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In our weekly series Anatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, funny lady Sarah Silverman gets serious—and seriously topless—inI Smile Back!
It's never easy for a "comedian" to make the transition into more serious fare. Most audiences will sit around waiting for the famously funny person to start cracking wise, only to leave disappointed when they don't do that. While a great many have persevered and broken through, the Hollywood landscape is littered with the careers of funny people who struck out when trying to get serious. Thankfully, Sarah Silverman didn't have such a tumultuous transition from stand-up comedian to funny bit player to comedic supporting roles all the way up to serious dramatic leading roles.
Following an early career spent doing stand-up and appearing on such sketch comedy institutions as SNL and Mr. Show, Silverman spent the early part of the new millennium transitioning to acting, mostly popping up to provide comic relief (Screwed, Evolution) or play the snobby girl (School of Rock, Rent). Despite all of this, probably her biggest brush with "fame" was when she went viral alongside then-partner Jimmy Kimmel in a riotous 2009 bit involving the actress having slept with Kimmel's arch rival Matt Damon.
In 2011, actress turned director Sarah Polley cast Silverman to play the second female lead in her 2011 film Take This Waltz, marking the first time Sarah got a decently juicy role outside of television. Silverman turned 40 the year she shot the film and made her nude debut alongside leading lady Michelle Williams, symbolically marking a new era for her career, which saw her take a turn into increasingly serious territory. While comedy remains her bread and butter, it was nice to see her become accepted as an actress.
In 2014—the same year she appeared in Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West—she joined the cast of Masters of Sex in its second season playing Helen, the lesbian partner of Annaleigh Ashford's character Betty. This was also the year that she would film her first major starring role in a film, I Smile Back, released the following November. One could be forgiven for thinking that Silverman's first starring role coming, as it does, in a film with the word "smile" in the title might indicate that I Smile Back was a rollicking good time. (cue Ron Howard voiceover) I Smile Back was not a rollicking good time.
Based on the book of the same name by Amy Koppelman—who shares script writing credit with Jakob Dylan's wife Paige Dylan—I Smile Back follows desperate housewife Laney (Silverman) as she struggles with a perfect storm of addictions to drugs, booze, and sex. The story centers on the toll those addictions take not only on Laney, but also her husband (Josh Charles) and two small children, bottoming out in a (non-nude) scene 26 minutes in where she masturbates on the floor of her (sleeping) daughter's room with said daughter's teddy bear.
The film strikes its tone right away, with Silverman going topless in the bathroom just four minutes in, doing a line of coke and then examining her breasts in the mirror...
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Your natural human instinct is to hit mute and enjoy the sight of her breasts, but the sound going on in the scene paints a dark picture that makes the scene borderline un-sexy. You can hear her husband and children playing outside while she's inside, terrified to interact with her children and focusing obsessively on herself instead of spending quality time with her family. The sound design then takes a stranger turn when it cuts to her sitting in a bathtub and we hear the disembodied voices of a conversation that she had with her son moments earlier. She then sinks below the water, attempting to drown out everything.
Comedians seem to connect most with characters demonstrating emotional pain, more or less reinforcing that old stereotype about how funny people use comedy to mask their inner sadness. Jim Carrey did this in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, arguably his best performance, as well as Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love, Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, the list goes on and on... for male actors. Silverman may be the first female comedian of her generation to really take the plunge into that rarified air of being "respected" as an actor.
Sarah Silverman earned a Screen Actor's Guild Best Actress nomination for I Smile Back—losing to eventual Oscar winner Brie Larson in Room—beating the likes of eventual Oscar nominees Jennifer Lawrence and Charlotte Rampling out of a shot at SAG's top female prize. It was a well-regarded performance that earned plenty of Oscar buzz, but the film likely proved too much of a downer for most voters to even watch. This theory also ignores any inherent prejudices voters may have had toward Silverman for having started as a comedian, though that's merely speculative on my part.
As far as why it took Silverman so long to go nude on film, she elaborated on that a bit—while also discussing her love of both comedy and drama—in an interview with Time run during the promotional push for I Smile Back...
"I am a comedian; that’s what my bones are made out of and where my heart is. And I love acting and I love drama; I love making videos on my couch, I like all these different mediums. I don’t have any kind of gameplan. I never was naked in anything until I was 40, and now I’m naked in everything! I was never the sexy girl in a big-budget movie, and now I’m just me! I’m allowed to be naked and say, “This is my human shell, that’s all it’s supposed to be.” Maybe it’s partly that I love being vulnerable and comedy comes easier to me; I’m almost an exhibitionist. With drama, it’s been a little different, because I’ve discovered there’s ego and defensiveness involved, because I do care about it and I am proud of it. I’m trying to put myself out there in a way where if people don’t like it, it’s about more than not having the same sense of humor. That’s why I try very hard to keep the source of my self-esteem from inside me and from the people I love. It’s vulnerable-making."
Well, it may go without saying, but there's a lot of people on this site who love Sarah and will keep sending those good vibes her way!
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Catch up with our most recent editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene
—Jessica Chastain's Nude Debut in Salomé Takes Director Al Pacino Over a Decade to Finish
—Salma Hayek Knocks Our Pants Off with Her Performance in Frida
—Kirsten Dunst Goes Topless for the First Time in All Good Things
—Kristen Stewart Pops Her Top Off in On the Road
—Uma Thurman Steals Dangerous Liaisons Out From Under Her More Famous Co-Stars
—Did They Really Kill a Chicken During That Infamous Pink Flamingos Sex Scene?
—A Naked Julie Michaels Kicks Keanu's Ass in Point Break
—Alexis Dziena Gives Aging Lothario Bill Murray an Eyeful in Broken Flowers
—P.J. Soles Establishes a Key Horror Movie Trope in John Carpenter's Halloween
—Can We Talk About Linnea Quigley's Barbie Doll Crotch in Return of the Living Dead?
—Innocent Blood Finds John Landis Trying to Get His American Werewolf Mojo Back
—The Insane Japanese Horror Movie House Features Equally Insane Nudity
—Howard Stern's Private Parts Lives Up to Its Titular Promise
—Neve Campbell Wastes No Time Making Her Nude Debut in When Will I Be Loved
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Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
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