Tig Notaro was 41 when she received a life-altering diagnosis in 2012: stage 2 cancer in both breasts. But because it arrived on the heels of a string of devastating events — a series of unrelated health problems, the unexpected death of her mother, and a breakup — it didn’t deliver the immediate emotional gut punch one might expect. “It was a little...,” she says, pausing for the right word, “confusing when I was told I had invasive cancer. I didn’t even know how to comprehend it for a while. But yeah, it was terrifying.” Within weeks of the diagnosis, she underwent a double mastectomy. Now 52, she has officially been in remission since September 2017.
I’m speaking to Notaro, the Emmy-nominated comedian and actor famed for her razor-sharp wit and deadpan delivery in shows like The Morning Show and The Sex Lives of College Girls, because she has produced a heart-wrenching documentary about cancer — but not her own. Come See Me in the Good Light, which has just landed on Apple TV, chronicles the final year of her longtime friend Andrea Gibson, Colorado’s nonbinary poet laureate, who died in July from ovarian cancer. They were 49.
