Buckle up, Christmas rush: Sandra Bernhard still has plenty to say

Bernhard has many groundbreaking moments to his name: a generation before Ali Wong won acclaim for creating raunchy comedy during her pregnancy, Bernhard was conquering the theater world, including on Broadway with her solo show “I’m still here… Dammit!” – with a big mouth, a see-through dress and a baby bump, which she clearly never said anything about.

“First of all, being pregnant is such a normal thing,” she said. “There are a billion people having babies all the time, so why talk about it? It wasn’t my jam. And I loved it. I had so much fun being pregnant, being on stage, performing and not just waiting to have a baby. (The show also received some criticism of Mariah Carey, who found the singer racist; Bernhard said her language was socially acceptable commentary at the time, but also acknowledged that standards for comedy have changed.)

She hosted a 10pm talk show for A&E, long before the talk of women taking over late at night. And years before Ellen DeGeneres came out, Bernhard played one of the first overtly strange characters on TV, as Nancy, a friend on “Roseanne,” in the ’90s; she was also an outspoken presence during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“She was one of the people who taught us — who taught me — how to activate, how to be present and show up,” says Billy Porter, her co-star in “Pose,” the FX series about underground ball culture , whose characters are haunted by the disease.

For Bernhard, it was a chance to mine her real-life emotions — she lost many friends to AIDS, she said — in a character, a nurse, who was, as she put it, “in the trenches” without the glamour.

She and Porter were the two cast members who had personally experienced the first wave of the AIDS crisis. “We really connected with that – the other people were playing a history lesson, but we had really lived it,” he said. “We told stories about intense trauma, and it was amazing to have her there to help me.”