When you sit down for a comedy special, you expect to laugh. (Or you hope to laugh, at the very least.) You don’t expect to cry – unless maybe you find yourself laughing so hard you’re crying. 

You’ll probably do both watching Alyssa Limperis’ No Bad Days.

The hour-long comedy special is a tribute to Limperis’ father, whose enduring optimism and “no bad days” approach to life never wavered, even as he found himself facing terminal brain cancer. 

“The special at its core is just about loving, losing, and learning to live without my dad,” Limperis said. “After he passed away, I didn’t feel like I could go back to doing comedy about whatever I was doing before, like dating or airplanes. I just watched this crazy, horrible, beautiful thing. I have to talk about it.”

During the course of her hour-long special, Limperis takes viewers on her own journey of pain and grief, and how the loss of her father has impacted her years later. She’s actually been performing variations on this standup show for years, shifting the material and stories as her own viewpoint has changed over time. As anyone who’s experienced a personal loss knows, our grief immediately following a loss manifests differently than it does a year (five years, ten years…) later. Limperis opens up about her own experience, exposing the highs and lows of life in a way that will have you smiling one minute and tearing up the next.

But the laughter is the focus. 

“The show has an overarching theme of optimism and choosing joy in the midst of pain, which was very much my dad’s MO,” Limperis said.

Learn more about how Limperis transformed grief into comedy and embraced her late father’s “no bad days” philosophy in our interview below.

You can stream Alyssa Limperis: No Bad Days on Peacock now.

Limperis also currently stars in the Showtime series, Flatbush Misdemeanors.