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Spending a Tuesday morning at the Times Square Dave & Buster’s with Amy Sedaris was not on my 2025 bingo card, but I’m down for anything in the name of brain health. Sedaris recently teamed up with Centrum and Dave & Buster’s to launch Silver Hours for the over-50 crowd at select locations, stimulating the brain while having fun. In between Sedaris playing video games and being turned into a human claw machine, I chatted with her about brain health, aging and improv. Our conversation, ahead.
What are some of the biggest changes you’ve made to your beauty and wellness routine in your 60s vs 50s?
“I’ve never been one to wear a lot of makeup. When I get dressed up for events and then look at myself and I’ve got all this makeup on, I always have to remind people, ‘You know, I’m 64 years old. I don’t want to look like Tootsie. I don’t want to have a lot of makeup happening.’ You know, thinning hair is hard and seeing aging in your neck, so I always wear a little bandana, I just do little things like that.
For me, it’s more important to get up off the ground without aches, so I work out five days a week. I just made that my job. It started when I broke up with a guy, and I was like, ‘How am I ever going to go to the gym and work out?’ So I started getting a trainer in 2001, and I’ve had one since then. I have somewhere to be every day, which helps. Sometimes I make myself take the stairs to my apartment and just move and breathe. I just want to be able to feel limber.”
What are your favorite workouts?
“I do strength training three days a week at the gym and then cardio. Then I do a stretch class, which is just movement. I have a Pilates chair, and I do Pilates once a week out of my apartment. I like muscles and I like to feel strong. I have noticed I’ve gotten weaker, but I’m still a lot stronger than a lot of other people I know my age. Hanging out with younger people helps.”
When did you start thinking about brain health? Did you actually think about it when you were younger?
“To tell you the truth, no. I really don’t think about age much. But one time, I was working on a movie and it was really hot out and I had a wig on, a turtleneck, a fatty suit, a fake fur thing and I noticed my brain went completely black. I couldn’t remember anything because of the heat, and that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, what do people do when they get older?’
You start to sound like Aunt Clara on Bewitched. And you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I just forgot that.’ Then I’m like, ‘Well, what do you take for brain health? What vitamin is going to help me with that?’ I didn’t take a multivitamin. I take a lot of other vitamins, but Centrum Silver ($19) was my first multivitamin that I’ve taken. So we’ll see how it goes. I hope I remember to take them.”
What are some of the things you do for your brain health in addition to taking a multivitamin?
“I keep myself really busy and I’m really surprised when I forget something. I have a really good memory. I’m good with names and birthdays, but it is kind of shocking when all of a sudden you’re like, ‘wow, they didn’t come to me so quickly,’ because I come from an improv background, so I’m usually pretty quick, you know, you need that stuff at your fingertips, so it’s pretty shocking and scary at the same time.”
I feel like we talk about men’s brain health so much more than women’s.
“Because they don’t have a brain. Men don’t have a brain.”
Centrum discusses the effects of screen time (both good and bad) on the brain. What’s your screen time like?
“I always say I’m not on my phone that much, but I think I’m probably on it more than I think I am. I post every day. I like it. It’s like a job I give myself, but lately it’s changed so much with the algorithms and I just don’t see the people I follow anymore. So I’m on it, but it’s not good for your eyes. I just started vitamin A, but it’s also in Centum Silver and I thought that’s really good because I’ll double up on it now. I’ll grab carrots, you know, because I’m such a visual person. That’s going to be really sad when my eyesight goes because I’m very observant.
But I’m not on it that much. Brain scramblers, you know, when people play those games, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is fun,’ even though I’m not a big game player. I like games that I make up. But when I go to these places, I’ve been to Dave & Busters several times, it just makes me laugh, it just really is fun to me.”
What exciting things do you have coming up?
“Well, my godson, he’s 10 and every year we do a Halloween movie. He writes it, he directs it and everything. So this year I’m a teenager. It’s funny, my whole life, I’ve always played older people and right now, my best character, which I haven’t really put out there, is an old lady in her early hundreds, which is the first character I ever did, imitating my grandmother, so it’s weird that I’m playing a teenager. We’ll see how it goes.
I’ve been working a lot lately, whatever comes my way. A lot of times, to tell you the truth, I’ve done jobs just so I have to memorize the lines because I think that’s good exercise. Or it’s like, ‘Oh, I haven’t memorized lines in a few months, so I’ll do this.’ I always say I’m bad at it, but I’m really not, so that keeps you sharp too.”
Was changing over to learning lines hard because you came from improv?
“I think that could be it, or I just automatically told myself it was. Then I was like, ‘Well, actually, I’m not that bad at it.’ I just want to keep doing it.”
