HBO series “Somebody, Somewhere,” stars Bridget Everett — who just so happens to be a graduate of ASU.
Prior to her television career, Everett was a cult favorite cabaret singer in New York City, where she’s renowned for her over the top performances of super-explicit, bawdy musical comedy. But “Somebody, Somewhere” introduced the world to a more nuanced version of Everett.
The series is inspired by her life — she grew up in Manhattan, Kansas, and in the show, she plays a character named Sam Miller, a messy, talented, tortured soul who moves home to Manhattan after the death of one of her sisters. The story follows Sam’s attempt to re-adjust to small-town life, get her life on track and reconnect with her singing voice. It’s funny and tender and awkward and profound — and in 2023, it won a Peabody Award. The awards committee specifically referenced Somebody, Somewhere’s, quote, “combination of pathos and hilarity.”
Everett joined The Show to discuss how she and the writers of the series found that delicate balance.
Full conversation
BRIDGET EVERETT: I wanted something that was a reflection of the way I see my life, like with my friends, you know, you laugh, you cry, you, you know, you fart, all of it.
SAM DINGMAN: Yes, yes, well that, I mean, that makes me think of a number of scenes where basically those exact things happen.
EVERETT: Oh my God, it was just happening with my friends last night in real life.
DINGMAN: Can I ask what felt important to you about capturing that kind of dynamic? Did you feel like it was missing from other things that you watch?
EVERETT: Well, I don't know, I just felt like we didn't focus so much on like a big story engine and a big drive. It was more about the moments between people. And so anytime anything felt like it was there just for a laugh or it wasn't meaningful, we just took it out.
So our, you know, in our first season, our episodes were kind of short because we just cut everything out, you know. We just wanted it, we want everything in there to mean something and to feel like you were kind of sitting in a room and just observing the people there, if that makes any sense.
DINGMAN: That, that does make sense. That does make sense. And it makes me think about one of, I'm sure, the most famous or maybe infamous scenes in the whole show, which is the scene where your character Sam Miller and Jeff Hiller's character Joel are both having some intestinal distress. And on the phone with each other on your respective toilets. It's so gross, but it also feels like this is why these characters love each other because they can share literally everything, and it felt like what an extreme but completely honest way of illustrating that.
EVERETT: Yeah, you know, it just reminded me of a kind of intimacy that you, you crave, like, and that Sam would really want to have with somebody, you know, that you could only do something like that with one special person in the world.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, I mean, I think for me that's one of the things that works so well about it is that it doesn't feel like it's there in a, “can you believe we put this on a screen,” but more like this is the way people who really trust each other interact.
EVERETT: Nothing in the show is like, wouldn't it be wild if we did this? It's more a lot of times stuff that's happened in my life or or some version of what kind of happened in my life. With my sister when I was little, like she would just sit on the toilet and like show me how to put a tampon in and and I was like, that's sisterhood and it's, you know, you just see that kind of stuff and like, I know it's it's kind of vulgar and maybe base level humor, but to me it's real life.
DINGMAN: Well, one of the other things I love most about the show is that it also sits very heavily in moments of life that are very hard to deal with. Like, I'm thinking of the moment where Sam goes to the doctor and she hasn't been to the doctor in a long time and she's sitting there in this gown. And the gown doesn't really fit, and the doctor has just told her, you got to make some big changes in your life.
[CLIP OF SHOW PLAYS]
DINGMAN: And then the doctor walks out of the room and the camera just sits there staring at Sam for a little while and she's like processing all of that.
EVERETT: Yeah, cause I think those moments are, you know, I've, I've, again, I've been to the doctor and like I have the gown that doesn't go over my, my big old beaver tails, you know, I'm like I'm sitting there and, and, but, you know, Sam, in that moment, it's like, it's like she doesn't care enough about herself to take care of herself. It's hard to hear it and I think it's important to kind of sit with the person after that cause I like to see the landmine exploding on them or in them, you know.
DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah, well, that makes me think about a line from the show that just made me like vibrate with recognition is when she finally gets up the nerve to go for a walk with Iceland, who is, this character who is renting, she and her sister's father's house and who Sam has developed these feelings for, and Sam is making all these self-deprecating jokes and Iceland just looks at her and says, “I don't like the way you put yourself down.” And you can see that it, I don't know, like destroys Sam to be that recognized.
EVERETT: Yeah. It's so true. And you know, like Darri, the actor, like didn't really want to say that line because I think he thought it was sort of direct or something, but I was like, it really hit me. Like it hit, hit me in my heart. I was like, and that has to be in there because I remember when he looked at me and he said it, it was, it was like, I was like, oh my God, this is Sam that's being affected right now, or Bridget, cause that is like, oh my God, was a good moment for Sam to hear and Bridget.
DINGMAN: Well, can I, can I ask you a little bit about that? Because we meet a lot of characters in Sam's life in Kansas, whether it's Joel who we have talked about, who's her friend who she can have intestinal distress with on the phone, or Brad, Joel's boyfriend, or Fred Rococo, who is this like gender nonconforming person who lives in the town. Less intelligent shows would put characters like that in a town in the Midwest and have a lot of the action of the series be about them being seen as different and having to navigate that difference.
And something that I think is really beautiful that the show does is it just shows us their day to day life. They have natural community with each other, they've all found each other already. And it's less about them finding community in an unlikely place and more about them confronting the things about themselves that are really hard to deal with no matter who you are.
EVERETT: Well, it was, what would happen if I didn't move to New York, what my life look like if I had stayed in Kansas or something cause I'm from there, and I think you know, these are the kinds of friends that I have in New York, and I think these are the kinds of friends I would have if I stuck around Manhattan, Kansas.
And also, you know, if you're trans or something living in a smaller town like there are gonna be some challenges, right? Like or anywhere, anywhere these days, you know what I mean like it feels like that's understood, you know, like, so I would rather just see how people live and how they connect with other people and just, you know, and assume that that that those things exist but that that that's not the story that we want to tell.
There's so much that's about people's trauma because of who they are and it's probably In some ways a little more political to do something that's just about their day to day lives, because to me, these are, these are all our friends, our neighbors, our community. What's the big f*cking deal, who they love, you know, or how they live, like we're all in this together.
DINGMAN: Yeah, well, as you were saying that, it made me think the character whose way that they express themselves in the world gets put to the test the most is Tricia, Sam's sister, and for the first maybe half of the show is, she thinks, doing a good job of performing the kind of mainstream life of like owning a small business in a small town, being a mom, kind of coloring inside the lines, and then her reality gets blown up, and she ends up stepping into this much truer version of herself and yeah, so it's kind of like the person who's making the most conventional choices that ends up having the most unconventional journey.
EVERETT: Yeah, and I, and I love that and that's on purpose because in in my way, you know, in my, like I had friends that when, when I would bring some, you know, a friend home from New York who, you know, I brought my friend home who was gay, and like another friend of mine said, “you know, love the sinner, hate the sin,” and, and so it's in the show in the pilot episode and I'm like, are you serious? Like, is this, is this how you talk about people? Like, like you, we, we just had a wonderful night together. We're all hanging out.
And anyway, so I, I think it's important for that person to love the sin or hate the sin, the person that's gonna say that, that's the person who needs to do the growth and that's the person who needs to change.
