Sarah Silverman Believes Her Grandfather Killed Her Infant Brother

Speaking with Rolling Stone for a new profile, Silverman opened up a bit about her brother Jeffrey’s death as an infant five years before she was even born. She said she was always told by both parents that “something happened with the crib,” where the baby’s body “slid and got suffocated,” while her father’s parents were babysitting. Silverman said the family almost never spoke about him.

When writing her memoir, she said, she thought it was odd her parents — who divorced and barely agreed on anything — spoke exactly the same about the child’s death. She also found it curious that there were never any lawsuits from the family for the crib company.

“I’m going to tell you a big bomb,” Silverman prefaced this next bit, after the Rolling Stone reporter wondered whether her parents ever felt comfortable talking about Jeffrey before they died.

Per the publication, Silverman said that in 2022, her father came to see the musical version of her Bedwetter memoir.  In it, she makes a joke about Jeffrey’s death, something which seemingly prompted her dad to tell her what he believed happened to the child backstage.

“My dad says, ‘I always felt that he was crying or something, and my dad shook him. He shook him in a rage and killed him,'” said Silverman — with the reporter noting that even the comedian’s manager “gasped” when she made the reveal.

“As soon as he said it, it was like, ‘Of course, that’s what happened,'” Silverman continued. “His mother always stood by her husband. She watched him beat the s–t out of her son. I couldn’t ask my mom, because she was dead.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Silverman said her father endured beatings, “mercilessly” as a boy — saying he had a “heartbreaking childhood.”

Silverman’s new Netflix standup special, PostMortem, is out today.