Sandra Bernhard Talks MARTY SUPREME, Her Evolving Comedy and More for TOWN & COUNTRY Magazine

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Sandra Bernhard is the March cover star of TOWN & COUNTRY, which is celebrating its 180^th anniversary this year. Decades after she charmed Scorsese, flirted with Letterman, and made friends with Madonna, Bernhard is still giving Babe Paley—she’s giving high glamour, she’s moving forward— and the audience loves it. With a newly announced role on THE WHITE LOTUS Season 4 and recent appearances in MARTY SUPREME and SEVERANCE, Bernhard shows no signs of slowing down. “The Mouth that Roared” by Mike Albo, is on townandcountrymag.com now and in the March issue, available everywhere by February 24.

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On being on the cover of Town & Country: “It’s ironic that I’m going to be on the cover of Town & Country,” she says, “because, of course, I would look at the magazine and think wistfully, I’ll never be that kind of woman.”

On how poking fun at the famous and fashionable has changed: “It’s harder—much harder,” she says. “Everybody thinks they’re a star, and the people who really are talented, they’ve fallen by the wayside.”

On resisting the “iconic” label and continuing to evolve in her work: “I appreciate it, but I don’t want to be seen as, like, iconic,” she says. “What I want from people is for them to come to my shows and know that I’m still loving it and writing and creating. Sometimes the work just gets more compelling as the person goes along.”

On what’s next: “People always ask, ‘Do you have a five-year plan,” she says. “I’m like, ‘How can you have a five-year plan in show business?’ You can get hired on a TV series, and six months later it’s canceled. It’s sort of out of my hands.” She stabs her fork into her greens. “The only plan I have—and it’s endless—is writing material, doing my shows, staying relevant, keeping myself strong.”

On knowing her limits: “I’ve never been the girl next door,” she says.

On meeting her partner, Sara Switzer: She met her partner of 26 years, Sara Switzer, in 1999, after Switzer, an editor at Harper’s Bazaar at the time, assigned her to write an essay about Y2K. They had never met in person, but one morning Bernhard was putting her musical director, Mitch Kaplan, into a car after a gig out of town, when a woman walked by. “She kind of smiled at me, walked past me, and then stopped and came back. She goes, ‘Oh, I’m your editor.’ I went, ‘Oh my god, I haven’t started writing the piece, but I’m going to.’ And she laughed.” They made plans to have a drink. Bernhard was doing a performance at the Beacon Theatre and invited Switzer to attend. In the middle of a song-and-dance number, Bernhard’s top popped off. “I was standing onstage naked, basically, and normally I would have been like, Whatever, but because Sara was there, I didn’t want her to see me,” she says. She found a way to cover herself and eventually brought Switzer to an afterparty. They made it back to Bernhard’s apartment, “and the rest is history,” she says. “If neither one of us had been on the street at eight o’clock in the morning, I never would have connected with her.”

On her biting 1992 HBO special, Sandra After Dark, which blurred fame and comedy and was jam-packed with boldface names: “There’s no way that would happen today,” she says. “They’d make you use people who have no discernible talent whatsoever.”

On growing up dreaming of a life beyond her hometown: “My friends and I used to go to the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix on a Saturday night when there was nothing to do,” she says. “We would watch planes take off, and I’d fantasize about the day I was going to get on a plane and go someplace and never come back.”

[Photo Credit: Hunter Abrams & Sam Lee for Town & Country Magazine]

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