Sarah Silverman is opening up about her past use of racial slurs in her stand-up and how she’s shifted to less offensive material in the years since.
In a recent sit-down with Rolling Stone, the comedian said she once felt she could use slurs while performing stand-up because she was “playing a character” and knew her real intentions were “always good.” However, upon reflection years later, she now sees the error in her thinking.
“I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, ‘We are all liberal so we can say the n-word. We aren’t racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff,’” Silverman explained. “I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were fucking ignorant.”
Silverman was heavily criticized for appearing in blackface during a 2007 episode of her show “The Sarah Silverman Program.” She also caught heat from Asian American activist groups for using Asain slurs in her material.
Silverman has since apologized for such incidents and now sees herself as more “PC.” However, she maintains that her move away from offensive humor was not out of fear of upsetting the masses.
“I don’t think of myself as being PC out of fear,” Silverman says. “Some people got mad at me for apologizing. I only did that because I was sorry. That’s a really great rule of thumb: Only apologize when you’re sorry. Always apologize when you’re sorry.”