Sarah Silverman says she was canned from a ’90s sitcom for kissing her co-star with too much tongue.
The comedian revealed for the first time that she’d been cast in the short-lived 1995 NBC show “Pride & Joy,” but got fired for French kissing on-camera.
“I looked 15 and was hired to play a wife, mother, architect in New York City,” she explained of her role in the show opposite Craig Bierko at live Q&A event with fans for RushTix (per The Hollywood Reporter).
When the script called for a sitcom peck, “I just fully did an open-mouth tongue kiss every time. I didn’t know better, and nobody said anything!” Silverman recalled.
She said her confusion was because she was referencing “Happy Days,” and “they made out hard in that.”
Silverman said that the show’s producers must have figured it was “easier to just fire me,” than to try and fix the slip of the tongue.
The comic is not listed in the credits for the show, and was replaced by Julie Warner. The sitcom lasted for only six episodes before being canceled. (According to IMDB, the show also starred Jeremy Piven, Caroline Rhea, and Jack Black in a small part.)
Before Silverman, 50, was cast on the ill-fated show, she’d been reportedly canned from “Saturday Night Live” — via fax — after a season. She has previously said of that experience: “I wrote not a single funny sketch.”
She followed up the “Pride & Joy” role with ’90s TV parts in “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Seinfeld” and “JAG,” before landing a regular role on the HBO cult hit “The Larry Sanders Show” in 1996.