idea of doing something based in Kansas, where I’m from, was something that is probably glaringly obvious, but something I never thought of doing.

Our showrunners pitched the idea of the world and after they did that, I had a super emotional reaction to it. Can you take me through what is directly inspired and what is more creative license? I’ve read that this is sort of inspired by your life. I try to make it be something that resonates with me and then I hope that other people will hop on board.

I mean, that’s how I’ve operated with anything that I’m a part of.

We spoke with Everett about all of that, working first and foremost for an audience of one, and what it was like to be in the middle of the Bobcat/Seinfeld kerfuffle. It’s something that stands as the perfect vehicle for its star and something that makes her feel safe and able to be vulnerable and explore her past, an alternate universe where she never found herself in New York, and a character who is on her own journey. In Somebody Somewhere, which is layered, heartful, and joyously inspirational, we’re shown a lot of those quieter moments and the re-construction of someone broken down by life - something sparked by the discovery of her people and her voice. The quieter moments and the tender moments are to show the conflict and the things that I’ve been through that have somehow led to this wild unleashed stage persona.” It’s like, banger, banger, banger, ballad, banger, banger, banger, ballad. But if you see the whole hour show, I call it slam, slam, slam, tender. “A lot of people know me from being on the road with Amy Schumer, where I do like 20 or 30 minutes. While Everett is known for her bawdy stage show and for appearances beside Amy Schumer (you also might remember her from Patti Cake$), she makes clear that there’s a softer side. And so it just got bigger and louder and wilder.” “I was going so wild because I was just desperate to feel alive.

#New yorker bridget everett series#

“I was living in New York and I was in my 30s and my friends and I used to go to this bar (The Parlour, on the Upper West Side) every Sunday night, and do karaoke,” she told us ahead of the premiere of her new semi-autobiographical HBO series Somebody Somehwere (HBO, Sunday at 10:30PM). She slowly works her way through a piano-backed cover of, yes, “Piece of My Heart,” eventually gathering up confidence and ripping her shirt open at the song’s climax.For Kansas-born and NYC-found comedian and cabaret singer Bridget Everett, it all starts with karaoke. The first time Sam unleashes her robust mezzo-soprano, it’s in a church refashioned into an after-hours performance space by a new friend, who urges her to take the spotlight. But the show’s occasional musical moments reveal something profound about its main character. In Everett’s semi-autobiographical HBO dramedy Somebody Somewhere, her alter-ego Sam is more likely to make a quietly cutting joke than uncork a tipsy song while riding some guy’s face. Bridget Everett first started turning heads and dropping jaws in New York City around the turn of the century, when she would commandeer a Manhattan pub’s karaoke night, standing barefoot on the bar and belting out classics like “Piece of My Heart.” These over-the-top performances led to her finding cult fame as a star of the downtown alt-cabaret scene, where her joyously raunchy shows usually ended with her motorboating audience members and hosing them down with booze.