‘Madonna and I exploited our friendship’
Acid-tongued stand-up Sandra Bernhard tells Craig Mclean why ‘Sex and the City’ disgusts her – and recalls that famous ‘showmance’…
Acup of tea in a Covent Garden hotel with Sandra Bernhard starts with a muttered imprecation about Frances Mcdormand, in town for Bafta weekend and spotted across the room. It breaks off for a big hug with Kylie Minogue lunching in the restaurant and ends with a scowl at a pair of fellow American women whose voices are rattling the china. In between there are blazingly forthright opinions by the bucketload.
“She’s not the friendliest,” she says of Mcdormand, refusing to go over and say hello. “I’ve known [Minogue], though, for a long time, she’s very sweet. But these two broads [nodding towards the Americans] are driving me crazy… I’m not a misanthrope!” continues the acerbic stand up and star of classic sitcom Roseanne. “But hearing an American accent here in London is a bit of a bummer…”
Bernhard is in town for her latest stand-up show, Sandemonium, a mix of live music, cabaret and comedy. Rather than discuss that though, this acid-tongued Eighties cultural icon, known for her high-profile spats and vicious commentary on her fellow celebrities, is more interested in sharing some juicy opinions. Take Madonna, with whom she famously had a fleeting “showmance” during the late Eighties before the pair fell out.
“I had met her several times before, before she finally [became famous], up at Warren Beatty’s house, just when she was starting to go out with Sean Penn,” says Bernhard. “And she was a little cold, icy.” But then Madge attended Bernhard’s 1988 New York show Without You I’m Nothing, “because she was drawn to whatever was happening in the moment – because she likes to glom on to things like that. That’s how we started becoming friends.” Later that year, the pair appeared in matching outfits on Late Night With David Letterman and behaved so flirtatiously that many assumed they were having an affair.
“Yeah, we did exploit our friendship by going on Letterman and things like that,” Bernhard says now. “But I thought it was fun and positive – I don’t think two women of our generation had done anything like that.”
Not many women – or men for that matter – behave the way Bernhard does. In an era of vacuum-packaged celebrity where the PR machine polices every utterance, Bernard is a gust of admittedly caustic fresh air. Take her on pop’s current reigning queen, Taylor Swift. “I think she’s totally manufactured. All her angst. I don’t believe she has really been able to live a life that would reflect all this drama.”
Or on Sex and the City, the turnof-the-millennium comedy drama for which Bernhard was offered the part of lawyer Miranda Hobbes but declined it on account of the poor script and poor pay.
“The depiction of New York was unrealistic and disgusting. It’s irreparably changed cause of that show,” she chuckles, drily. “And I don’t like the way it portrayed friendships between women,” she continues. “I thought it anti-feminist. Women looking for men. Women spending too much money on shoes. Women doing things out of desperation. That’s exactly what I’m not about.”
Bernhard is a long-time resident of New York, but she was born in Flint, Michigan into a conservative Jewish family. She knew from the age of five she wanted to be a performer so, in 1973, at 18, she moved to LA, cutting her teeth on the stand-up circuit and performing her first one-woman show I’m Your Woman in 1985. She also moved into acting, notably with a role in Scorsese’s
The King of Comedy before being cast as Nancy Bartlett in Roseanne in 1991.
One of America’s most high-profile lesbians, she came out as bisexual in high school, but it was no big deal. “I was always tongue in cheek about everything,” she declares. “It was a different time, it wasn’t political. I had crushes on both sexes, but it wasn’t like I was trying to forge some identity.”
She and her partner, Sara Switzer, have been together for two decades and in 1998, aged 43, she gave birth to Cicely, although she has never divulged the paternity. She’s a lifelong champion of LGBTQ rights, so it’s surprising to hear her say that she thinks it’s no progress at all that gender and sexual orientation are today much more part of the conversation.
“All the fun’s been sucked out of it,” she frowns. “If you add in the whole trans movement, I think that people make big decisions way too soon. It’s something that happens over a period of time… So to suddenly decide you’re something else, at 16? It’s suffocating. It’s knocked the stuffing out of a lot of fun that people should be having.” She has equally strong views on Caitlyn Jenner, self-proclaimed Trump voter and arguably the world’s highest-profile transgender figure. She thinks Jenner’s transition has been weaponised to create an entertainment mini-franchise. “Whether or not this is something genuine – I think it was – she has exploited it. Politically, I can’t stand where she’s coming from. If you’re becoming a woman and dealing with all these changes in your psyche, it should be opening you up to other people’s struggle and emotion. You would think it would accentuate the understanding and empathy.”
In terms of advancing a wider mainstream discourse about the gay experience, Bernhard has done her bit. Her character on Roseanne ended up in a same-sex relationship after “running from the greasy arms of Tom Arnold,” she says of the thenhusband of creator and star Roseanne Barr, “into those of Morgan Fairchild, who’s equally unappealing, when you think about it,” she snorts. “And that just was fun.”
Bernhard will appear in the final episode of the blue-collar sitcom’s much-anticipated comeback series, which begins on March 27. But she admits to some unease about the show’s politics. Sure, she understands why the on-screen Roseanne would support Donald Trump. But as to the off-screen Roseanne’s allegiance to the Tweeter-in-chief, “I don’t know what she’s thinking,” she says.
There will be no mention of Trump in Sandemonium. “It’s not funny, it’s tragic, and when you’re inundated with it every night on the news there’s just nothing more to say. But my work is always inherently political,” she adds, “so I find ways of imbuing things without hitting you over the head.”
Similarly, there’s only a “little” #Metoo discussion because the topic “has already gone through 500 news cycles”. It’s perhaps no surprise that Bernhard hasn’t experienced sexual harassment “at all on the level of some of these women”. She admits she is someone who has a “What the f--- are you doing, asshole?” default stance.
She will, however, find ways of being personal – just not, of course, in the obvious way. She will not, for example, be discussing menopause.
“F--- no!” she laughs. “People spend so much time analysing the different junctures in their life.” So hers wasn’t debilitating or defining for her?
“It’s neither here nor there. Also, it’s private. I know I talk about a lot of private things in my life. But I don’t like clichés. Like, so many women talk about their periods. Just shut up! Go crawl under a rock in the forest and have your period,” Bernhard says, pointed, provocative and, for sure, political to the end.
Sandra Bernhard’s Sandemonium is at Ronnie Scott’s, London W1, tonight and tomorrow night
‘If you add in the whole trans movement, I think that people make big decisions way too soon’