Sarah Sherman‘s debut special, Sarah Squirm: Live + In The Flesh, begins with her body reassembling from a pile of viscera and arts and crafts garbage. It only gets more disgusting from there.

The 32-year-old comedian and actress has fortified her career as a Saturday Night Live utility player — one who frequently makes high-concept cameos at the Weekend Update desk with recurring bits aimed at humiliating Colin Jost. She played a rabbi in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, voiced a water tower in Severance and even begged for a bit part on General Hospital. But her heart, she says, has always been in the absurd, intentionally grating and sometimes deeply gross stage work she performs under her alter ego: Sarah Squirm.

The uninitiated will get a chance to see this side (and every side) of her when the special debuts December 12 on HBO, a culmination of years of work she described in a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast *I’m Having an Episode *(Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple). And, though there are artfully constructed body gags on stage and in accompanying video pieces, she assured her platform — and potential viewers — that none of the genitals on display are actually her own.

**For the people who don’t know your stand-up, how would you describe this show and your approach to stage comedy? **

An assault on the senses. It’s quite an ear beating and an eye beating, as well. I hope that the energy that people feel in the comedy club is felt in their living rooms at home. I really wish it was a four-dimensional experience — that they could get scratch and sniff cards, but that’s just not something we could figure out with the time constraints.

**What are the smells in the room when you do it live? ** I’m moving around a lot, and I’m in polyester, so it doesn’t smell awesome. I have one joke where I refer to this green slime on the set, and I’m like, “I scraped that out of my underwear.”

**You’ve been working on this material for a very long time. How did you shop it? **

I’ve been touring for a billion years. I love making crazy crap. So, standup specials, people hear that and they’re like, “Oh, that’s a cheap thing! We could shoot it on four iPhones and put it on YouTube.” But I really wanted to make something awesome. I really wanted to get my rocks off and to work with a lot of awesome people. HBO said “Sure.” And I was like, “But I’m going to show some hemorrhoids…” Great. Then I got an email from them after we taped it: “Just checking, your real genitals aren’t showing, right?” Yes, correct.

The practical effects, the video work, the staging, this all reads very expensive for a comedy special.

But it’s arts and crafts. Everything is made of crap. My director Cody [Critcheloe] and I were working on it for two years, and then all the designers were amazing. The set designers did the Oh, Mary! set. I sent them a drawing — that made no sense — of what I wanted this set to look like…. guts with a big nose and whatever. And then they just fucking built that in a day. It’s just crazy. People are amazing.

What have you learned about working with the crafts and props and makeup people at SNL? What they turn around in a week is wild, and with your bits, I’d imagine they either love working with you or see and just think, “Oh God. Here comes Sarah…”

They’re my life. Those are the people that you’re closest to. They’re in your face. They’re the most intimate people that you work with every single day. And we’ve been through really challenging production situations together. And so it was actually really nice working on a project that’s slower. There are so many limitations at SNL because of the time constraints. And then with this project, I really felt like I could just go all out. I have so much experience making my own stuff myself. There’s some videos in the special that I made six years ago in my garage in L.A. with glue and wax and $30. And then there’s the prosthetic labia and other effects that I had tried to make myself a long time ago. I didn’t know that you can’t glue silicone onto something without a silicone bonding agent! Once I was on SNL and I had a little bit of money, I was able to pay my friend Izzy to make these crazy professional prosthetics. So there’s a nice blend in the special.

When you opened for Adam Sandler, how did you adjust your act for a crowd that I would imagine would have a rainbow of reactions to your regular set?

That’s a good way to put it. (Laughs) What’s funny about Sandler is that his hour is very surreal, kind of psychedelic and very blue. He has a very dirty act. I like thinking of myself as a comedian who’s hired to give everybody a good time right before Sandler goes on. So I do try to be on my best behavior, but I’m still… I have a thanks to David Spade in the special because when we were on tour, he gave me a punch up for one of my jokes that is in the show: “I have so much old meat in my underwear, I got to keep a silica packet in there to keep it from going bad.” That’s a David Spade punch up original. ** That one really stays with you.**

Good. I hope you think about it when you close your eyes at night.

I was describing your stand-up to someone recently, and I was trying to find a comp. Nothing really comes to mind. There’s Julio Torres, if only for how far he’s willing to go in terms of aesthetic execution. But who do you consider your contemporaries or the people who influenced you the most?

I love Julio, because we live in such an ugly world. Even McDonald’s looks like a hospital now. They don’t have the ball pits with the trees and the chairs that are hamburgers. Everything’s gray. So, I love all of Julio’s stuff. When I watch TV, I don’t want to see how fucking shitty everything is now. I want to see something awesome. That’s why I love PeeWee’s Playhouse. I don’t like seeing my own mediocre world reflected back at me. I like going somewhere. I love Steph Tolev. We both talk about our buttholes and having too much body hair. Like, Phyllis Diller had a joke about her tits being so long they knocked around at her knees.

