by andrew j stillman
When you’ve been in the entertainment industry for over 40 years, one might think your material might be a little dated and stale. However, if your name is Sandra Bernhard, you’re the complete opposite.
Known for her upfront, brazen and brutally honest comedy shows as well as a broad range of acting credits that continue to grow, Bernhard is exactly where she’s meant to be and works hard to keep herself and what she talks about relevant.
“I hate being redundant,” she told The RAGE Monthly. “I’m very plugged into what’s happening politically and culturally, and that’s just always something I’ve been interested in. I try to stay away from the obvious conversations and material, but what I do is a very personal and anecdotal reflection of my life. Anything that’s political or cultural, I weave in as well as I can in the times we’re living in and try not to bore people to death with that.”
Growing up in Flint, Michigan introduced Bernhard to the life of factory workers, especially since the auto industry was at its peak during her childhood. “It was a very cozy, fun, intimate little town,” she said. “No question about it, it was very easy. I never grew up thinking about feeling different or on the outside. I had a great upbringing.”
When she was 10, her father relocated the family to Arizona, which initially introduced her to the juxtaposition between the Jewish Midwest and the Southwest. Back then, she said, it was unusual for people to leave Flint, and doing so felt really exotic. Not only that, it gave her a view of America from two different angles, which ultimately went on to serve her really well.
Determined since the age of 5 to be a performer, Bernhard did some traveling after high school before she landed herself in Los Angeles to start actively pursuing her career. She started gaining traction in the late 1970s and earned her celebrity status by the early 1980s, and her authenticity and outspoken opinions garnered her a lot of attention.
“I had so much to draw upon, whether it was my family, my grandparents coming from Russia, or the turn of the last century,” she said. “My father being a doctor, the Kennedy era, the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, the huge shift in music and culture — these were all things that were big influences for me. To this day, I still draw on those memories and textures and feelings because I think they’re really authentic and a great launching pad for me, personally, as a performer.”
Before hitting it big, Bernhard worked as a manicurist in LA, though her initial dreams saw her as a musical comedy star on Broadway. The move to Arizona, however, left her feeling like she didn’t want to move all the way back to New York, and her whole take on entertainment and the world as a whole fit the postmodern and diverse sexuality expressed more in LA at the time.
Bernhard ultimately pioneered the one-woman comedy show as her career flourished, but she has also spent plenty of time working on scripted projects.
When it comes to live performing, she said, “Anybody who does it and has been doing it for as long as I have is always something you come back to, because you have total control over it. And that’s a luxury few actors have. Getting hired as an actor in different roles is also sort of a break from all the hard work that it takes to put a show together. So I kind of like pivoting back and forth between the two worlds, but I ultimately love performing live the most, though it’s not always sustainable. I’m really glad I’ve been getting back into my acting again.”
Recent roles have seen her in shows like Pose and American Horror Story, but Bernhard’s radio show Sandyland also plays a key role in her current success. She has got a set of the same name slated for a show in Fresno and another in Orange County, which she said will be a “similar stream of consciousness” in terms of her material.
“I write my shows specifically that have a flow,” she said. “I have my band with me so I’m going in and out of songs and recollections and reflections and funny, crazy observations and stories about my life in a show that comes at you from a lot of different angles.”
A strong voice in the queer community, Bernhard expects that her audience, regardless of their sexual orientation, shows up informed, well-read and plugged into what’s going on in the world.
“I think it’s important to find a way to open the conversation up to everybody, and that’s where the radio show come in,” she said. “I feel like people might listen to me that wouldn’t necessarily come to my shows, or really don’t know about the arc of my work. So it’s a great place to be, to get a little bit hardcore and say, ‘This is where we’re at and you gotta step it up and accept that we can’t go back to the way things were.’”
These days, Bernhard is living in New York City, which she loves because of how everyone keeps things “a little more real.” Still, she remains humble and doesn’t play into the psychology of being famous. “And if you wonder why I stay humble,” she said as a handyman showed up at her house to help her install some blackout curtains, “it’s because I take care of shit. I go to the grocery store, I go to the gym, but you’ll never hear me say, ‘You don’t know who I am’? Who cares who I am. I’ve evolved a lot as a person, but I never look back on my life and go, ‘Gee, I wish I thought differently back then.’”
In regard to staying active, Bernhard is also all about self-care. She doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and if she had to keep only one app on her phone, it would be the app that counts her steps. “I love to log my steps every day. I have this stupid app that my cousin put on my phone that lights up and shines when you hit 10,000 steps, and it’s so fun. I have a wide stride so I may be covering a bigger piece of turf than most people but I can’t do a stutter step.”
Self-care is an important topic to her, and one she said is easier for people to do than they think. “It’s about pacing yourself and staying off of social media as much as possible. Have conversations that you do naturally so you’re not constantly comparing yourself and putting yourself up against other people who you don’t know who seem to have a wonderful and glamorous life. Nobody’s life is that exciting. You have to come back to yourself eventually.”
Andrew J. Stillman is a writer of fantasy stories and freelance content. In his spare time, he makes YouTube videos and explores the world on his travel blog at lifeinanotherworld.com. Follow him @andrewjstillman on all the things.