Comic regrets her TV sketch

Sarah Silverman has admitted she was ‘fucking ignorant’ to don blackface for her American TV show.

In a 2007 episode of her Comedy Central series The Sarah Silverman Show, she blacked up and said: ‘I look like the beautiful Queen Latifah’ before entering a baptist church and proclaiming: ‘I’m black today.’ 

She also used racial slurs in the show, which ran from 2007 until 2010.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine she said: ‘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."

‘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.’

In 2019 she revealed she was fired from a movie when the sketch resurfaced, prompting much criticism – saying at the time that she didn’t fight the decision. 

The previous year, the comedian, now 57, admitted she was ‘horrified’ by the blackface sketch, telling GQ: ‘I don’t stand by the blackface sketch. I’m horrified by it, and I can’t erase it. I can only be changed by it and move on.

‘That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism. I don’t get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person anymore.’

Silverman has previously also apologised for cruel jokes she’d made about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, prompting a backlash from those who thought she should not have backed down.

She told Rolling Stone. ‘I don’t think of myself as being PC out of fear. Some people got mad at me for apologising. I only did that because I was sorry. That’s a really great rule of thumb: Only apologise when you’re sorry’ – then adding: ‘Always apologise when you’re sorry."

Published: 19 May 2025