Bridget Everett on 'Somebody Somewhere' finale: 'I hope it's only goodbye for right now'
In the last few minutes of Sunday’s series finale of HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere,” Sam (Bridget Everett) celebrates her personal growth over three seasons by belting out Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb.”
The poppy power ballad hammers home the belief that life is about the journey, and not a destination. “Ain’t about how fast I get there, ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side,” Sam sings to her friends at the bar where she works. “It’s the climb.”
“Over the last two seasons, Sam was learning from her friends and Joel lifting her up and the community around her,” Everett says in an interview. “Season 3 for her is about putting those lessons to practice, to push through it when it hurts − especially when it hurts − to push through it and keep going and try to live a bigger, broader, brighter life.”
The performance in the finale is the perfect callback to the show’s 2022 premiere, when Sam became reacquainted with Joel (Jeff Hiller), a fellow member of their high school’s show choir she just couldn’t seem to place. Yet Joel adored her: “I used to love watching you sing,” he told Sam in that first episode. “You were so joyful it, like, soaked into me. Nothing made me happy in high school, and that made me so happy.”
Sam’s singing in the finale conjures up that same joy, and it will be evident to those who have watched the series' 21 episodes just how far Sam has come. When viewers first met her, she was grieving her sister, who had died six months earlier and was struggling to find her place in Manhattan, Kansas. (Everett’s hometown is the setting for the semi-autobiographical series.) Sam had returned to take care of her sister, who was battling cancer.
“I feel really good,” Sam tells her friends from the bar stage in Sunday’s episode. “And I thought that that was a good enough reason to ask all my favorite people to be here with me today. I want you guys to know how much I love you. I really do. … Cheers to us, and here’s to living.”
The finale brings the characters full circle, which is why it’s surprising to learn Everett and the cast didn’t know the episode would be their last. (HBO canceled the series after three seasons.)
“That was my first day on set” for Season 3, says Hiller, 49.
“It was kind of wild,” Everett adds, “because you sort of have an idea of where you think you want the temperature to be of the scene, but we just really rolled the dice and hoped that that was good enough."
An online petition with more than 10,000 signatures urges HBO to give the Peabody Award-winning series a fourth season, praising the “quietly compassionate show that features − and highlights − a loving community in middle America, the importance of chosen family, authentic trans and queer representation, and real relationships that endure even the most painful conflict.”
And Everett, 52, is game for more.
“I never want to say goodbye to these characters,” she says. “I hope it's only goodbye for right now. I was saying to somebody earlier I was out getting my steps yesterday, or whatever day it was, and I was thinking about a scene between Sam and Joel, where they might be right now, and a set of circumstances that I have in my head. It just it feels like I'm right back in it.”
What Everett envisions for the characters she keeps close to the vest, but she knows "exactly how I'd want it to end.”
Hiller would also raise a ‘tini to resurrecting the characters. In the finale, people-pleaser Joel decides to return to his church and finds the courage to share his decision with his partner, Brad (Tim Bagley).
“But let's just say that if we did get to do a movie or something, Joel wouldn't be living in London and having a phone call in,” he says, referencing Kim Cattrall’s brief “And Just Like That …” cameo, amid a public feud with star Sarah Jessica Parker. “I’ll be there.”
Hiller describes the series as “a platonic rom-com,” after all. It would make as much sense to have Sam without Joel as a peanut butter sandwich without jelly.
Everett’s favorite moment in the finale is when Joel declares Sam to be his person: “My life is so much better because of you,” he tells her.
“It feels like the point of the show,” Everett says. Sam “needs somebody like Joel who's undeniable and not willing to give up on her.”
As a result of Joel’s unconditional love and a strengthened relationship with her sister, Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), a more confident Sam feels emboldened to take a chance on romance with a man nicknamed Iceland (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson).
Sam initially said Iceland blew her off after their first date, when she actually ghosted him because she was scared of being rejected. After Tricia encourages Sam to give things a shot, she invites Iceland to the bar, where he’s mesmerized by her performance. “That was amazing,” he tells her before Sam falls into his shoulder and the credits roll.
“The whole point of the show is to not give up on yourself,” Hiller says. “By the time I had turned 40 and I hadn't ever made it as an actor full time, I kind of was like: ‘Oh, it's never going to happen. I'm just going to be someone who teaches improv and then sometimes gets to play a waiter on a sitcom.’ And this show said, ‘No, your story is valid, too.’”