VIDEO: Sarah Silverman on Her First Bad Joke, Going From ‘SNL’ to Conan O’Brien, and the Rise of Women in Comedy

Nikki Glaser. Amy Schumer. Ali Wong. Taylor Tomlinson. Chelsea Handler. Tiffany Haddish — these days many of the most successful comics in the business are women, but when comedy icon and beloved Stern Show guest Sarah Silverman began rising through the ranks in 1992, the stand-up scene was far less welcoming to even the funniest of female comedians.

“When I started it was very much a boys’ club,” Silverman told listeners on Wednesday while chatting with Howard about her early days in comedy, returning to Studio 8H for “Saturday Night Live’s” 50^th anniversary, and her heavily anticipated new special “PostMortem,” debuting Tuesday on Netflix.

“I remember the guy comics saying — and me believing it — ‘Don’t talk about the female experience. No one wants to hear it. Even though there are women in the audience, they’re on a date and they’re only going to laugh if the guy laughs, so you have to just make the guys laugh,’” the Emmy-winning stand-up, writer, and actress continued. “And I accepted that, you know? It’s so odd.”

Though the industry remains far from perfect, more female comedians are thriving now than ever before thanks in part to the hard work and dedication of Silverman and her other trailblazing peers.

“I spent so much of my early career being pitted against women comics and taught that there’s only one slot in any show for a woman — and all that bullshit that we accepted — [but] at some point we didn’t accept it anymore,” she told Howard. “[Now] women really dominate.”

Sarah’s candid and wide-ranging chat with Howard also covered her short stint at “Saturday Night Live,” which helped her land a breakthrough gig on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show, and how the video game “Call of Duty” brought her and her now-boyfriend Rory Albanese together during the COVID-19 lockdown. Rory, a comedian and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” writer, also joined Sarah in the studio at one point to meet Howard for the first time and regale him with tales of working alongside Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney.

While talking comedy, Sarah confessed she’d recently found a notebook with a “horrible” joke she wrote at the age of 19 (“I don’t know why my fish died. I put it in a tank … top”) before opening up about the driving force behind her poignant new comedy special, “PostMortem,” which deals with the passing of her father and stepmother.

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“It’s so heartbreaking that your stepmother and your father died nine days apart,” Howard remarked.

“He probably could’ve lived longer, but he was just done. He [just] wanted to be with her,” Silverman said before sharing a few stories about her dad, a kind man who never lost his sense of humor even after his health started to fail him.

While praising “PostMortem,” Howard marveled that Sarah convinced one the most celebrated comedians of all time to lend his voice to the special. “How did you get Steve Martin to be the announcer?” he asked.

“I never ask favors of people,” Sarah said before explaining how in Steve’s case she made an exception. Thankfully, the comedy legend was only too happy to oblige. “He was great,” she added. “It was so kind of him, and a little brazen [of me to ask].”

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“Sarah Silverman: PostMortem” debuts Tuesday, May 20 on Netflix