“That is terrible.”
Sarah Silverman is sharing the real story behind her late brother’s death for the first time.
The 54-year-old comedian is the youngest of five children and one of four girls, including her three sisters, Rabbi Susan Silverman, writer Jodyne Speyer and actress Laura Silverman.
But she never had the opportunity to meet her older brother Jeffrey, who died before she was born.
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In her 2010 memoir, “The Bedwetter,” Silverman opened up about how she was told that her brother died when he was three months old after part of his crib collapsed on him.
Her memoir was later adapted into a musical of the same name, which premiered in 2022.
But in a new interview with Rolling Stone, published May 18, Silverman dropped a bombshell about the truth behind her brother’s death, which her father revealed to her backstage three years ago, she said.
“The story was that something happened with the crib, and Jeffrey’s little body slid and he got suffocated,” she told the publication of the original story about her brother.
“But if you look back, there was never a lawsuit with the crib company or anything,” she added.
It wasn’t until her father watched her musical, which features a scene about Jeffrey, that he told her a different story about Jeffrey that contradicted what she had been told her entire life.
“My dad says, ‘I always felt that he was crying or something, and my dad shook him,’” she recalled to Rolling Stone. “‘He shook him in a rage and killed him.’”
Silverman says the entire room went quiet when her father told the story.
“As soon as he said it, it was like, ‘Of course, that’s what happened,’” says Silverman. “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,” she added of her mother, who died in 2015.
Silverman opens up about her father’s abusive childhood
According to Silverman, her father was no stranger to “dropping bombs” — and his father’s abuse was something she had been aware of.
As she describes it, her father “had a heartbreaking childhood.”
“His dad beat the s**t out of him every day, just mercilessly,” Silverman told Rolling Stone. “He had a younger brother who wasn’t touched. His father made the kids call him Mr. Silverman.”
Her father’s childhood resulted in him developing an “uncontrollable rage” as he got older, but Silverman says he wasn’t “physically abusive” to her or her siblings.
As for the rage, he eventually shed it with “age, enlightenment, and Zoloft,” which she described as an “excellent combination for him.”
“He was my best friend, my buddy,” she says before correcting herself. “Well, he wasn’t my best friend until I was older.”
Silverman’s father, Donald, passed away on May 10, 2023. His second wife, Janice (Silverman’s stepmom), had died nine days earlier.
“My best pal, Schleppy - my dad, died last night,” she wrote in an Instagram caption at the time. “All the sisters, and grandkids surrounded him with love and singing and very dark … jokes this final week.”
“But ultimately, he wanted to be with his love, Janice, who we lost last Monday,” she added.
In her interview with Rolling Stone, Silverman recalled yet another “bomb” her father had dropped.
“We were playing poker once, and he just dropped in that one of the priests at his school fondled him,” she told the publication. “I was like ‘Dad!’”
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“That was my dad,” she said with a laugh.
