Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Sarah Silverman Says She Was Fired From Film Project Over Blackface Clip

(JTA) — Sarah Silverman said she was fired from a movie role after producers saw a clip of her in blackface, the Jewish comedian said in an interview on The Bill Simmons Podcast.

“I recently was going to do two days on a movie, a sweet part in a cool little movie, then at 11 p.m. the night before they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode,” Silverman said, referring to her now canceled Comedy Central sitcom “The Sarah Silverman Program.”

In the episode, Silverman put on blackface in an effort to prove a point about who faces more discrimination, Jews or African-Americans.

In the interview, she said she had changed as a person and that she understood that wearing blackface is “never OK.”

Blackface, which has a long history in American entertainment, is considered deeply racist and offensive to African-Americans.

This is not the first time that Silverman has courted controversy with a racially charged comedy routine. In 2016, she appeared on the TBS show “Conan” dressed as Adolf Hitler.

Silverman recently was subject to racial harassment herself: Last week, she tweeted an undated video of a Florida pastor delivering an anti-Semitic rant in which he called for God to loose his divine wrath upon her.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.