Catie Lazarus, a writer and comedian who hosted the popular live talk show and podcast “Employee of the Month,” died Sunday night at her home in Brooklyn.

The cause was terminal cancer, which she fought for several years, according to friends who knew her. Lazarus was 44 years old.

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In an anecdote she recounted publicly, Lazarus was inspired to drop out of her doctorate program in phycology to pursue a career in comedy after seeing Tina Fey at a conference, in which she suggested improv theater at the Upright Citizens Brigade. That’s where she eventually started “Employee of the Month,” her live interview show with notable people. By around 2014, it had moved to Joe’s Pub at New York’s Public Theater and became a popular ticket for audiences and guests alike. Recordings of her more than 250 interviews were also made into weekly podcasts by Slate.

“The way she interviewed people is almost indistinguishable from the way she interacted with people in general,” Trevor Williams, a director and longtime friend of Lazarus, said. “She loved people and getting to know everything that was going on in their head.”

Her interview guests over the years included Jon Stewart, in his first interview after leaving “The Daily Show”; Jill Abramson, just before she was ousted at The New York Times; David Simon; Jon Hamm; Gloria Steinem; Martha Plimpton; Daveed Diggs; Tom Colicchio; Lin-Manuel Miranda; Rachel Maddow; Samantha Power; Sarah Silverman, and Titus Burgess, among many others over several years of the show.

She also wrote for various publications, including The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine, but when her interview show started to take off, it seems she wrote less often.

As for her show, it essentially came to an end earlier this year, given the inability to stage it live under public measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Previously, on occasion, the show was put on hiatus due to Lazarus’ illness, which she largely kept hidden but from a few close friends. But she always came back to it.

“We could never figure out how she figured this show out, because in every other area of her life she was so scattered,” Williams said, laughing. “But she did it all. She booked it, produced it and wrote it. And you show up and she’s got Jon Stewart on.

“The show was sort of what she lived for, and I mean that quite literally,” Williams said. “She was always hustling, figuring out a way to feed the show.”

Part of the show’s appeal was its vibe of being of another era, like the Catskills comedy scene in the Sixties. But it was also hailed in reviews as simultaneously funny and thoughtful, even as it tended to drill down into the work lives of her guests. The New Yorker wrote that Lazarus’ “unorthodox interview style and background in psychology” helped her to “get stories out of her subjects which others cannot.”