Sarah Sherman On John Waters, Bowen Yang & Her New Comedy Special

Contrary to popular belief, Sarah Sherman gets grossed out, too. In fact, pretty much everything you see in her new special, Sarah Squirm: Live + In the Flesh, makes the body-horror comic’s stomach churn. “It all grosses me out,” she tells NYLON over Zoom. “I feel the same way everybody else does. I don’t love my hemorrhoids either. They’re f*cking disgusting.”

Sherman has been torturing entertaining audiences with her signature brand of surrealist comedy for 10 years now, five of which have been spent making the patrons of 30 Rock’s Studio 8H howl with laughter as one of Saturday Night Live’s most prominent cast members. But despite completing her 10,000 hours long ago, Live + In the Flesh marks the performer’s first-ever comedy special — and boy, did she come out swinging. In it, Sherman lets her absurd alter ego, Sarah Squirm, take fans to the deepest, most depraved corners of her psyche, subjecting viewers to graphic footage of her insides, detailed accounts of her hemorrhoid struggles, prolapsed-prosthetic-labia prop work, and a truly unnerving meditation session. In other words, it’s both a visual triumph and a sensory nightmare. “I wanted the show to be as loud and abrasive and violent as I feel,” Sherman says.

Ahead of the its release, which airs at 9 p.m. ET Dec. 12 on HBO, we caught up with Sherman to talk about how the special came together (including the John Waters cameo), and why working at SNL is her version of drag.

I imagine people will watch this special and be like, “Is she OK?” So I’m here to ask: Are you OK?

Totally. It’s funny, I did a show a couple weeks ago, and the merch table was in the room, so the merch guy saw the whole show. I came up to him after the show and he was like, “Oh, my God, I thought you were going to be rude and mean, but you’re nice.” I would hope that in real life I’m a lot tamer, but the show is an expression of some very Jewish neuroses embodied.

Let’s talk about the opening sequence for a second. How do you even come up with something like that?

So many stand-up comedy specials start with the comedian backstage getting ready, they’re in the green room. And so my version of that is I’m not in a green room, I’m in a crypt, and my bones and goo are forming. That’s my version of getting ready.

And of course, the great John Waters makes a cameo. How did he get involved?

I wrote him a letter. I drew the picture of the bones and guts that I was going to look like. I was like, “This is who you’re going to be talking to in the scene.” I was walking home from therapy, literally eating a baguette and walking down the street feeling like sh*t, and I got a call from an unknown number with a Baltimore area code. I was like, “Hello?” And he was like, “Sarah, it’s John Waters. I’ll see you on set.” And I was like, “Oh.”

Was that your first time meeting him in person?

Yeah, it was awesome. All the producers, everyone on set was the biggest fan of him ever. It was just all movie freaks, and so everybody was sneaky taking pictures of us laughing.

Including that opening sequence, there’s obviously a lot going on in the special that I imagine you probably didn’t get to do on the road. How did the show evolve from stage to the final product?

The show is really intense and loud and in your face, and it’s almost like a total sensory experience. So me and the director, Cody [Critcheloe], were just like, “We don’t want that to be flattened when people are watching it on their phones on the toilet.” So [we tried] as best as possible to keep it energetic and crazy.

I can’t reach out into the people’s living rooms and roast them at home, but I’m like, “What is a way to make people feel like they’re really there?” [For] the editing with the final meditation, we just wanted to make it feel like you’re actually in an unconscious or something, like you actually are meditating and the physical reality is melting away and you’re just in a kind of psychedelic psychic nightmare kind of thing.

How long does a special this take to make?

A really long time. I’ve been touring for 10 years, and this is my first special. So the material has been coming together for a while. The videos I had made over a course of years, the ones that are embedded in the show. They range [from] videos that I’ve made myself with clay and wax and glue, [to] videos that my friend Izzi [Galindo], who is an amazing prosthetics artist, built. And then even just pitching it to people and being like, “I know this sounds crazy, but we need a little bit of a budget to do something.” Because stand-up specials are cheap. And we’re like, “But what if it wasn’t cheap?”

The pre-filmed sequences genuinely had the audience screaming in horror at some parts. What goes through your mind when people are reacting like that?

My favorite part of the show is the repulsion and attraction thing, because if the grossness and the horror stuff is repelling people, comedy brings people back in. So I just like playing with that, grossing people out, and then I say something funny, so they have to kind of come crawling back in. Sometimes it’s too much. People leave. I’ve had people throw up, but that’s the most fun part.

I loved the outfit that you were wearing; it felt kind of like a nod to ’80s comics. How did you settle on that look?

It’s very Paula Poundstone and a little Rodney Dangerfield. Actually, the pants are… There’s a Cabbage Patch Kid doll that has those pants basically, so I just literally drew what I wanted, and my friend Ashley [Dudek], who’s a costume designer at SNL, made it exactly.

Speaking of SNL, do you ever workshop your material with your co-stars?

There’s some stuff in the special that I had started… I did a Weekend Update thing once where I was talking about the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and how my underwear doesn’t look anything like the G-strings on the runway. A Weekend Update segment is four minutes, and I just kept going. I wrote 20 minutes of underwear jokes, and they’re all in the special basically. So it’s just stuff like that. I’ll have a kernel of an idea, and I’ll start writing it, and then on my own I’ll just kind of explode it.

You’re on your fifth year at SNL; you’re coming off of SNL 50. How are you feeling about the season so far?

I was editing the special kind of right up until going back to work, so shifting gears has been whiplash-y and startling, but also kind of fun. The show has forced me to like, “Hey, you actually have to write a joke, you can’t just be screaming about poop all the time.” OK. You’re right.

And I feel like the show has kind of made me more grounded — I know it’s funny after watching that to think of anything being grounded that I ever do — but I’m in drag at work, basically. They put me in a lot of blond wigs. I’m a normal woman who’s like, “Hey, Grandma, why are you…” Whatever.

Has there been a standout moment for you so far this season?

Bowen [Yang] wrote this sketch this past weekend, the Bobs versus the Bangs boot camp sketch, and just, I am so obsessed with him and the fact that he even puts me in a skit. I, like, literally, I’m sometimes late on my lines when I’m in a sketch with him because I’m literally just watching him like he’s a TV show. I forget that I’m in the sketch. So I’ll just be watching him and laughing and be like, “Oh, right, I have to talk.”

How do you want people to feel walking away from the special?

I don’t even know about how I want them to walk away; I want them to walk towards it. I’m worried that people will see the poster and be like, “Oh, this isn’t for me. This is for bisexuals in Brooklyn with gay little hair cuts.” But I promise there’s something in it for everyone. There’s jokes, there’s stuff to look at. It’s definitely not boring. I hope people walk away not bored.

And if there are people out there who only know you from SNL, what warnings would you give them before going into the special?

Do not eat while watching.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.