How Vanessa Bayer's love for QVC and teenage cancer battle inspired 'I Love That for You'

Vanessa Bayer longed to put two things from her real life on screen: a love for shop-from-home TV networks and her teenage leukemia.

As a kid, she was entranced by the jewelry advertised on cable networks like HSN and QVC and bought a ring made of white, rose and yellow gold. "If you can imagine that, what a gorgeous piece," she says playfully. She also enjoys watching celebrities act as salespeople while promoting their lines.

Over a brunch with former “SNL” writer Jeremy Beiler, who worked with Bayer during her seven-season tenure on NBC's late-night sketch series, the two realized they both wanted to set a project in the world of home shopping.

“I Love That for You,” a Showtime comedy, Sunday (8:30 EDT/PDT), centers on Joanna Gold (Bayer), a survivor of childhood cancer who lands her dream job at SVN ("Special Value Network"). It’s a big jump from her previous gig, passing out samples at Costco. But she's mentored by her idol, the network’s top host Jackie Stilton (Molly Shannon).

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Shannon says she was the one who needed an education in home shopping. "Vanessa taught me this great thing… the people at QVC always touch the object they’re selling. They're like, 'The bottle is so sleek. It's cranberry tablets.' They're like, 'This is the best.' There's something she said about touching it that really sells it."

What Joanna lacks in experience she can't quite make up for with enthusiasm. She’s axed by the cutthroat owner of the network (Jenifer Lewis) after fumbling an on-air appearance. Desperate to save her job, Joanna blurts out a lie to Patricia and her colleagues that she has cancer: “I had it when I was a kid, and… she back.” Patricia encourages Joanna to go public with her "relapse" in order to gain sympathy – and sales – from viewers, which makes her increasingly uncomfortable.

"Joanna is a sweetheart of a gal who's overcome a huge obstacle in her life and really wants to be liked," says executive producer Jessi Klein, "but also can't help but admit to herself that she has an outsized amount of ambition and will often do things to achieve what she wants that are in conflict with an integrity that she's trying to achieve."

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Bayer, 40, has incorporated her health ordeal into her stand-up routine, seeing humor in how she "used to really enjoy the perks of being sick, like the special treatment."

She was diagnosed in her freshman year of high school and endured treatments until her senior year. "I had 10 months of pretty intense chemo and then two more years of what they call maintenance chemo where my hair grew back, and it was a little less intense," she says. Her cancer has not returned.

The premiere opens in Cleveland in 1997 with a young Joanna (Sophie Pollono) watching Jackie sell a gold bracelet from her hospital bed. Joanna gets up and cons a nurse out of her birthday cake, explaining, "There's so few pleasures I get to enjoy in this world. You know, leukemia."

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Similarly, Bayer recalls she and her parents "dropping the L-bomb" as an excuse to get out of sticky situations, like when she was late to school. Leukemia also got her dad out of a speeding ticket. "He told the cop that he could only think about his daughter, who had leukemia, and that's why he was speeding, and he didn't even realize it."

Bayer also used her cancer to get out of a school dance. "I remember someone asked me to prom or homecoming once, and I didn't want to go with him," she says. "So I was like, 'I'm sorry, I'm getting chemo that weekend.' It really was a thing that we would joke around about, and I think the fact that we joked around about it so much really helped us all get through it."

"It sharpened my sense of humor," she adds. "In retrospect, (it's) probably the reason that I ultimately went into comedy is just because it was such a wonderful and healing thing when I was sick."

Bayer didn't start dating until she went off to college, and she chronicles the effects of a delayed adolescence caused by her cancer battle in the debut episode, when Joanna believes she's entered into a relationship with a man (Jason Schwartzman) after a couple of dates.

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She says, "A lot of what we have in this show is inspired by the fact that in my real life I did feel that I was playing catchup a lot in terms of being an adult, and how exactly do you do that?"

"The awkwardness (of Joanna) is very true to me," says Bayer. "My favorite character that I ever got to play on ‘SNL’ was the bar mitzvah boy because it is truly, at its base, that's who I am. I’m that little awkward kid."

Klein predicts viewers will relate to the show's theme of "what makes people feel like they're enough. Other than our food needs, when we're shopping we're filling some little void," she says. "'Am I pretty enough yet? Do I look cool enough yet?' We live in a very capitalistic culture, and we're very much trained to scratch that itch with purchases."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Showtime's 'I Love That for You' inspired by Vanessa Bayer's leukemia