Bridget Everett on Bringing Her Full Self to Three Seasons of Somebody Somewhere

Being a fan of Bridget Everett used to feel like being in on a deliciously dirty secret. Since the mid-aughts, the comedian, actor, and singer has been the pride of New York’s downtown alt-cabaret scene, belting out freaky anthems and shaking her braless bust in fans’ faces at intimate venues like Joe’s Pub. But the secret has been out for quite a while now. Over the past decade, in frequent performances on Inside Amy Schumer, the Comedy Central special Gynecological Wonder, and memorable Hollywood roles from the Netflix series Lady Dynamite to the indie film Patti Cake$, Everett expanded her cult following far beyond the five boroughs.

In 2022, she stepped directly into the spotlight with HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, a warm slice-of-life dramedy set amid a group of friends and family in her real hometown of Manhattan, Kans. A writer and executive producer of the show, Everett stars as Sam, a woman who struggles with purpose, companionship, and self-worth—but starts to find all three with help from an ebullient best friend, Joel (Jeff Hiller); a community of kind, music-loving misfits that includes charming soil scientist Fred (Murray Hill); and eventually a sister, Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), with whom she’s always quarreled. 

While its audience has always been relatively small, the Peabody-winning series is beloved by those who’ve found it for its unique mix of gentleness, realism, earthy humor, and plainspoken profundity. In advance of its third and final season, which will premiere on Oct. 27, Everett hopped on a video call to talk about ending the show, being honored back in Kansas, and whether she could actually live there.

TIME: It’s easy to imagine Somebody Somewhere continuing forever. The characters’ arcs are so patient, and its rhythms really do feel like the rhythms of real life. Did you and the creators, Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, know when you were putting together the third season that it would be the last? 

Everett: With this kind of show, you feel like every season is going to be your last, honestly. The way we wanted to approach the season was: it's a snapshot, a moment in time—not wrap anything up. We just like to live with the characters.

Your character, Sam, the show’s protagonist, has made painfully—but relatably—slow progress at learning to value herself and let people into her life. Do you ever find yourself imagining the futures that she, Joel, Tricia, and the other characters might have? 

I do think about, what would Sam be doing right now? The story is always going in my head, and maybe down the line, we could do a movie or something. Because I love these characters so much, and it just doesn't feel like these lives get wrapped up in a pretty way. The show happens at the speed of life, and whatever is happening in Season 3 is just a step along the way. I do think, oddly enough, that Tricia has the most rapid growth out of any of the characters. Sam has moved about three inches in three seasons—but all because of those around her. I think these people will always inform and shape each other's lives.

Somebody Somewhere has many autobiographical elements for you, from your background to your character’s talent for singing. Which aspects of Sam’s story have resonated most with you? 

The love of music and struggles with self-worth—Sam hums along to those two things, which I really relate to. Also, the kind of people that Sam is around, Fred and Joel—they're like the people in my life. Murray and I drive each other crazy sometimes; we're also close friends and confidants and cheerleaders. Jeff has become a close friend. Mary Catherine and I lived together for many years. So it felt like a safe pool to swim in.

I’ve never seen a character quite like Sam on TV before. She’s charming, great at small talk and hilarious with dirty jokes, but she shuts down when conversations get too personal or relationships too intimate. How did you arrive at that set of contradictions?

Maybe her personality is similar to mine, because I do a lot of the writing. I can relate to shutting down and cracking a joke and getting out of there. It reminds me of the people I grew up with—joking, deflecting. A lot of my friends and family are humble people, and funny, but it's hard to sort of get in there. The core of [the show] is really Joel and Sam, and how Joel knows that there's more to her, and he just keeps digging it out of her. He's irresistible. Jeff is like that in real life.

For the first time, in Season 3, Sam has a love interest, played by Olafur Darri Ólafsson. Why did you decide to add the possibility of romance to her life?

Meeting somebody is [about] what it brings up in her. It's not really about Sam finding love; it’s about her continuing to try to open herself up and grow. Growth against all odds: that was our theme for this season. I love Darri. He's an incredible actor. Carolyn [Strauss, Somebody Somewhere’s legendary producer, known for shepherding Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, and several other HBO hits] was talking about Darri as an actor, and I was like: “Oh my God, we're friends.” And I thought, if Sam ever had a love interest, It would have to be him.

Considering that Sam is, in some ways, an alternate-universe version of you, I wonder: Do you think you could have been happy with the quieter sort of life she lives?

I do think about it sometimes: What would happen if I still lived in Manhattan, Kan.? I still have the same best friend that I had [growing up there]. We knew each other, literally, when we were born. I go visit her, and I get a good sense of what's going on [as well as] that feeling of being a little too much for people—I've always felt like that. I think I could be happy there. I think I'm happier where I'm at, but it's interesting to think about how the place shapes the person, nature versus nurture. And I hope that, like Sam, I would have found my people.

