Less than two months after she mocked Christians and Trump voters in a promo video for her new standup special, comedian and actress Sarah Silverman says she wants her forthcoming Hulu talk show, I Love You, America, to build bridges between people on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Speaking to reporters and critics at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour on Thursday, Silverman offered thoughts on how she wants the 10-episode series to be less political and more “funny and silly and aggressively dumb.”
“With this show, I’m hoping to connect with un-likeminded people. And networks went crazy because they haven’t heard anything like that before,” she said of the taped weekly show, which Hulu plans to air on Thursdays.
“But what is really important is that it will be funny and silly and aggressively dumb, which is my favorite kind of comedy. And anything smart that’s in there will be served in a big, fat, bread-y sandwich of super, super dumb, because that’s how I like my comedy,” the Emmy-winner said.
The series, Silverman says, intends to highlight how similar Americans are despite where they get their news from or what their political leanings happen to be.
“The thesis of the show is that everybody wants to be loved. And if I were to say a mission statement for the show in terms of the field pieces, it’s exposing the fact that we are actually the same,” explained Silverman. “We may be listening to two different sets of lies right now. We may be getting our facts from very different places in a time where truth has no currency and facts don’t change minds, but I think comedy at its best can get people’s porcupine needles to go down.”
It’s a seemingly new direction for the actress, who in the past has urged her 11 million Twitter followers to “join the resistance” against President Trump and suggested the U.S. military could help overthrow him.
I Love You, America is produced by left-wing comedy shop Funny or Die and executive producer Adam McKay, an outspoken critic of President Trump.
McKay used Thursday’s presser to trash Trump.
“It’s funny that my agent was also Donald Trump’s agent, and then Ronald Regan was a movie actor. In Hollywood, we’re the elites until we’re not. It tends to go that way,” he said. “I think one of the things about this show is that we want to get back to a grounded place, where we’re looking at not right versus left, but we’re looking at corruption versus honesty. We’re looking at the good of the whole versus the good of the few.”
“What’s happened in this country versus the right and the left, it’s the greatest scam you could ever pull because if you wanted to pickpocket someone, what’s the best way to do it? Create a fake fight so everyone turns their head and rubbernecks, and then take their wallet,” the Ant-Man screenwriter said. “I always get very annoyed when people tell me I’m a liberal. I’m like, really? I just don’t want corruption. I just don’t want the banks to rip us all off. I don’t want to be lied in a war. How is that liberal? That’s just common sense.”
Hulu has yet to set a date for the premiere of I Love You, America.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson