Three seasons and a movie? That may be the dream for fans of “Somebody Somewhere.” An unabashed gem of a show, HBO revealed the Peabody Award winner would end with its third go-around before it was even released. That was somewhat disheartening, considering an already great show was just hitting its stride. For Bridget Everett, reviving Sam, Joel, Tricia, and Fred’s stories is paramount. Considering how moving the show to another network or streamer is a long shot, a movie might be an ideal option.
READ MORE: Bridget Everett On Saying Goodbye To ‘Somebody Somewhere’: “We Felt Lucky To Ever Get Season One”
“A movie is a dream. I mean, I haven’t received any phone calls. We’d love to, but I think that a movie feels like a natural progression, and I feel like there are things that we have talked about and dreamt on, and I was just thinking about today, I was like, ‘Do I really need to say goodbye to this? Do I need to say goodbye to this world?’ Because it’s been hard for me to do that. I feel really blessed and fortunate that HBO gave us the gift of three seasons. This is a really small show and consequently a smaller audience. And I think it was a gift that we got to do as much as we did, but how sweet would it be to have just that little footnote of a movie, so we could kind of say goodbye in a way that feels very ‘Somebody Somewhere.’”
Taking into account the show’s built-in audience, how inexpensive it was to film, and its ingrained indie film aesthetic, a movie version feels like a no-brainer, no? Of course, HBO would have to grant permission for that to happen, so…paging Casey Bloys. Let’s make this happen.
Throughout our conversation, Everett, who is on a West Coast tour this July, reflects on Sam’s journey, how Sam and Tricia’s (Mary Catherine Garrison) relationship evolved in season three, why the show means so much to people in this political climate, and much, much more.
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The Playlist: Was it last night that you guys had a reunion Q&A for Emmy season?
Bridget Everett: We did it last Thursday night, and I just got around to posting it now, but it was great to be with everybody.
I know you’re good friends with Jeff Hiller, but had you seen the rest of the cast recently, or was it a rare reunion?
We’re all good friends, so I see them whenever I can, but this is the first time we’ve all been together, and I think maybe since the final viewing party that we did in Manhattan, Kansas. So it was really great.
I was looking on IMDB – clearly the most scientific of all research mechanisms- and season three overall is the highest rated among viewers. It’s so hard to go out on a high note. When you were making the show, how important was it to you guys to try to end the series the best way possible?
I don’t think that we knew it was the end of the series, and to us, it was still in our heads. But I think as the seasons progressed, we had a better idea of the characters and how to tell the story, and I think we got better at it. So to me, that kind of makes sense. And this season felt very personal to me. They all feel very personal, but I think we just take so much care, and we think about it all the time, and really pour our heart and soul into it. And I also think that people, the longer they watch the show, the deeper they feel for the characters, so that might be reflected in that rating as well. That’s true.
Did you feel that this was the most personal of the three seasons?
I think so, yeah. I was in the writer’s room all three seasons, and I put so much of my personal experience and how I operate and the sort of mechanisms of Bridget went into Sam, a lot of that. But I think season three I was even more involved and I just think I went a little deeper and some of the stuff that Sam deals with the stuff that I’ve dealt with to some degree and also, not unlike the audience, the more time I spent with Sam, the more I fell in love with her and the more protective I became of her and of all the characters I would watch from the monitor sometimes as other people are doing a scene and couldn’t believe that I get to be a part of something so special.
If you can elaborate, was there one particular storyline or any aspect of her journey in season three that you resonated with the most?
Well, I identify with a lot of the self-worth stuff, and I think this season, Sam does stuff that Bridget is less capable of, but living through it via Sam was very cathartic for me. For instance, the feeling of going on a date and kind of just all that drums up in you, and just how vulnerable a first date can be if you haven’t done it in a long time. I don’t know, they seem like small moments, but to Sam, they’re such huge, huge seismic moments for her, and I relate to that. I think nothing ever feels small for me. I just sort of make so much of everything that feels reflective of Sam’s experiences and feels reflective of my own in that way.

I know the show was created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, but how different was Sam from those initial conversations from where she ended up as a character at the end of season three?
Well, they came to us with the world, the choir practice, and Murray [Hill] as Fred, and that she’s a singer. But as we developed the pilot and certainly season one, I really poured a lot of myself into it. So, Paul and Hannah jumped out of the world. But I think I’ve really infused myself into Sam from the beginning. But as we’ve gone along, I feel so supported by Paul and Hannah and [producer] Carolyn [Strauss] and the whole cast and crew, it just became easier to reveal more. And maybe not even that. They’re just my experiences, but the way that I think Sam would be feeling or the way I think that she might interact with another character, it was such a safe environment that it was easy to kind of let your guard down and sort of spill more than you might even with your closest friends.
Do you mean that in the writer’s room or just even playing the Sam herself?
I mean there’s a number of times I cried in the writer’s room and just even doing the scenes stuff with Mary Catherine [Garrison] as Tricia and stuff with Jeff as Joel, they’re both so warm and such wonderful scene partners that I think it allowed me to feel like I could let my guard down and kind of expose myself. And I think the last five years I’ve been walking around the world, kind of just a little shellshock because I feel like I gave so much of myself to this show. But it’s good because in the end I feel lighter, I feel better. And I learned from Sam that connecting with other people is not so bad.
Is this the type of show you would like to do again in the future? I don’t know how much you want to be in front of a camera as an actor, but you’re damn good at it.
I want to do it again. I’m trying to dream up the next thing, talking to some people, and I don’t think that my sensibility is going to stray that far from “Somebody Somewhere.” I just really like the way that you get to know all the characters and everything feels like it breathes and it’s funny and you can fart and just like life, that stuff is really funny to me. My stage stuff is a lot wilder and sort of a tornado on fire, but in front of the camera it is a different experience and I like to take what I’ve learned from “Somebody Somewhere” and expand on that and I hope I get an opportunity to, but if this is it, this is it. But I think there’s something also about when I do another show or a movie, and I’m stepping into somebody else’s territory, it takes me a while to kind of settle in. But because we created an environment where you felt like you couldn’t fail, it made it almost impossible to fail, if that makes sense.
It was framed when the season was announced that it was going to be the last one, but clearly when you made it it you didn’t think it would be. Is there room for a movie or some other way to continue the story?
A movie is a dream. I mean, I haven’t received any phone calls. We’d love to, but I think that a movie feels like a natural progression, and I feel like there are things that we have talked about and dreamt on, and I was just thinking about today, I was like, “Do I really need to say goodbye to this? Do I need to say goodbye to this world?” Because it’s been hard for me to do that. I feel really blessed and fortunate that HBO gave us the gift of three seasons. This is a really small show and consequently a smaller audience. And I think it was a gift that we got to do as much as we did, but how sweet would it be to have just that little footnote of a movie, so we could kind of say goodbye in a way that feels very “Somebody Somewhere.”