Sandra Bernhard: The Mouth that Roared

Mike AlboWed, February 18, 2026 at 12:50 PM UTC

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The Mouth that Roared Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

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It’s early December and Sandra Bernhard is fresh from a session with her trainer, wearing a gray sweatshirt and not a stitch of makeup. She looks great, but at the moment there’s something about the lanky star that seems strangely bulky: Underneath the sweatshirt she’s wearing a weighted vest. But make no mistake: Bernhard is no fitness fad follower. “It’s supposed to help with bone density,” she explains. “But I’ve been working out forever. I’m ahead of the game.”

For Bernhard that has always been the case. She has been a comedy pioneer, movie star, fashion muse, radio personality, sitcom regular, cultural critic, author, and perhaps TV’s greatest talk show guest—and at 70 she is still working her worked-out ass off. She recently showed up in Marty Supreme to lend a certain eau de New York. “When it came time to cast Judy, Marty’s mother’s co-conspirator and downstairs neighbor, it took very little time to land on the ultimate yenta punk: Sandra Bernhard,” says the film’s director, Josh Safdie. Like everyone in Hollywood, Safdie knows that Bernhard is incomparable, so if you want a “Sandra Bernhard type,” why not just get the real thing? (Bernhard was also recently cast in the upcoming fourth season of The White Lotus. “I’ve known and admired Mike White for a long time,” she says of the series creator. “This is an incredible opportunity to be part of a show that has transformed the zeitgeist. It’s come at the perfect time for me.”)

Can we talk? In addition to her work on stage and screen, Bernhard hosts the weekly show Sandyland on SiriusXM. Marc Jacobs coat and Balenciaga eyewear, courtesy of Albright Fashion Library. Verdura vintage wing ear clips and flower bud bracelet. Belperron Col de Cygne necklace. Mahnaz Collection geometric cut-out cocktail ring, c. 1980. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

Bernhard has an endless IMDB page, and at this point her cultural imprint is almost biblical. Her blending of song and comedy begat stars like Cole Escola and Jinkx Monsoon; her fearless style and unapologetic sexuality begat Sarah Sherman and Megan Stalter. She has walked for Chanel, modeled for J. Crew, been the face of Marc Jacobs, hosted the CFDA Awards, and canoodled with supermodels. Decades before everyone was asking us to get ready with them, Bernhard was using fashion to her advantage. And way before our attention spans fractured into bits, her appearances on talk shows were unforgettable—like the 1992 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (one of 30 times she was on that show) when she rhapsodized a mile a minute about Isaac Mizrahi and Oribe. Bernhard swaggered, flirted, dominated, and simultaneously terrified and titillated Letterman without ever looking rehearsed or forced. Those appearances are now sliced up into memes, so she begat the viral guest spot, too.

But Bernhard isn’t interested in being a lioness in winter. “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.”

When Bernhard first moved to L.A. from Scottsdale, Arizona, in the 1970s, she lived with her aunt and uncle in Westwood and went to beauty school to learn to become a manicurist. In 1974 she moved into an apartment she shared with a hairdresser and worked in Beverly Hills at CIA Salon on North Canon Drive, the go-to for the celebrities of the day. Dyan Cannon, Victoria Principal, and Altovise Davis all came to see her. “I met a lot of wonderful women who were very groovy and supportive,” she says. “I might have done Jaclyn Smith’s nails.”

She got her start on the L.A. comedy circuit performing at Ye Little Club—a spot where Joan Rivers tested material—and at open mics at places like Rusty’s Bagels on La Brea. “It was owned by a guy named Rusty Blitz,” she says. “He played a grave digger in Young Frankenstein. He opened a little storefront, and if you wanted to perform you had to buy a bagel with a shmear in order to get on.”

Ralph Lauren Collection dress. Manolo Blahnik pumps. Van Cleef & Arpels earrings and necklace. Mahnaz Collection by Illario Brother bracelet, c. 1965. Tiffany & Co. HardWear bracelet. Briony Raymond diamond rings. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

She was discovered doing standup by Paul Mooney and Lotus Weinstock, two comedian’s comedians who guided her through the scene. “I put together my little remedial show. I did my Mary Tyler Moore impression. I said kooky, funny, weird things. I used to read from the pages of Women’s Wear Daily,” she says, satirizing the kind of blond, straight, squash racket–holding woman that she, a Jewish girl from the suburbs, was not.

