Late comedian filmed secret special
Norm Macdonald, the late comic who kept his terminal illness a secret until after he died, had another secret up his sleeve: the posthumous release of a new comedy special.
The former “Saturday Night Live” comic, who died in September at 61 after privately battling cancer for nine years, recorded an hour of new comedy while sitting in his living room under what were dire circumstances.
His material will be released May 30 via Netflix under the title “Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special.” “His test results were not good, so during the heart of (the) COVID-19 pandemic and literally the night before going in for a procedure, he wanted to get this on tape just in case — as he put it — things went south,” the comic’s longtime producing partner Lori Jo Hoekstra told the Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.
“It was his intention to have a special to share if something happened,” she said.
But Macdonald pulled through his procedure and the tape was sort of forgotten, she said. His intention was to record it in front of an audience at some point, but that time never came.