Sarah Silverman opened up about the death of one of her siblings during a recent interview with Rolling Stone. The 54-year-old comedian has three older sisters, and when her brother Jeffrey died at just 3 months old, Sarah hadn’t been born yet. When her brother’s death was explained to her, she was told that “something happened with the crib” and her brother Jeffrey “got suffocated.”
Now that she’s older, she no longer believes this story. During the Rolling Stone interview, she explained that when she was older, her dad, Donald, offered a different explanation for what happened to Jeffrey: Her grandfather allegedly killed him.
Jeffrey died while Donald’s parents were watching him, and he believes that his son’s death was due to his father’s “rage,” rather than a problem with the crib. He didn’t share this theory with Sarah until 2022, when he watched her Bedwetter musical. During the performance, she made a joke about her brother’s death. After seeing it, her dad decided to tell Sarah what he really thought happened to Jeffrey.
“My dad says, ‘I always felt that he was crying or something, and my dad shook him,’” Sarah told Rolling Stone. “‘He shook him in a rage and killed him.’”
Instantly, that story sounded believable to Sarah, though she’s unable to verify it with her mom, who died in 2015. “As soon as he said it, it was like, ‘Of course, that’s what happened,’” she said. Sarah’s father and stepmother died in 2023.
She had her doubts about the crib story because “there was never a lawsuit with the crib company or anything.” This also wasn’t the first time she’d heard that her grandfather had allegedly been abusive.
“His dad beat the s— out of him every day, just mercilessly,” Sarah said. “He had a younger brother who wasn’t touched. His father made the kids call him Mr. Silverman.”
Sarah also explained why her grandmother never said anything about her husband allegedly killing Sarah’s baby brother: because she “always stood by her husband.”
“She watched him beat the s— out of her son,” Sarah added.
