Sarah Nicole Sherman (born March 7, 1993), also known professionally as Sarah Squirm, is an American comedian, actress, and screenwriter. Sherman is known for using surreal and body horror comedy. She became a featured player on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live starting with its 47th season in October 2021, and was promoted to repertory status in October 2023.
She has also appeared in films including Nimona, Rap World, Pizza Movie, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, as well as multiple projects produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, including You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah and Roommates.
Contents
Early life and education
Sherman was born and raised in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, into a Jewish family. She told Variety, "I grew up liking, you know, crazy cartoons, and I love Joan Rivers and The Nanny and Garbage Pail Kids and Ren & Stimpy and stuff like that." She told another interviewer, "I had Raggedy Ann dolls. Thinking about it now, Raggedy Ann has heavily influenced the way I dress. I had a bunch of Lamb Chop dolls, too. I'm a huge Lamb Chop freak because Shari Lewis was a Jewish comedian, and I have a giant Lamb Chop tattoo on my leg."
She attended Great Neck South High School, where she was on the improv team and ran track, graduating in 2011. She subsequently graduated from Northwestern University in 2015 with a degree in theater.
Career
Early work
Sherman developed an interest in stand-up comedy after she did not make the improv team at Northwestern. After graduating, she decided to stay in Chicago, befriending the comedian Megan Stalter, and had a monthly show called Helltrap Nightmare along with Luke Taylor, David Brown, Wyatt Fair, and Scott Egleston. Sherman began performing under her stage name "Sarah Squirm", which was inspired by a high school nickname. She was also getting booked as a comedian alongside noise musicians as she had friends who ran a record label.
In 2018, she made her television debut in an Adult Swim infomercial titled "Flayaway." In 2019, Sherman opened for fellow comedian Eric André on his Legalize Everything tour. She was also a writer for The Eric Andre Show, Three Busy Debras, and Magic for Humans.
Saturday Night Live
Sherman was asked to audition for the long-running NBC sketch-comedy show Saturday Night Live after doing a stand-up set at the Just for Laughs festival. She had previously been asked to perform some showcases for SNL producers and attempted some character-based work which, according to her, "fucking sucked." She initially auditioned for SNL in 2016, as part of a showcase at the iO Theater in Chicago that also featured Alex Moffat, who would be hired as part of the cast that year. In 2021, she auditioned again. James Austin Johnson was directly ahead of her in line, and she expressed her nervousness, but "I went into the audition with good vibes because of James and, LOL, we both got it." In the interview, she added, "I did standup. I didn't have any impressions or characters. It was disgusting, I'm talking about genitals." She was subsequently cast as a featured player for its 47th season, alongside fellow newcomers Johnson and Aristotle Athari. Before being hired by SNL, she had had trouble finding employment because her gross-out videos turned hiring managers off. Sherman found a limited audience in her first season because of COVID-19 restrictions, and the end of her second season was cut short by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. In 2023, Sherman was promoted to a repertory player.
At SNL, Sherman frequently collaborates with writer/film producer Dan Bulla, who joined in 2019 for Season 45, and with whom she shares an office. Among their sketches together are "Jewish Elvis," "My Best Friend's House," and "Shrimp Tower". The latter, starring host Josh Brolin, earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Production Design for a Variety or Reality Series. Of their Christmas sketch "Pongo," featuring a "wonderfully creepy" synthetic pet, Bleeding Cool writes, "With all due respect to co-writer Bulla, this sketch had Sarah Sherman's brand of humor all over it – and it was brilliant." About a black-and-white pre-taped video suggestive of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Sherman told Style Weekly, "I was so lucky to have immediately linked up with amazing writers who totally got it. You know, like Dan Bulla, who I write with a lot. We did this sketch called 'The Anomalous Man,' where I play this mythical creature beast with Dua Lipa, it was kind of an Elephant Man parody. When we were writing it, Bulla was like, 'Oh and by the way, you need to have a hunchback with an eyeball on it."
Asked about her favorite experience with any performer, Sherman refers to her twisted, gory Scooby-Doo sketch in Season 49: "This past finale, Jake Gyllenhaal was the co-host. He's such a good actor and just willing to go there and be aggressive and crazy and chaotic and high energy... The first time he hosted, we did that sketch where I play Chucky and I appreciated anyone willing to go there." Also that year, Sherman posted on Instagram "Severed Head Count: 3." The Late Nighter website added them up in the article "Sarah Sherman's 'Severed Head' Makes Third SNL Appearance." The first time is in the parody documentary sketch "UNTOLD: Battle of the Sexes" in a critical tennis game. "That beheading came at the hand of host Jason Momoa, who knocked off her head with a (literal) breakneck serve." The second time is in the Scooby-Doo sketch, in which Sherman (playing Velma) is clotheslined by a piano wire. The third was "My Best Friend's House," in which Sherman appears as a plastic-wrapped severed head stored in the refrigerator by Ariana Grande's best friend's dad, who turns out to be a savage serial killer.
Other work
Sherman was credited as a screenwriter for the reality comedy film sequel Jackass Forever (2022). She co-starred in the Adam Sandler comedy film You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023) and was cast as a character in downloadable content for the video game High on Life (2022). She voice acted as "Coriander Cadaverish" in the animated film Nimona (2023) and in a cameo for season 2 of Severance (2025). She is expected to star in CoComelon: The Movie, which will be released in 2027.
Since October 2023, Sherman has hosted the NTS Radio show Freakradio Emergency Hotline. Among the artists she has played on the program are Macula Dog, Doug Lussenhop, Johnny Pemberton, Clownvis Presley, Negativland, and The Residents. On September 5, 2024, Sherman began her guest starring role as dialect coach Robin Finch—for Lois Cerillo, played by Rena Sofer—in the daytime soap opera General Hospital. In 2024, she debuted as a host for the HBO Max game show Human vs Hamster.
Influences
Sherman has said her comedic influences include television shows such as Seinfeld, The Nanny, The Golden Girls, Pee-wee's Playhouse, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. She told an interviewer, "I'm obsessed with Jerry Lewis... I look like Jerry!" She has cited Norm Macdonald as an influence on her SNL work: "He was a little troublemaker. I relate to him because he was never not himself." She has also said, "I am obsessed with Norm MacDonald... can you imagine being on a show with Norm MacDonald, someone who's so fearless every week, saying the craziest shit on TV and getting in trouble for it?"
When she started performing stand-up comedy, she took influences from comedians such as Todd Barry, Maria Bamford, and Kristen Schaal. In SNL history, she loves Dana Carvey's iconic sketch "Massive Head Wound Harry" (Season 17), in which Carvey wore a bloody, mangled head prosthetic which is tugged and chewed by a dog.
On Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2025, Meyers asked, "Were you somebody at a young age who was into David Lynch stuff?" Sherman answered, "I feel like he taught me, like, how to think, basically. And I'm in dream analysis and stuff because of him... I'm 15 [seeing Lynch's Blue Velvet for the first time] and I'm going, 'I guess there's, like, a dark underbelly to Americana suburbia'." When asked whether filmmaker David Cronenberg is an influence, she answered, "Yeah, one billion percent."
Political views
Sherman supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 United States presidential election. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She endorsed Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary election. In one of her shows, Sherman had expressed her support for Palestine.