For Bridget Everett, starring in, writing and executive-producing the HBO series Somebody Somewhere was not only gratifying but a long time coming.
After studying music and opera at Arizona State University, Everett — who grew up in Manhattan, Kansas, and sang in show choir during high school — moved to New York City in the '90s. She spent more than two decades writing and performing her delightfully bawdy (and at times tender) cabaret show, becoming a staple of the downtown scene.
Many TV executives saw her performances over the years and loved them. "But nobody wanted to figure out how to translate Bridget from the stage to a TV show," she says.
That changed after Everett took her act to the Los Angeles comedy and music venue Largo. "HBO came, and it was really the first time that somebody from Hollywood said, 'We want to do something with you,' and followed through," she says.
Everett credits former HBO entertainment president Carolyn Strauss, Somebody Somewhere's executive producer, with seeing the potential in her softer side. Strauss wisely tapped High Maintenance writers Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, fellow Midwesterners who also came up in New York's downtown theater scene, to cocreate a show loosely based on Everett's own life with what Everett calls "emotional hooks I could work with."
Grief is among the most powerful. Like her alter ego, Sam, Everett knows the pain of losing a sister to cancer and finding release and joy in singing.
While Everett had done some acting — she played Maria Bamford's friend Dagmar on Lady Dynamite and a drunken mom in the 2017 indie film Patti Cake$ — leading a series was a new challenge. "I'm not a trained actor, I'm a trained performer," she says.
Which is why Everett appreciated being surrounded on Somebody Somewhere by a talented ensemble made up of real-life friends like Jeff Hiller (American Horror Story), Murray Hill (Life & Beth) and Mary Catherine Garrison (Veep), who was her roommate for nearly a decade in New York.
Returning to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, to shoot the series was a homecoming in more than one way. "It made me appreciate where I'm from," Everett says, so she could "see the value in it and love and understand my family and community better."
With Strauss's encouragement, Everett was in the Somebody Somewhere writers' room from the beginning. "Seasons two and three I got a lot more confident, and I felt like my voice was really valid, and I could be a TV writer, and I could be an actor, and I could be a producer," she says.
Somebody Somewhere ended its three-season run late last year. Everett desperately misses working on the show. But the experience of learning how to make television was invaluable, she reflects. "I got a free masterclass, basically."
Somebody Somewhere is now streaming on Max.
This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #4, 2025, under the title "Something Special."
