{"id":1044647,"date":"2025-12-09T19:38:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T16:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1044647"},"modified":"2025-12-09T19:38:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T16:38:46","slug":"sarah-squirm-on-her-sick-new-hbo-special-live-in-the-flesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1044647","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Squirm on Her Sick New HBO Special, \u2018Live + in the Flesh\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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TV & Movies<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gross-Out Comedy, But Make It Fashion: Sarah Sherman on Her Sick New Special, Live + in the Flesh<\/em><\/h1>\n
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By <\/span>Emma Specter<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Photo: Greg Endries\/HBO<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There are parts of Sarah Sherman\u2019s new comedy special, Sarah Squirm: Live + in the Flesh<\/em>, that will feel intimately familiar to students of stand-up. As she cavorts onstage, the loose physicality of her alter ego Sarah Squirm calls to mind fellow Saturday Night Live<\/em> alum Gilda Radner, and some of her best jokes are punctuated with Seinfeld<\/em> riffs. In terms of her material, though, Sherman is absolutely doing her own thing, serving up tonally wild yet genuinely thoughtful bits about everything from mammograms to politics (\u201cI\u2019m a cool Jew. I believe in a free Palestine\u2026. Of course<\/em> I do, I\u2019m Jewish and it\u2019s free\u201d).<\/p>\n

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Ahead of the special\u2019s release on December 12, Vogue<\/em> nabbed some time with Sherman in between SNL<\/em> rehearsals to talk about successfully shooting her shot with John Waters and gender affirmation via a Mondo Guerra clown tie.<\/p>\n

Vogue<\/em>: Can you tell me a little bit about this stand-up special\u2019s gross-out visuals and set design?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sarah Sherman:<\/strong> I worked with this collective called Dots, who are so genius. Oh my fucking God, I love working with theater people, because everything was so intentional. They were like, \u201cWhat if the door was a butthole?\u201d And that was something I was really excited to do\u2014just climb onstage out of a butthole for my first-ever comedy special. I sent them a drawing of a slime green door with an eyeball, and they were like, \u201cRight, because the eyeball\u2019s infected.\u201d They made the handle on the door a little hand, like a sex toy for fisting, and they painted the nails on the hand.<\/p>\n

Beautiful!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know!<\/p>\n

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Photo:<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

How did you get John Waters to appear in this, and what was it like working with him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I mean, I was frozen in fear. I hope I acted cool. I hope I made a good impression. He\u2019s so fun. I wrote him a letter and drew a picture of the pile of bones and goo that he\u2019s interfacing with in the scene, and was like, \u201cWill you be in my stand-up special? You\u2019re in a crypt, and you\u2019re talking to this.\u201d And then the bones-and-guts drawing was there. I put my phone number in the letter, and a couple of days later, I got a call from an unknown number with a Baltimore area code. He was like, \u201cHey, it\u2019s John Waters, I\u2019ll see you on set.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How did you balance writing this material and putting this special together with your SNL<\/em> work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I usually tour on my time off from the show, so spending the summer taping a special felt right. It was a very bloated hour, and then editing was the excruciating process of cutting out half an hour because the producers were like, \u201cLeave them wanting more.\u201d I\u2019m such a maximalist that I\u2019d never considered that. I like to say, \u201cOverstay your welcome, and make people miserable.\u201d So cutting out half an hour was hard.<\/p>\n

Tell me everything about that pink mic. Did you get that made?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We wanted to do an eyeball microphone where the pink would be the guts and the ball of the microphone would be an eyeball, and then the stem of the microphone would be the viscera and roots, but I put the mic in my mouth so much that we were like, \u201cOh, we can\u2019t put anything on top of this microphone.\u201d<\/p>\n

How would you describe the vibe of the outfit you wear to perform this special?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My costume designer, Ashley, who I work with at SNL<\/em>, was working on the special, as was my makeup girl Rachel, who\u2019s literally doing my face right now. Say hi to Rachel.<\/p>\n

Hi, Rachel!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel glued all the sequins to my face for the special, and my SNL<\/em> hair girl Gina was there too, which felt really nice. Your hair, makeup, and costume people are the ones closest to your body, so it made me feel safe and taken care of. I drew a picture of the costume, sent it to Ashley, and the references were a Cabbage Patch doll from the \u201980s in a clown outfit and Paula Poundstone. Ashley literally made it exactly, and then her friend Karen did all the rhinestones. Mondo Guerra did the foam tie, which was just a tie that I had. Even though I was like, It\u2019s my first special, and I want to do a crazy costume<\/em>, I\u2019m so comfortable in that tie. The most gender affirmation I ever feel is when I\u2019m in my foam clown tie by Mondo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This conversation has been edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/sarah-sherman-live-and-in-the-flesh-interview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TV & Movies Gross-Out Comedy, But Make It Fashion: Sarah Sherman on Her Sick New Special, Live + in the Flesh By Emma Specter December 9, 2025 Photo: Greg Endries\/HBO There are parts of Sarah Sherman\u2019s new comedy special, Sarah Squirm: Live + in the Flesh, that will feel intimately familiar to students of stand-up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-1044647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1044647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1044647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1044647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1044647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}