Sarah Silverman: ‘I cringe at material I did 10 years ago'
“I don’t forgo any important part of my life for being on the internet,” says Sarah Silverman. We are supposed to be talking in person but she’s stuck in traffic so we’ve started the interview over the phone, which is awkward – although we are talking about how much she looks at her phone, so maybe it’s appropriate. She doesn’t have any self-imposed rules about screen time, “but I’m pretty good at making things a treat. I don’t go crazy with any one thing. Even a cigarette: I’ll just have one once in a while.” She pauses: “I guess I shouldn’t say that because this is a Disney movie I’m promoting.” Shortly after this exchange, the phone line mysteriously cuts dead. A loss of signal? Or has she gone too far off-message for her Mouse House handlers? We will never know.
No one could mistake Sarah Silverman for a children’s entertainer. Her even has a subsection devoted to “Controversies”. Silverman’s brand of comedy is famously hard-edged, boundary-teasing, close to the wind-sailing, but told with a smile, a wink and a, reprising her perky virtual video game character Vanellope von Schweetz. As the title suggests, she and the adorable lunk of the title (voiced by ), are whisked from their offline amusement arcade backwater to this brave new thing called “the internet”, which the movie depicts as a bustling, regimented, perpetually sunny metropolis dominated by corporations such as Google, eBay and, of course, Disney. So, not far removed from modern-day Los Angeles.
