How a Review Changed Both Sarah Silverman and Our Critic

A.O. Scott critiqued her approach to comedy in a 2005 movie. Now they sit down to talk about what he got right and wrong, and why owning up to mistakes is freeing.

In 2005, A.O. Scott, co-chief film critic for The New York Times, panned “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic,” which was based on her one-woman show and involved taboo-breaking jokes about a range of topics including race. Suggesting Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor as reference points, our reviewer wrote, “She depends on the assumption that only someone secure in his or her own lack of racism would dare to make, or to laugh at, a racist joke, the telling of which thus becomes a way of making fun simultaneously of racism and of racial hypersensitivity.” The critique “hit me hard,” Silverman later said, and led her to take another look at her act. It’s rare that a review has that kind of effect, and as part of a series of wide-ranging conversations Scott is having with artists, he and Silverman recently sat down via video call to discuss that moment and why admitting you’re wrong (as Silverman asked our critic to do as well) can be freeing. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.