OUT WITH A BANG
Bernhard closes decade, Joe’s Pub run with shows
Sandra Bernhard is closing out the decade on a whitehot career streak and capping it in style — on a New York stage.
The 2010s saw her launch an award-winning satellite radio talk show (“Sandyland” on SiriusXM), and a return to prime-time television. She starred in the sitcoms “2 Broke Girls,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the controversy-plagued “Roseanne” spinoff “The Conners” and, most recently, Ryan Murphy’s Peabody Award-winning drama series “Pose.”
Now, she’s commemorating her 10th anniversary of live holiday shows at Greenwich Village hot spot Joe’s Pub with “Sandy’s Holiday Extravaganza: A Decade of Madness and Mayhem,” running through Dec. 31 with two shows a night.
“The show is really … my little road map through life. And it brings all of the little moments of ‘Sandyland,’ the radio show, to life,” the 64year-old comedy queen told the Daily News. “There’ll be a couple of choice pieces from other shows, and then there’ll be a lot of new stuff and musical numbers and just things that make people feel good and rock their world.”
Bernhard actually contemplated ending her marathon Joe’s Pub engagement last year but wanted to have a more suitable sendoff.
“Last year, I thought, ‘I can’t do this again. I’ve got to take a break,’ ” she said. “And then I thought, ‘No, I’ve got to do it this year,’ because I like things to have a real [ending] and I just wanted to put a pin on it. Put an exclamation on it. Ten years just seemed right.”
Raised in Tucson, Ariz., the former Beverly Hills nail salon manicurist first gained national attention on NBC’s 1977 series “The Richard Pryor Show” after cutting her teeth mastering observational comedy at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles.
She’s since written three books and recorded over a dozen albums over a rich career that kicked into full swing with her feature film debut as a psychotic fan of a late-night talk show host in Martin Scorsese’s 1983 satire “The King of Comedy” with Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis. Bernhard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for best supporting actress.
The longtime partner of former Vanity Fair publicist Sara Switzer and mother of daughter Cicely, now 21, Bernhard is recognized as an LGTBQ+ pioneer for her portrayal of Nancy Bartlett on ABC’s hit sitcom “Roseanne,” one of the first openly lesbian characters on television.
Looking ahead to 2020, Bernhard said she’s ready to do another television comedy special after more than two decades.
“My last special was on HBO when I was in the last part of my pregnancy,” Bernhard said. “It’s really time for another special, and I’ve got all those years of material.”
As far as performing live, Bernhard said “it’s something you really have to nurture.”
“And I’ve been doing that my whole career,” she continued. “I’ll never stop performing live because it’s the best thing you get to do in your life.”