When Norm Macdonald died from acute leukemia at the age of 61 last September, it was a shock to not only his fans but his friends and colleagues in the entertainment community. Macdonald had been diagnosed nearly a decade earlier, but he kept his condition private and worked as much as he could without ever talking about it. In the opening to the new Netflix event “Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special,” the graphics tell us:
“Norm was working hard preparing material for his Netflix special—until COVID shut things down. … In the summer of 2020, he was scheduled to undergo a procedure and as he put it, ‘didn’t want to leave anything on the table in case things went south.’ At home, the night before going in, he shot this — in one take.”