Bernhard appeared on Richard Pryor’s short-lived comedy show in 1977 (along with another newbie, Robin Williams), but her big break, in Martin Scorsese’s 1983 movie The King of Comedy, happened when a friend—not her agent—recommended she go up for the role. “So I called and set up my own meeting for the casting director, Cis Corman,” Bernhard recalls. “I came in and blew her away.” Rewatching her today as the unhinged stalker Masha interacting with late-night legend Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis, who appears genuinely terrified of her), you can’t imagine anyone else in the role, for which Bernhard won a National Society of Film Critics award. “I was so that person at that time. I wanted to be loved. I wanted attention. So it was a no-brainer for me to do that.”

More than four decades later Scorsese remains in awe of his star. “To label Sandra as anything—a comedian, an actress, a performance artist—is to do her a disservice,” he tells T&C. “A true artist is more like it, and a true artist who has more or less invented her own art form. When she performs, she starts in comedy and immediately goes past it. She pushes past a boundary, goes right to the edge, then almost goes over the edge, and then pulls it back. And then she does it again, taking it further and further. There’s really no one else like her.”

Hold for Sandra! Bernhard has always had an eye for style. In 2016 she appeared in an ad campaign for Marc Jacobs’s spring/summer collection. Dries Van Noten dress. Gianvito Rossi shoes. Margot McKinney earrings, collier necklace, and ring. Mahnaz Collection bracelet, c. 1965. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

After The King of Comedy, Bernhard appeared in a few films, but she focused on sharpening her stage act. In 1988 her Off-Broadway solo show Without You I’m Nothing became a huge downtown hit and later a movie and a Grammy-nominated double album. Since then there isn’t a year she hasn’t been busy. Name a touchstone TV show and she was probably on it: Ally McBeal, The L Word, Will & Grace, Roseanne, on which she played Nancy Bartlett—perhaps sitcom TV’s first openly bisexual character. She told Howard Stern that she was offered the role of Miranda in Sex and the City but turned it down because the script “just wasn’t any good.”

Bernhard is hungry. There’s a nonstop downpour of cold rain in Manhattan, and we’re sitting at Rosemary’s, an Italian restaurant in the West Village. We order kale salads, and when the waiter asks if we want bread, she tells him in no uncertain terms, “No, darling, no bread! No bread!”

After he leaves, she explains: “I’m on a bread-free diet. I’ve got to because the show’s coming up.” The show in question is her 19th annual holiday residency at Joe’s Pub, the stalwart downtown nightclub, which culminates on New Year’s Eve. “It’s all written,” she says, “but I leave lots of room for improvisation, because I don’t know what will inspire me night to night.” She’ll use the material—a mix of comedy, commentary, and cabaret—for subsequent gigs in Australia and New Zealand.

Sergio Hudson blazer, vest, shirt, and trousers. Cartier Trinity earrings. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

In addition to Marty Supreme, she’s on the new season of the ­Disney+ streaming hit Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and she appeared on the Emmy-nominated series Severance. “I’ve known Sandra since I was a kid, when my parents took us to see her perform at the Improv,” says Ben Stiller, an executive producer of the Apple TV+ show. “For Severance, her incredible intensity in combination with her sense of humor fit perfectly. I remember thinking, We need an insane Sandra Bernhard moment in the show… She has a commitment level to being who she is that is just beautiful.”

Next up? Who knows? “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.”

The future may be a mystery, but the trails Bernhard has already blazed are deep. She was doing queer comedy long before it was called that, and she has been open about her sexual fluidity since before it was called that, too. She wrote humorous memoirs before Chelsea Handler, Tina Fey, or Lena Dunham, and she hosted a satellite radio show, Sandradio, years before the podcast boom. (These days she’s got her Sandyland show on SiriusXM.)

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Throughout her life, a mix of ballsy confidence and fabulous providence seems to be the driving force. 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.”

All the world’s a stage. Bernhard grew up in Arizona and made her name in Los Angeles, but now she and her partner—and their 16-year-old dog—call New York City home. LaPointe coat and belt. Manolo Blahnik Carolyne pumps. Chopard Haute Joaillerie collection earrings. Reza Tour ring. Mahnaz Collection Burmese sapphire ring. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

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.”

