Sarah Silverman once did blackface for a 2007 episode of The Sarah Silverman Program, and the resurfaced image caused her to get fired from a movie recently.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, 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,” Sarah said on the Bill Simmons podcast. “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.”
They then went on to speak about “cancel 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,” Sarah added. “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. 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.’”
Sarah Silverman continued, “It’s OK to go, ‘Wow, look at this back then. That was so f*cked up looking at it in the light of today of what we know,’ but to hold that person accountable if they’ve changed with the times, like for me … I held myself accountable. I can’t erase that I did that, but I can only be changed forever and do what I can to make it right for the rest of my life. If I look back on my old self and don’t cringe, there’s something wrong. Because if you’re putting yourself out there, it’s not going to be timeless.”