Sarah Sherman as a drunk raccoon on the Dec. 6, 2025, episode of Saturday Night Live. Will Heath/NBC

John Waters makes the cameo with the intro as well. How did that happen?

I wrote him a letter and said, “I worship you, obviously.” I drew a picture of the pile of bones and guts that I am at the beginning of the special before I formulate into the hideous human being that I am. “Hey, this would be your scene partner. Here’s my number.” Then, one day, I had an eviscerating therapy session. I picked up a loaf of bread on the way home and I’m just eating the fucking loaf of bread and get a call from an unknown number from a Baltimore area code. “Hey, it’s John Waters. See you on set!” Then, not to brag, he called me a “Gore Gore Girl,” which was a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie.

Does your therapist engage with your material at all?

Yes. I have no reason to believe he’s seen anything I’ve done, and he is featured heavily in the special, but when David Lynch died, he was like, “Would it be productive for us to talk about the passing of David Lynch today?” (Begins to pretend to cry) Yes!

**This is not a judgement, just the nineties kid in me, but there are a lot of people in your audience who’d I’d describe as goth — for lack of a better term. Is that your demo? **

The freaks come out to play! I like that a Sarah Squirm show can be a meeting of the goths. I had a show in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in the middle of the show there was a commotion going on in the front row. It was this guy, who you would think would be at one of my shows, and he’d been accidentally seated next to his old second grade elementary school teacher. It’s a nice confluence of Sarah Squirm heads and* SNL*’s Sarah normal heads. I like that. It’s world peace. ** I’m fascinated by this idea of “Sarah Normal.” I also think there was a sketch last season where you were told to channel “Sarah Sexual.” Being all these different Sarahs… is there a Sarah you haven’t explored and are you moving in a direction to just being Sarah?**

I think that the Sarah is Sarah Squirm. For real. I’m nicer in real life. I’m not actually rude! I’m just showing what it feels like to be neurotic.

Being Sarah Squirm, how would you compare your pitch success ratio on SNL with your fellow cast members and the writers?

I don’t have a good batting average. (Laughs) What’s interesting is that it’s rounded me out. I’m putting my whole ass into writing sketches where I’m like, “What if I’m a woman who’s like, ‘Heeeey!’” I’ve tried and I’ve bombed on air because of things that I’ve written. That is me trying to give it the old Sarah Normal college try.

**I’m dating our conversation, but it’s been a couple days since “Bob Army.” Tell me about making that one. **

Knowing Bowen Yang, every single day is Christmas. They put me in that sketch, and I was like, “My birthday came early this year!” That just hit at the table read. Everybody’s screaming, laughing and it was fit to print. It got an applause break at table read, which is unheard of. The crew was laughing. It was just a rare piece.

**It also stood out to me because you crammed a lot of the cast onto the stage at once. **

It’s really fun when you can make that work. The only reason why a lot of sketches like that aren’t written is because it’s hard. Everybody wants to have fun with all of their friends on TV, but it’s just a hard thing to pull off. Also, Glen Powell was amazing. He was really down to be all in with the entire cast.

**He really commits to the bit. **

I’m obsessed with him. He’s one to watch. (Laughs.)

You’ve been on SNL for five seasons now. You were there for the 50th. You’ve seen some frequent collaborators leave. It can’t be an old hat, but I imagine that it’s got to feel more like your job now. How has that evolution been for you?

My whole life, I wanted to be a comedian. I have the job. I am so grateful for that every day. My god, no disrespect, but I don’t have to clean out a storm drain every day. It’s amazing. But It’s a job that it’s hard to ever feel like you’re good at it. We have the schedule of a longshore fisherman: three weeks on, two weeks off. That third week, you’re like “I’m getting the hang of it again!” Then once you’re off work, you’re totally deprogrammed. I could be there for 35 years and never feel like I’m doing it right.

I’ve read that you go back and watch how your show performances land compared to the dress rehearsals. What do you get out of that?

Nothing! It’s just self cutting. Also, in the special, that’s me before SNL that’s the truest expression of me. And I got the job from a lot of that. There’s a five-minute chunk of material in the special that I did at my audition. So I got SNL and everybody was like, “What? That’s hilarious. That’s a freak accident.” My friends said, “You’ll probably say two lines as a waiter and get fired.” So it’s a happy accident. But you don’t want to get too comfortable. You always want to have a fire under your ass.

What from Live + in the Flesh was part of your SNL audition?

Just stand-up about my family and my long labia. They hired me on that. That’s the thing… people tell you that when you’re doing the SNL audition, you have to do five characters. It’s not true. You just have to be yourself.