Sarah Silverman talks about her departure from comedy in gritty new drama I Smile Back

The warts-and-all drama about a mentally ill, drug-addled New Jersey housewife wasn't a stretch, the comedian said

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Sarah Silverman has spoken about her career reinvention in I Smile Back.

Talking at the Sundance Film Festival about playing a bipolar housewife, Silverman said the challenges of drug-taking and sex scenes weren't too great.

"The nudity and the sex scenes and snorting even fake cocaine is, you know, a bummer," she told Vulture, "and I just really prepared and braced myself. It’s funny because [I told a good friend about it] and I said: 'There’s a scene where I’m having anal sex and blah blah blah.' And then, after the first week of shooting, he’s like: 'How’s it going?' And I’m like: 'It’s okay. It’s hard.' And he’s like: 'How is the anal sex scene?' And I was like: 'Oh, it was fun! It was good!'"

Silverman, who is best known for her controversial stand-up and her television comedy sketch show, The Sarah Silverman Program, says that she will not leave comedy for good.

"I love comedy, I love being a comedian, she said. "I love doing stand-up. That will never change as long as I can control that."

Silverman added: "It’s not like my comedy is 'I drop a ball and then I go to pick it up and I kick it further'. You look at a set-list and it’s like, 'Holocaust', 'Abortion', '9/11'.

"It was a leap but I think comedy at its best every exposing and vulnerable, and those are elements in doing this kind of work, but it’s kind of the other side of that, the bizarr-o world version."