There was a Bridget Everett Day in Manhattan. What was that like?

It was bizarre and hilarious and really cool. In the city park, right across from city hall, all these people came out—high school friends, some of my teachers. My old voice teacher came. I saw her and just started crying. There were also queer members of the community that I got to talk to, and that was really meaningful, because they're like: “We're here.” And I'm like: “I know!” They did these life-size cutouts of me, and they're in some of the small businesses. I’ve got friends that take a picture and send it to me, and they're, like, grabbing my boob.

In your Peabody Award acceptance speech, you quoted LL Cool J: “Dreams don’t have deadlines.” How has that idea manifested in your life?

Years ago, my friends were watching, I think it was, Oprah's Lifeclass. LL Cool J was on, and he quoted that. And at first I laughed, and then I was like: Wait, wait. I was a waitress at the time. I waited tables for 25 years. It's so easy to give up on yourself, especially when you find yourself in your 40s and you haven't become what you thought you would be. So I think about it all the time—I have jewelry about it, I have artwork that says it. If you're waiting tables and that's not your end goal, and the only singing you're really doing is at a karaoke bar, you’re like: Well, maybe now's a good time to pack it up. But hearing that and having it in my head made me just keep going, and it led me to something really great.

A lot of performers who come to Hollywood from edgier, more underground cultural worlds, as you did from, end up sanding themselves down for mass appeal. But you’ve been very true to the warm, bawdy persona you cultivated in your early career, particularly in Somebody Somewhere. Has that been hard?

I don’t think it's been difficult to hold on to who I am; I think it's been difficult to find ways to get to show it. Everything I've done that I'm most proud of, I've had to build. I didn’t do it alone. But if I didn’t do the stage show, I wouldn't have [Somebody Somewhere]—they’re two very important  sides to me. But [both are] screaming for somebody to see who I am. I feel really fortunate that I've gotten to do things on my own terms. It actually kind of blows my mind. 

Did it help to have old friends from that New York scene—like Murray Hill, a transmasculine comedian and downtown icon—around you as you made the show?

Absolutely. It's helpful to have people that have been scrapping around in an alternative scene. We were often in the suburbs of Chicago filming, and we felt like we were just doing another downtown show. It wasn't like we were rolling up to the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. We were at a dead mall in Illinois.

The show’s characters, from mouthy single women to members of the LGBTQ community, are people we almost always see represented in urban, blue-state contexts. What did it mean to you to place them in Kansas, in a story that isn’t defined by their oppression?  

When Paul and Hannah pitched the show to me and Carolyn, they were like: “And Murray Hill is Fred Rococo.” That made me cry—because I was so excited to get to do this with somebody who is part of my life and my world, but also because the world needs more Murray in it. When I go back to Kansas, there are people that live in Manhattan that are like Fred and are like Joel; they just don't get to be on TV. That's a shame, because they're very special and significant people. I want to see my world reflected back at me. Those are the people I love. So let's see what happens if we put them on TV.

How has it felt to see yourself and your work perceived by such a broad audience?

It’s cool. It's very different than early on in my career, when I was singing songs like “Titties.” I rent a car down the street, and one of the guys from the garage is always like: “When's the season coming out?” That blows my mind. Not that somebody that works in a garage wouldn't appreciate it, but it's just not the kind of people I was seeing at Joe's Pub. I never thought I’d have that kind of reach. I’m not Kate Winslet, you know?

There’s a lot of anxiety right now in the entertainment industry about the contraction of streaming—and particularly what that might mean for small, offbeat shows that center characters we don’t often see on screen. Do you think it would’ve been harder to get Somebody Somewhere made in 2024 than it was a few years ago?

Yeah, I can't see it happening now. [Laughs] If people watch shows like Somebody Somewhere, then they're gonna find a way to [make them]. But our show has a small audience, and we did everything on a shoestring. I feel very fortunate that we got to do three seasons of it. I think that would only happen at HBO, and it's a shame, because I know these stories resonate with people. You can't cut out art from the heart, you know what I mean? We need it. 

What do you see yourself doing next?

I really don’t know. I can always go out there and sing in the clubs and make some money. So I want to take my time and find something that I can really connect to, because I've worked hard to get myself to this point. I don't have to be No. 1 on the call sheet, but I want to do something that means something. In a fantasy world, I would make Somebody Somewhere 'til the day I die. But that's not the way life goes. I was just talking to Carolyn the other day, and we were like: “OK, what are we going to do next?” We'll find it.