Norm Macdonald was an intensely private man. The Saturday Night Live star was an old-fashioned comedian, one who preferred to throw out hilarious anecdotes and humorous asides without devolving anything too specific from his private life. Even his own memoir, 2016’s Based on a True Story, favored fabulism and absurdism over being a completely proper-and-true autobiography. Fans only got a passing glimpse into the ace comedian’s life — if any real glimpse at all — when he performed on stage, and the depths of his privacy proved to be shocking and devastating when it was announced that Macdonald passed away in September, at 61, after a private, nearly decade-long battle with acute leukemia. And even several months after his death, we’re still discovering long-kept secrets from the late comedian.
As THR revealed, Macdonald liked to keep the surprises coming. Specifically, the Dirty Work star/writer filmed one final, secret stand-up special, entirely in his living room, in the summer of 2020. The ailing comedian was working on a new Netflix comedy hour when he needed to go to the hospital and the test results were not looking good. Fearing the worst, Macdonald decided to film his special on the night before his procedure. He wanted to “get this on tape just in case — as he put it — things went south,” according to Lori Jo Hoekstra, Macdonald’s long-time producing partner.
Due to the pandemic, no venues were open or available to record the late-in-the-game special. So, Macdonald opted to film the whole thing in one long single take in his house, with no audience, to get it out of his system, just in case the operation proved fatal. When the surgery proved successful, Macdonald decided to throw this recording “in a closet.” However, when Macdonald’s health continued to fail, it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to be able to film the special in front of an audience proper. It was then that Macdonald asked Hoekstra to find the footage they shot so that the comedian could re-evaluate it.
SNL Weekend Update Pays Tribute To Norm Macdonald
When Macdonald watched the footage, he came up with a fittingly self-deprecating title: Nothing Special. Now, a little seven months after the comedian died, Netflix will be releasing Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special on May 30th. While Netflix has become a pretty common breeding ground for popular stand-up specials, Nothing Special could represent a first for the service — and for comedy in general. As the article notes, it’s hard to think of a comparison to something like this. Even Bo Burnham: Inside, from 2021, doesn’t seem like a proper comparison to this secret recording.
Here’s what Hoekstra said about this final Macdonald special:
From the various conversations I’ve had within our circle of friends in comedy and producing, no one has heard of any comparsion to this [situation] — not even close… It makes me so happy that I can share it, but also so sad that we can’t share it with him. He didn’t do this for the shock that it exists. He shot it because he loved his material and was so proud of his material. He worked so hard and it really would’ve bothered him to have done all that work and not been able to show everybody. He did it for the stand-up. I just hope people appreciate that he did this.
Along with Norm’s final hour, the program will also include clips from the recent Netflix Is a Joke Fest, where Adam Sandler, Conan O’Brien, Dave Chapelle, David Letterman, David Spade, and Molly Shannon discussed the late comedian-collaborator and his indelible comedic legacy. The conversation was recorded earlier this month.
Whether it was with a punchline, a poignant line of thought, or his untimely death, Macdonald always knew how to surprise people, and this unearthed special is merely another example — if sadly the last.
Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special will premiere on Netflix on May 30th.
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