Tig Notaro on finding comedy in cancer and the set that changed her life

DAYS after being diagnosed with cancer, Tig Notaro put all the tragedy into a raw stand-up act which catapulted her to fame overnight.

THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON -- Episode 0293 -- Pictured: Comedian Tig Notaro performs on July 17, 2015 -- (Photo by: Douglas Gorenstein/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images).

OVER a four-month period in 2012, comedian Tig Notaro experienced an epic string of misfortune: She suffered a bout of the deadly bacterial infection C Diff. She went through a breakup. Then her mother died unexpectedly. Two weeks later, she found out she had breast cancer.

Days after her diagnosis, she put all the tragedy into a raw stand-up act, telling the crowd at LA’s Largo that August, “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer.”

Louis CK hailed the set as “masterful” on Twitter and Notaro, 44, catapulted to fame overnight. The album of her Largo set sold 75,000 copies in a week. She also underwent a double mastectomy and was declared cancer-free.

So when her friend Kristina Goolsby approached her about making a documentary in January 2013, Notaro was happy to volunteer as a subject.

“I naively thought that because I had already been through so much turmoil that it would just be a highlight reel of me on my way back up,” she says. “I didn’t consider how life swings in every direction and it’s not guaranteed that you’re in the clear.”

The 90-minute documentary, Tig (premiering Friday on Netflix in the US), follows her sorting through her medical and emotional battle scars and trying to regain her confidence as a comedian. After the Largo set went viral, she started wondering if she had to now be a confessional comedian.

“It was so much pressure having a No. 1 album around the world and having so much written about me as a comedian and that I was great,” says Notaro, who ended up taking a six-month break from stand-up. “I really felt lost.”

The documentary also reveals personal ordeals, as Notaro struggles following her cancer bout and begins a romance with actress Stephanie Allynne, whom she met on the set of the 2013 film In a World and who had previously only dated men. They’re now engaged.

Notaro’s career is also on the upswing. Her HBO comedy special Tig Notaro: Boyish Girl Interrupted premieres Aug. 22, she’s currently filming Season 2 of Amazon’s Transparent and she’s editing her first book, a memoir out next summer. Though she no longer feels pressure to talk about cancer in her comedy, Notaro says the famous set did change her, both as a comic and as a person.

“Having watched the movie, that’s when I realised I was a risk-taker,” she says. “I’ve learned that sharing … it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be open and honest and a bad thing will come from it.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post.