Comedian Sarah Silverman keeps tabs on new boyfriend: I watch him have sex on TV all the time

SHE’S a comedian known for taboo topics and shocking screen exploits. Luckily, Sarah Silverman’s new boyfriend has also been there, done that.

DON’T try to get anything past Sarah Silverman. The US actor and comedian is wise to the linguistic tricks we Aussies play.

In Australia 18 months ago to plug the animated Disney film Wreck-It Ralph, Silverman slipped into comedy clubs and got to know the local talent.

What to watch: All the latest movie reviews from Leigh Paatsch

Sarah Silverman and Giovanni Ribisi in <i>A Million Ways To Die In The West</i>.

So, when this correspondent sits down with Silverman in a LA hotel, she refuses to be patronised by an Americanised pronunciation of “Melbourne”.

“It’s ‘Mel-bun’!” she says, drawing on lessons from her comedy club mates.

“They were giving me s--- cos I was calling it ‘Mel-bourne’. I was like, ‘If I wasn’t an asshole American, if I was from Italy and I was saying ‘Mel-bourne-o!’, would you be like ‘It’s Mel-bun’?”

Sarah Silverman and boyfriend Michael Sheen.

Now 43, Silverman has been doing stand-up since 1992, forging a cutsie girl persona at odds with the taboo topics that fall from her mouth. But lately she’s dumped the persona, saying she doesn’t want to get “stuck in a caricature”.

Case in point: the video she released online recently, in which she discusses abortion rights with Jesus. She calls the current, conservative state of the US “slack-jaw inducing”.

“The representative of my home state of New Hampshire said men should be paid more than women because women are lazy … in 2014. Really.”

Silverman reckons she can get away with career-limiting stuff because she keeps her “overheads low”. It also helps to have fans in strange places.

“I just did a movie where it came about because the writer heard me on Howard Stern’s radio show. On Wreck-It Ralph, the director read my book and was like, ‘This is Vanellope!’”

In the case of Seth MacFarlane’s movie A Million Ways To Die In the West, he wrote the role of the cheerful town whore for Silverman.

“It was still hard to get the part,” she shrugs. “Suits would rather have a starlet than a 43-year-old Jew comedian.”

But MacFarlane, hot off Ted, got his way. And it’s hard to imagine a better fit for his kind of humour than Silverman.

Sarah Silverman says <i>A Million Ways To Die In The West </i>“is a combination of smart observational humour and aggressive stupidity”.

“I like doodie jokes,” she grins. “This is a combination of smart observational humour and aggressive stupidity.”

Shocking screen exploits from Silverman are not that big a deal for her family, who went to the A Million Ways To Die In the West premiere. “They are so jaded,” she says.

Her new boyfriend has also been there, done that:

“I watch him have sex on TV all the time,” she laughs of UK actor Michael Sheen, who plays a 1950s researcher in TV show Masters of Sex.

Silverman has a recurring guest role on Masters this season. Does that mean she will have to watch Sheen have sex live?

“No, I’d never go to set when that … I don’t want to know,” she says, screwing up her face. “It’s so not sexy.”

■ A Million Ways To Die In The West is now showing

Sarah Silverman poses on the red carpet at an event in Hollywood.

Originally published as Comedian Sarah Silverman keeps tabs on new boyfriend: I watch him have sex on TV all the time