Why Sarah Silverman Believes Her Grandfather Killed Her Infant Brother

“My grandmother picked us up for our Sunday breakfast at a local diner, and she said, ‘Everybody buckle up,’” she wrote in her 2014 memoir The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee, per NPR. “Thinking I was going to kill, I said, ‘Yeah, we don’t want to wind up like Jeffrey,’ and just silence. My sisters turned and looked at me like I was crazy, and my grandmother just burst into tears.”

She admitted that the incident ultimately taught her that sometimes, her comedic choices can have consequences.  

“I think I’ve been called edgy—but in all honesty, there is a safety in what I do because I’m always the idiot,” she wrote. “Unless you’re just listening to buzz words and not taking into account the context of the situation, you see, I’m always the ignoramus.”

She concluded, “No matter what I talk about or what tragic event, off-color, dark scenario is evoked in my material, I’m always the idiot in it.”