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Patton Oswalt Discusses Losing His Wife Michelle McNamara: ‘My ’80s Sitcom Sucks. There’s No Punch Lines.’

In a moving and bleakly funny interview on Conan last night, Patton Oswalt discussed life after the sudden death of his true-crime writer wife, Michelle McNamara, earlier this year, whom he memorialized in his Emmy acceptance speech. As you might have expected, his life is currently horrible. “I’m a widower and if I put it in really basic terms, I’m like every bad ‘80s sitcom where there’s a dad raising a kid by himself … except my ‘80s sitcom sucks,” he jokes. “There’s no punch lines. There’s just a lot of insomnia. There’s a lot of me eating Cheetos for dinner. I’m waiting for my daughter to turn to the camera and say, ‘No wonder I’m in therapy.’” Oswalt also subtly reminds the public not to bring up his wife’s death in front of his daughter if they see the pair in an airport, a warning you wouldn’t think the world would need, but here we are.

Patton Oswalt Discusses His Late Wife on Conan