Sandra Bernhard comes to town to make a little mayhem

Coincidentally, the role recalled her first opportunity to act in a feature film, way back in the late 1970s, here in Boston. She’ll return to the city Thursday to perform her current show, “Madness and Mayhem,” at City Winery, with her longtime musical accompanist, Mitch Kaplan, in tow.

After being discovered in Los Angeles by the late Paul Mooney, a close confidant of Richard Pryor, Bernhard accepted a role in a film called “House of God.” Shot in and around Boston — she remembers it being the Christmas season, when the city looks “pretty magical” — she played a nurse. Despite a cast that included Tim Matheson, Ossie Davis, James Cromwell, and Joe Piscopo, the film never had a theatrical release.

But she came back to Boston and Cambridge often. She was especially fond of the Inn-Square Men’s Bar, the rock and punk club in Inman Square, which closed in 1984. Sets like those led her to Provincetown, where she’s long had a devoted following.

Influenced by entertainers “from Carol Channing to Mick Jagger, and everything in between,” Bernhard came into her own with the bizarro cabaret shows “I’m Your Woman” and “Without You, I’m Nothing, With You, I’m Not Much Better,” both of which were released as recordings. On Comedy Central’s roundup of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time, Bernhard is listed at number 96. That’s about right, she figures.

“I never really considered myself a straight stand-up comic, per se,” she says, “so I guess I’m flattered they kept me in the Top 100.” Singing, dancing, dishing — to her, it’s all performance art.

At the height of her fame, Bernhard was a welcome guest on David Letterman’s late-night show, making dozens of appearances, and she made headlines as a close pal (and rumored lover) of Madonna. In the 1990s, she played the recurring role of Nancy Bartlett, one of TV’s groundbreaking bisexual characters, on “Roseanne.”

In her personal life, she declines to assign herself any kind of sexual identity in particular.

“How about ‘sophisticated’?” she told The New Yorker a couple of years ago. “How about ‘groovy,’ ‘sexual,’ ‘international,’ ‘hot,’ ‘swinging’? Those are all words that work for me.”

For the last several years, Bernhard has hosted “Sandyland,” her own talk show on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM channel. Combining celebrity interviews (Bette Midler, Debbie Harry, Paul Rudnick) with her own rambling thoughts about favorite topics — fame and celebrity, feminist and LGBT issues, her dog George — it’s ideal for her, she says.

“After years and years and years of perfecting what I do, fine-tuning it, my net is wider. I’ve drawn in more people,” says Bernhard, who is 66. When fans call in, it’s a love-fest of “honeys” and “sweeties,” just the way she likes it.

“I think part of being on Sirius is that people have to pay for it,” she says. “I don’t think you’re gonna tune in to pay for somebody you don’t love. It’s not terrestrial radio, where anyone can call in off the street. It’s sort of a natural buffer.”

“Madness and Mayhem” is an updated version of a series of shows she did at Joe’s Pub in 2019 in New York City, where she lives. She would have toured the show sooner but for the pandemic.

Bernhard and her partner, Sara Switzer, have made New York their primary home for the past 20 years or so, since the birth of Bernhard’s daughter, Cicely. Though she comes across as a quintessential New Yorker, Bernhard was born in Flint, Mich., grew up in Scottsdale, Ariz., and spent her early years in show business in LA.

It wasn’t until her breakthrough role in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” (1982), in which she played an unhinged fan obsessed with a talk-show host (Jerry Lewis), that Bernhard began spending more time in New York.

“I like wide-open spaces,” she says. “I like to drive, but I don’t like to drive in New York at all. I won’t do it. All the people darting out in front of you, the bikes, the trucks . . .

“In many ways, New York is not a natural fit for me, but in terms of artistically, intellectually, the theater, food, it is. It’s an interesting mix of what I relate to, the zones I’m comfortable in.”

As she speaks, workers are repointing the bricks outside her apartment building. They’ve just moved the scaffolding to eye level, and George is suddenly barking up a storm.

“He’s a real protector,” she says, moving into another room and shutting the door. “It’s gonna get ugly.”

In “The King of Comedy,” Bernhard’s character, Masha, is verging on madness when she insists, “I’m having fun! ‘Fun’ is my middle name.”

The woman who played that part is still having fun these days, albeit with some of the intensity buffed out. In her latest show, the madness is outside the doors; Bernhard herself seems to have found some inner calm. She can be reflective, even.

This visit to Boston will be her first in years without seeing her friend Sylvia Mekler, a fan from Quincy with whom she became close beginning in the ‘80s. Mekler was a bon vivant, Bernhard says, so much so that she heard she died on the dance floor, at age 91.

“That’s kind of beautiful,” she says.

E-mail James Sullivan at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.

SANDRA BERNHARD: MADNESS AND MAYHEM

At City Winery, Sept. 2 at 8 p.m. $55-$75. https://citywinery.com/boston