Vanessa Bayer

Vanessa Bayer watched so much QVC growing up that she admits it’s become “like a foreign language I can speak.” Her new series I Love That for You allows her to show off her fluency in the lingo that home-shopping hosts use to sell cashmere throws, genuine leather handbags, or platinum gold jewelry—often pronounced “jul-ry, like, with a u,” according to Bayer. In the comedy, airing Sundays on Showtime (streaming via the Showtime app on Fridays), the former Saturday Night Live star plays Joanna Gold, an aspiring host for the shopping channel SVN who, after getting fired, lies and says her childhood cancer has returned in order to keep her dream gig.

Vanessa Bayer mines comedy from the fraught topic of cancer in her new Showtime series “I Love That For You.” While the former “SNL” star is hardly the first comedian to use tragedy as a launching pad for laughter, it’s always a hit-or-miss proposition – and this show hits more often than not, albeit a bit unevenly. Airing Sundays at 8:30 p.m., “I Love That For You” follows Joanna Gold (Bayer, who also created the show based on her own experience with childhood leukemia), an Ohio woman who dealt with childhood cancer. The adult Joanna, who’s now in her 30s, is in...

Admittedly, I Love That for You is a hard sell. Vanessa Bayer’s new Showtime series is a quasi-autobiographical comedy about a former cancer patient who dreams of becoming a home shopping network host. Like Bayer, who was diagnosed with leukemia at 15 and went through treatments until she was 17, the show’s protagonist, Joanna Gold, is a childhood cancer survivor. Unlike Bayer, who made a name for herself on seven seasons of Saturday Night Live, Joanna lies about her cancer status to hold onto the spotlight. Yeah, this is a fake cancer story that wants you to root for the liar.

Vanessa Bayer fell in love with home shopping when she was around 8 or 9 years old. "I watched QVC and I just would really marvel," she says. "I loved the products so much. And I loved the way that the hosts would talk about them and touch the products. I was very into the jewelry segments. They would, a lot of times, be selling herringbone, either bracelets or necklaces."

Vanessa Bayer, who rose to prominence as a long-running Saturday Night Live performer (she held the gig for seven seasons), has a new project sure to conjure up laughs: I Love That for You, a Showtime series she co-created with Jeremy Beiler in which she stars as Joanna, a woman who wins the opportunity to be a host on a QVC-esque home shopping channel.

Vanessa Bayer knows how to steal a scene, whether as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, in network sitcoms, or showing up in sketches for I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. What happens, though, when she takes a page out of her own life story and stars in an alternate universe where she lies to keep her dream job, then finds herself in potentially embarrassing situations over and over again because of it? That’s the quick-pitch for Bayer’s first role as a leading lady in Showtime’s newest comedy series, which also stars another former SNL standout, Molly Shannon.

Click here to read the full article. Showtime comedy “I Love That for You” traces a straight line back to “Saturday Night Live.” Not only did former “SNL” star Vanessa Bayer create the show with former “SNL” writer Jeremy Beiler, and Bayer’s co-star is “SNL” veteran Molly Shannon, but the relationship between the actresses’ characters also looks a lot like… Shannon and Bayer’s, back when they were on “SNL.” They didn’t overlap on the show (Shannon’s run ended in 2001, and Bayer’s began in 2010), but it remained a shared experience. The actresses grew up 10 minutes away from each other...

Vanessa Bayer spent seven years on Saturday Night Live playing pop icons, child newscasters, Bar-Mitzvah boys, and Totinos-loving housewives but her latest comedy on Showtime is giving her a brand-new character to test out: herself. Well, sort of. I Love That For You is a half-hour comedy about a woman...

Vanessa Bayer and Jeremy Beiler may have worked together at “Saturday Night Live,” but they bonded over QVC. While at the late night variety show (she as a performer, he a writer), the two watched home shopping channels. They both left “SNL” at the same time and, one day over breakfast , Bayer told Beiler she had an idea for a show set in the world of QVC.

The Vanessa Bayer comedy I Love That For You promises to be a side-splitting affair, and it’s no surprise that those out there who subscribe to Netflix would be curious to know if the laugh-inducing series is available on the streamer. The SNL alum stars in I Love That...

CLEVELAND — Get ready to laugh. Cleveland natives, and "Saturday Night Live" alums Vanessa Bayer and Molly Shannon are teaming up for a hilarious new Showtime comedy called ‘I Love That For You.'. In the show, Bayer, an Orange native, plays Joanna Gold, a Cleveland woman who dreams...

Vanessa Bayer relied on her past experiences to create her first TV series. The Saturday Night Live comedian, 40, said her battle with cancer inspired her upcoming Showtime series, I Love That for You — but not in the way viewers might think. While speaking about the series with...

Vanessa Bayer is an energetic treat in her new Showtime comedy with Molly Shannon and Jennifer Lewis, which she co-created.

LOS ANGELES, April 29 (UPI) -- Vanessa Bayer said she toured QVC and met with home-shopping hosts to prepare for her role as one on I Love That For You, premiering Friday on Showtime. "I got to meet these hosts that I've been watching since I was a kid," Bayer...