Bridget Everett is processing the end of “Somebody Somewhere,” the HBO series loosely inspired by her life, in a very Bridget Everett way. “I’m just not ready,” she says about potential roles to come. “It’s like you just had the best sex of your life, and now someone wants to hold your hand.”
That’s the kind of bawdy metaphor Everett might work into her stage act, a bodacious take on cabaret studded with expletives and songs about oral sex. It’s less typical of Everett’s character, Sam, a withdrawn woman who’s spent three seasons processing the death of a beloved family member, finding community in her Kansas hometown and gradually coming out of her shell. When we meet at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan to discuss the show’s bittersweet, life-affirming final episodes, Everett wears a necklace bearing the acronym “GAAO,” short for “growth against all odds” — the guiding motto of this last season.
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“Sam grows inch by inch,” Everett says, which on the refreshingly human-scale “Somebody Somewhere” equates to massive strides. Everett herself has expanded her horizons in lockstep with her character’s: The final season features an original composition that marks her first-ever love song — one not addressed to her dog, at least. (The scene where it’s performed, a shared showcase for Everett and actor Tim Bagley, is exquisitely moving.) The show’s budget and audience have remained small, but its fans, including the jury of the Peabody Awards, will deeply mourn the loss.
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Also at lunch is Mary Catherine Garrison, a longtime friend and former roommate of Everett’s. Garrison plays Trisha, Sam’s straitlaced sister who’s undergone major growth as well. (A running bit in Season 3 has Sam’s friends constantly ordering extra food “for the table,” so in that spirit, the three of us split fries to accompany our salads.) “One of the things I love about this show is that these women are not 25, and they’re still very much learning and growing and changing,” Garrison says. By series’ end, Trisha has gotten divorced, embraced Sam’s group of largely queer and trans friends and built a thriving business as a purveyor of pillows printed with profane, punny quips. Everett’s favorite reads “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Cunts,” which she credits to executive producer and former HBO entertainment president Carolyn Strauss.
Everett credits Strauss, whose CV as an executive spans such HBO calling cards as “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” with invaluable guidance for her first experience at the top of the call sheet. “Carolyn is a legend for a reason,” Everett says. “She somehow treats us all like peers, lifts us up, but can still teach us all at the same time.” Among Strauss’ contributions to the “Somebody Somewhere” ethos is her advice not to “lean into the ‘cutie,’” a reference to a frequent adjective in the shared slang of Sam’s friend group. The idea was to not make the term a sitcom-like catchphrase that could suck the oxygen out of the cast’s natural rapport, instead letting the group form their own, understated chemistry. It’s a philosophy indicative of the show’s overall approach to comedy, one driven more by infectious rapport than conventionally structured bits.
Strauss also coined the evocative tagline to “Somebody Somewhere,” which deems the show a “coming of middle age” — not just for Sam and Trisha, but also for figures like Sam’s best friend, Joel (Jeff Hiller), a queer Christian navigating both his first adult relationship and a crisis of faith. Guided by creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, who partnered with Everett to build a series around the star’s own experience losing her sister to cancer, “Somebody Somewhere” makes the biggest impact in its quietest moments. One of Sam’s greatest leaps forward this season is getting herself to the doctor for a routine checkup; the emotional climax of the finale, which also sees Sam belting out a rendition of Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb,” is one character simply accepting a hug from another.
That exchange occurs between Sam and the man she nicknames “Iceland” (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the new tenant of her parents’ farmhouse with whom she forms a tentative connection. Ólafsson and Everett had previously worked together on Maria Bamford’s absurdist Netflix show “Lady Dynamite”; as with Garrison, his onscreen chemistry with Everett comes from real-life familiarity. “It’s not necessarily about Sam finding love and falling in love,” Everett says of the flirtation, which is more about Iceland patiently admiring Sam than sweeping her off her feet. “It’s just meant to show you that she’s trying to grow. She’s trying to push through her fear and her feelings about herself.” The storyline is more about internal change than external validation.
Everett and the writers weren’t aware Season 3 would be the show’s last as they were planning it — but even if they had been, they wouldn’t have designed a more dramatic conclusion. “I think it would be a disservice to the show to try and wrap anything up,” Everett says. “We did what we thought was right for the characters at the time.” Precisely because “Somebody Somewhere” was never a show to lean too hard into comedy or pathos, instead coming by its laughs and tears honestly, it still ends on a fittingly graceful note. When Sam and Trisha realize they’ve forgotten their late sister’s birthday, the newly close siblings reflect on the evolving nature of grief in a conversation that brings the show full circle. “What I wanted for Sam and Trisha was to find each other,” Everett says. “To realize that they can learn from each other, and that they can make each other’s lives richer.”
In Everett’s mind, she knows where Sam, Trish and Joel’s journeys will take them years into the future, though she won’t share their arcs in case she gets to make a movie someday. “We love this world, and we would happily stay in it for the rest of our lives, but that’s not necessarily how Hollywood works,” she says, laughing. Sad as its ending may be, Everett remains grateful to the patrons who made the ride possible in the first place: “Only HBO would have given this show three seasons, and we know that.” The fact that any season exists, let alone three, Everett calls “a blessing and a miracle” — assuming God smiles down on the occasional poop joke.
