Alan zwiebel and gilda radner cancer

Former Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel recalls being so nervous at his first cast meeting that he hid behind a plant in producer Lorne Michaels’ office.

WHEN Gilda Radner told her friend Alan Zweibel, the comedy writer, that she had ovarian cancer, he asked what he could do.

In , as she grappled with ovarian cancer, Radner's longtime friend and collaborator Alan Zweibel was persuading her to do a guest shot.

But Gilda, after a few meetings, the cancer caught up with her and she couldn't do it anymore.

Rothberg explained, "When I met Alan, we bonded over his deep connection with Gilda Radner and her cancer journey.

Previously, when Gilda told me she had ovarian cancer, I asked her, “What do I do?” Her answer was “Make me laugh.” It's Garry Shandling's Show.

Gilda Radner found him, asked if he could help her write dialogue for a parakeet sketch and offered to sit with him. “She said, ‘It’s my first TV show, and I’m a little nervous, too,’” he recalls to Closer.

On SNL, Gilda helped blaze a trail and prove, without question, that women could be as funny as men.

Her fearless pursuit of a laugh allowed her to go toe-to-toe with the best comedians of her generation, but it’s her giant heart that has kept her memory alive for the past 34 years.

“What was special about Gilda is that you could see her true sweetness.

She was able to showcase that in characters like Judy Miller and Emily Litella,” SNL alum Laraine Newman tells Closer, adding that Gilda also ran with the boys playing “gross, subversive and hard-edged characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna and CandySlice.”