That’s how it happens for Bernhard. She runs into people. She got her part in the Emmy-nominated series Pose because she ran into Judith Light on a flight from LAX to JFK. When they landed, Light introduced her to Our Lady J and Steven Canals, two of the show’s creators, who were also on the flight. “We were on all those escalators to baggage claim, and I said to them, ‘If there’s ever anything on Pose for me, I’d love to work with you,’ ” she says. “They went into work the next day and talked to Ryan Murphy and asked, ‘What about Sandra Bernhard?’ Even though Ryan is a fan, I don’t think he ever would have thought of me.”

It was that role, as Judy Kubrak, an overwhelmed New York nurse deep in the devastation of the 1980s AIDS crisis, that brought Bernhard renewed attention as a versatile, serious actress.

Bernhard, who says she only ever went to a couple of acting classes, learned her craft by doing. But at this point, as accomplished as she is, she knows her limits. “I’ve never been the girl next door,” she says.

Bernhard has been one of TV’s most reliable secret weapons for decades, appearing in everything from Roseanne and Will & Grace to Pose and Severance. Marc Jacobs car coat. Alaia butterfly sunglasses. David Webb emerald ring. Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee

Daring stars like Bernhard are hard to mint these days. And now that celebrity is such a saturated market, poking fun at the famous and fashionable the way she used to isn’t so easy. “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.”

Though less well known, her 1992 HBO special Sandra After Dark is the epitome of her work blurring fame and comedy—jam-packed with a potpourri of boldfaced names of the time: Janice Dickinson and Kristen McMenamy, Timothy Leary, Debi Mazar, a young Sofia Coppola, and Tom Jones, to name a few. “There’s no way that would happen today,” she says. “They’d make you use people who have no discernible talent whatsoever.”

Over the years, digs at celebrity culture became harder for Bernhard, too. Making fun of fame while dwelling within it is a dance, and the closer you get, the more complicated it becomes. Take her storied friendship with Madonna. They showed up on Letterman in 1988 dressed the same, insinuating intimacy, and then had an unamicable split—something Bernhard doesn’t discuss. With her improv chops, Bernhard’s shows remain topical (and fiercely political), but the world of the rich and famous doesn’t need any help making fun of itself these days. Even the New York Times has noted that she seems to aim her weapons a bit more carefully these days: “The claws have been retracted, but the attitude remains the same.”

What hasn’t changed is that Bernhard isn’t afraid to get personal in her act, often bringing up childhood memories. “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.”

Decades later she is certainly a long way from Scottsdale. Bernhard sold her home in L.A. years ago, and today she and Switzer—and George, a 16-year-old rescue dog—are empty-nesters in Manhattan. (Cicely, their daughter, 27, lives downtown.) But in some ways, that longing at the airport never really went away. “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.”

When our waiter sets down a complimentary dessert—olive oil cake with whipped cream, his favorite—Bernhard says, almost to herself, “Okay, one bite!” It’s a dreary day during undeniably dark times, but she’s pleased about the recent outcome of New York’s mayoral election, and the sugar seems to sweeten her outlook. “I really feel optimistic,” she says, digging into the cake, “and like things are about to shift again. I like to make people happy and to bring people together.”

Then Bernhard looks down at the table and realizes what she has done. “Never put this olive oil cake in front of us,” she yells to no one in particular. “We said one bite and now it’s decimated!”

Ralph Lauren Collection Tuxedo Dress, Shirt, Pant and Bow Tie. Van Cleef and Arpels Trois Turquoise Earrings and Heritage Clips. Manolo Blahnik Pumps. Town & Country Magazine

Ralph Lauren Collection Dress. Van Cleef and Arpels Trois Turquoise Earrings and Zip Antique Myosotis Necklace. Mahnaz Collection by Illario Brother Bracelet, c. 1965. Briony Raymond Diamond Rings. Tiffany & Co. HardWear Bracelet. Manolo Blahnik Pumps. Town & Country Magazine

Photographs by Hunter Abrams + Sam Lee Styled by Ryan Young

Hair by Brent Lawler at Lowe & Co. Makeup by Romero Jennings for Mac Cosmetics. Nails by Kayo Higuchi for Dior Vernis at Bryan Bantry Agency. Tailoring by Susan Balcunas at Lars Nord. Set design by Reece Koetter.

In the top image: Sandra Bernhard has stayed ready for her close-up. Recently she starred in Marty Supreme and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Next up? A world tour. Balenciaga peacoat. Gianvito Rossi shoes. Cartier High Jewelry earrings, necklace, bracelet, and ring.

This story appears in the March 2026 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

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