NEW YORKER BRIDGET EVERETT FULL
NEW YORKER BRIDGET EVERETT SERIES

HBO has marketed Somebody Somewhere as a “coming of middle age,” a description that doesn’t just apply to Sam. Through Sam, Everett can dip a toe back into live performance-though in her case, it was the pandemic that kept her from the stage, not a psychological block. She’s also an outlet for the kind of catharsis Everett hasn’t had regular access to since the coronavirus shuttered theaters nearly two years ago. To Everett, Sam is a version of her younger self, a woman who doesn’t trust her instincts or feel uninhibited enough to make a stranger motorboat her chest, a signature move in Everett’s cabaret act. For Sam, it’s a safe, welcoming space to get back into singing, a hobby she abandoned years ago. Through Joel (Jeff Hiller), Sam meets a circle of misfits who come together for weekly “choir practice.” In truth, the gathering is more like an open mic night that happens to take place in a church. Somebody Somewhere picks up six months later, when a dead-end job at a standardized test grading center reunites Sam with an old high school classmate. Like her character Sam, Everett hails from the deep Midwest Everett, too, lost an older sister to cancer, a tragedy that robs Sam of the only relative who truly gets her. Somebody Somewhere may introduce Everett to a much larger audience, but that audience will meet a very different side of the performer who storms onstage swigging from a bottle of wine in a paper bag.Īnd yet the show, created by High Maintenance writers Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and produced by the Duplass brothers, is very much an extension of Everett. On the surface, it’s an imperfect star vehicle for the diva at its center. Where Everett is “larger than life,” the headline of a recent New Yorker profile, Somebody Somewhere is small and subdued where Everett is a New Yorker through and through, Somebody Somewhere settles into “the eighth-biggest town in Kansas,” where Everett’s character returns to take care of an ailing family member.

NEW YORKER BRIDGET EVERETT SERIES

With the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz on bass, Everett leads the crowd in an infectiously filthy sing-along: “What I, what I, what I gotta do / What I gotta do to get that dick in my mouth?”Įverett is, in sum, the exact opposite of Somebody Somewhere, the new half-hour HBO series she leads throughout its seven-episode first season.

NEW YORKER BRIDGET EVERETT FULL

Those outside the tri-state area can see her talents, among other things, on full display in Gynecological Wonder, a special that aired on Comedy Central in 2015.

Backed by her band, the Tender Moments, Everett’s stage persona is loud, lewd, and boozy, belting obscene original lyrics to songs with names like “ Titties” and “ Fuck Shit Up.” Before the pandemic, Everett put on regular performances at Joe’s Pub, the more intimate stage of the famed Public Theater. Bridget Everett has built something of a reputation in her years on New York’s alt-cabaret scene.

New yorker bridget everett