Sarah Sherman Is Grosser Than You Think
Sarah Sherman doesn’t just challenge comedic boundaries; she pulverizes them. Her performance style, a jarring collision of body horror and stand-up tropes, has quickly established her as a singular voice in comedy, particularly through her work on Saturday Night Live and her recent Max special. But the deliberately shocking act of “Sarah Squirm” wasn’t a sudden invention. its a carefully constructed persona built on a foundation of mainstream influences, a rebellious streak, and a willingness to embrace the “freak” within.
The impact of Sherman’s act is visceral.A recent performance involved a grotesque reveal: opening her legs wide to reveal a mouth that, smiling spookily, spurted out chunky period blood from between its teeth. “Look at the screen!” Sherman yelled, as audience members reacted with a mixture of squeals and horrified glee. She deliberately layers her unsettling material with the familiar cadence of a macho comedian – “D’you know what I mean?” and “You kidding me?” – creating a disorienting effect.The result, as one observer noted, is a “bizarro blend of Rodney Dangerfield and Hannah wilke.”
Following a taping of her special, a visit to Sherman’s dressing room revealed a stark contrast to the stage persona. She sat huddled with her long-term boyfriend, Dan Sloan, a sweet-faced academic. Stripped of her clown makeup and polka-dot top, she appeared slight and pretty in a white undershirt, her glittery eyeshadow the only remaining trace of performance.she suddenly resembled, as one account described, “a nice upper-middle-class Jewish girl from Long Island,” which, in essence, she is. A hug offered in greeting was quickly withdrawn, accompanied by genuine concern: “I’m so sorry-am I really sweaty?”
Sherman’s upbringing in Great Neck, Long Island, hardly foreshadowed her current career path. Her father owns a children’s clothing company and commutes daily to Manhattan via the Long Island Rail Road. Her mother is a retired teacher, and her younger brother works in market research in the city.She remains close to her family, though she acknowledges a certain tension, stating her parents are “hot, and I’m sort of reactionary to them.”
As a teenager, Sherman was a well-adjusted student and athlete, running track and working as a lifeguard and swim teacher.While not part of the popular crowd,she was well-liked. “I was funny, and when you’re funny you can be really socially mobile,” she explained. She even received an invitation from the high school quarterback, which she declined. Her true passion, from a young age, was comedy.
her early comedic influences were rooted in network television. She was captivated by sitcoms like Seinfeld and The Nanny, appreciating their ”prickly…tri-state jewish humor.” (She continues to incorporate the slap-bass theme from Seinfeld into her sets.) Later, she discovered the sharp wit of Joan Rivers and Kathy Griffin through E!’s Fashion Police and Bravo’s My Life on the D-List, respectively.
Sherman began frequenting stand-up shows in the city with friends (“We’d be, like, ‘Louis C.K. is doing a drop-in at the Creek and the Cave!'”) and joined the improv club at great Neck South High School. They staged comedy shows in the basement of the local library, which housed a youth community centre called Levels. Attending Levels carried a social stigma, as fellow great Neck native Ronald Bronstein, who executive-produced Sherman’s special, put it: “If you went to Levels, you had a taint on you.” Sherman, though, embraced the unconventional atmosphere. “I thought Levels was cool as everyone was a crazy fucking loser,” she said. It was there she earned the nickname “Squirm” from her peers: “They called me ‘Squirmin’ Sherman’ because I was sort of skinny and gross.”
