Patton Oswalt Netflix Special Discussing Wife’s Death to Release This October

| More Articles: Entertainment
Published on
August 28, 2017

Netflix has just announced the release date of Patton Oswalt’s first comedy special since the death of his wife.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Patton Oswalt: Annihilation will hit Netflix on October 17. Oswalt confirmed Entertainment Weekly’s reporting on Twitter, saying that the special was not easy to film but that he’s proud of the way it turned out.

In April 2016, Patton Oswalt’s wife Michelle McNamara unexpectedly died in her sleep at the age of 46 of an undiagnosed heart condition, leaving him to care for his 7-year-old daughter. Annihilation will be the first stand-up special that Oswalt has recorded since the death of his wife. His previous special, Talking for Clapping, was released one day after McNamara’s death, but it was recorded much earlier.

Patton Oswalt performs during The New Yorker Festival
Patton Oswalt performs during The New Yorker Festival in 2014. | Bryan Bedder/Getty Images

Oswalt will be talking about his personal tragedy in Annihilation. He recorded the show back in June 2017 at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago.

“This show is me dealing with this past year of my life — easily the most horrific 12 months I’ve had to wade through in my 48 years on the planet,” Oswalt described on Facebook ahead of the live show.

Oswalt will go to such a dark place in this show that he decided not to perform the material on the road after the taping.

“No, it’s too intense,” Oswalt told Vanity Fair. “And it would feel weird going on to make some money off of this stuff when it was just meant to be pure catharsis. I’ll just write another hour.”

Oswalt began to address his wife’s death in his stand-up routine for the first time in November 2016, and The Daily Beast called the result “heartbreaking and cathartically funny.” That won’t be the only subject covered in Annihilation, though. According to Entertainment Weekly, the comedian will also share his thoughts on social media, robocalls, politics, and more.

Since filming Annihilation, Patton Oswalt has become engaged to Meredith Salenger.