Even as Sarah Silverman told jokes about Paris Hilton to the crowd at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, she felt bad about it. Fourteen years later, she is publicly asking for forgiveness.
Silverman remembered sending an apology to Hilton a few days after it happened, but she never got an answer. She didn’t expect it, she said, but it bothered her that Hilton didn’t seem to know that she had held out her hand.
“I regretted the jokes not years later, but kind of immediately,” said Silverman on Thursday Sarah Silverman Podcast. “And I wrote to her to let her know, but now I know that letter did not reach her. So here I am, 14 years later, telling you, Paris, that I am really sorry. I was at that time, and I am very more completely and with much more understanding, I think, now. I can’t imagine what you were going through at that time. My understanding of humanity through the lens of my work as a comedian had not yet merged. I’m sorry for hurting you. you know, it’s not perennial. “
The excitement was about the fact that Hilton, one of the biggest celebrities of that time, was about to serve a prison sentence for an alcohol-related driving offense. What Silverman did not know when he planned his monologue is that Hilton would be in the audience.
“I also didn’t know that she was going directly from the event to the prison that night. I said some really heavy jokes about her, and she was there,” said Silverman, remembering that the crowd loved them. “And while I was, you know, thrilled by the success of my monologue, I remember seeing her in the audience. Really. And I remember seeing that look on her face, and my heart sank. Because there was a person under there. “
Silverman mentioned the incident after Hilton called her on his own podcast, This is paris, on Monday.
“I was very shocked and surprised because I met her a few years earlier at an event and she was adorable,” said Hilton.
The DJ remembers making a brave face, but said that Silverman’s jabs on her were “so mean, so cruel”.
“I was sitting there, wanting to die, I was holding back tears, I had tears in my eyes,” said Hilton. “I literally wanted to run out of the entire room. The whole audience was laughing and she kept stopping.”
Silverman agreed with Hilton’s assessment that his jokes would be different in 2021.
“You know, as she said on the podcast, it would never happen today, and she is right. I would never make those jokes today,” said Silverman. “In fact, I’ve spent the last few years trying to make comedy that tries to marry hard-hitting jokes with, you know, real heart. At that time, the consensus seemed to be that it wasn’t possible. And I totally accepted that. I came at a time when that talk show hosts and comedians hired to make fun of pop culture were crushing the biggest celebrities and pop culture icons of the day. And no one was bigger than Paris Hilton. “
In response, Hilton said in a podcast update that she was “shocked” and “pleasantly surprised” by Silverman’s comments: “I could tell that she really meant what she said when she said she was apologizing.
“Thank you. I really appreciate you doing that,” said Hilton. “I know it is difficult for anyone to apologize, and for someone to do that it really means a lot.”
She said she was happy that Silverman’s comedy had grown and that the comedian realized the effect of her words. Hilton “got a little teary-eyed” when Silverman talked about seeing the expression on the face of the reality show star.
“We have all said things in our past that, you know, we feel bad and then regret it,” said Hilton. “And I just don’t know, I think everyone is guilty of doing that.”
She said she never received the letter from Silverman, but she would have loved to read it, because that night “haunted” her.
“Excuses are never late, so it’s okay,” said Hilton. “But, yes, I wish whoever you gave it to would do it for me, because that would have, I don’t know, meant a lot at that time, especially at that time, when I was going through so much.”
Last month, Silverman apologized to Britney Spears for the jokes she made the same night as the ones about Hilton.
Silverman said he is happy to be part of an awakened world.
“It’s how we grew up. It’s how we changed,” she said. I’m super pleased with the reflection on the past and my part in perpetuating really ugly shit. “
Read more on Yahoo Entertainment: