BRIDGET EVERETT
After studying music and opera at Arizona State University, the Kansas native got her start by playing a liquored-up party girl who applies to be Carrie’s assistant in the rst Sex and the City movie. She yukked it up on Inside Amy Schumer from 2013 2016 and had her own Comedy Special called Bridget Everett: Gynecological Wonder in 2015.
But her most memorable work has been on the cabaret circuit, as a bawdy crooner with a tendency to strip, spit wine, and occasionally mount her fans in the audience. “You gotta make a living,” quips the comedian, who has developed quite the cult following. “I just nished doing a run of shows at Joe’s Pub [in New York City]. It was modi ed because times are changing. But we still had a lot of fun.”
How Somebody Somewhere Became a Reality
After scoring a development deal at HBO in 2018, Everett called friend and uber-producer Carolyn Strauss about helping her put together a show with writers Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen. “I think a lot of people have seen my live show and have been like, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be fun to do something with her?’ But we never could gure it out. So, I got lucky with Carolyn, Paul and Hannah.”
Thureen suggested a show based on Everett’s life growing up in Manhattan, Kansas, where she swam competitively and participated in show choir. In Somebody Somewhere, Everett plays Sam, a 40-something singer who returns to her Midwest home to care for her dying sister. While her days are spent working at a test-grading center and helping her family cope with the endless disappointments of life, Sam nds joy by performing in an underground cabaret at a local church.
“By the end [of the pitch] I was so overcome with emotion. I’ve always kind of done things like, follow my gut, you know? There were a lot of personal elements in it, like the singing aspect and the sister who passed away, and Murray Hill as Fred Rococo. Murray’s one of my best friends in New York, I lost my sister, and music is the great love of my life. I gured the more personal we made it, the better. It felt more interesting to think about, what if somebody like me never went to New York? I love my hometown, but I left it for a reason. Family for many people is complicated, and I was in a place where I never really felt like I belonged, even though I had a lot of friends. That shaped me, but in a good way.”
How She Cast the Show
One of the more endearing qualities of Everett’s show is how the entire cast looks like actual average people, not Hollywood’s version of average people. “That starts with who’s number one on the call sheet. I don’t look like your typical leading lady,” Everett says. “We wanted that to be re ected all the way down the call sheet. It just feels like a truer re ection of the people I see in my life. I have some very beautiful friends, but they’re not top models. You know what I mean? We cast people we could see on the streets of the ‘Little Apple’, which is what we call Manhattan, Kansas.”
Everett was also hands-on when it came to out tting her actors. “We didn’t want the Midwest to be represented as corny. When I lived there, I used to just wash and go and grab something comfortable. There weren’t a lot of options for a plus-size woman. So, I would just buy T-shirts and cut the neck out. I just wanted it to feel real that way.”
How She Achieved the Look
Though it’s semi-autobiographical, Somebody Somewhere is actually shot in the suburbs of Chicago, not smalltown Kansas. “I think it would have been really self-conscious,” admits Everett about the possibility of shooting back home (though production did get some B-roll in Manhattan). “The fact that we did it in Illinois felt like we were in our own little world and in a little bubble. It never felt like, Oh my, holy shit, this is gonna be on HBO.’
Fortunately, the folks back in Manhattan are pleased with the results. “I think my hometown is happy and that is probably one of the greatest reliefs, because my brother and my mom still live there, and I don’t want her to walk around town with her head hung in shame.”
What People Think
Initially, Everett worried the show wouldn’t resonate with HBO subscribers. “I was nervous for a number of reasons. It’s very personal, so I felt like if people didn’t like the show, they didn’t necessarily like me, you know? But more than that, I was nervous because it doesn’t feel like a cool show. It’s not built as a comedy. I think of it as a slice of life. And I was just concerned that because it wasn’t cool that it might not catch re. Carolyn says it’s a show that likes to wear its heart on its sleeve, and I think that’s true. I think that we got lucky. I think the more speci c you make something, the more universal its appeal if you get it right. So, while it’s not doing Game of Thrones numbers, it has found its audience and they seem to be very enthusiastic. The show is a nice bit of sunshine for the sort of hell that everybody’s been living through right now.”