Throughout the course of the series, we kept trying to think about where the music would be and what it would be. How did you approach the process of writing that song? I remember sitting down at the keyboard to film it, and it was the only time I thought, I’m on HBO.

I remember when I was sitting in my apartment dreaming it up, thinking about that moment and the kinds of friends who have lifted me out of depression when I needed it most. I wrote that song with my friend Matt Ray. It’s hard for me to put it into words, because like Sam, I communicate best in music. I wanted to start with the lovely moment in the finale when Sam sings to Joel “you brought me home” in the barn. By the finale, Sam has gotten comfortable enough to sing some of her original work for them, and, in the episode’s closing moments, to step back into Holly’s room and lie in her bed.Įverett talked with Vulture about her character’s slow “Bridget-ization,” where she imagines Somebody Somewhere might take Sam next, and her hometown’s response to seeing itself on HBO. Somebody Somewhere opens as Sam strikes up a friendship with Joel, her gay Christian colleague and former classmate, and he nudges her toward live performance, introducing her to a group of like-minded outsiders in town.

The character had moved back to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas (where Everett herself grew up, before becoming a fixture on the New York cabaret scene) to care for her sister, Holly, whose death left Sam directionless. In one, she stands up in a party bus with her new group of friends and sings about her plans to “wrap this pussy around every dick I can.” In the other, a few scenes earlier, she sings a ballad at a keyboard in her family’s barn, telling those friends how “you brought me home.” As different as they are, both moments mark steps toward emotional openness for Sam. At the two emotional extremes of the season-one finale of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere are two performances by Bridget Everett’s Sam.

Bridget everett piece of my heart