The three-part docuseries Live and Let Dai shares his cancer journey. The first episode saw Henwood pen himself a goodbye letter, and in the third he learned about letting go.
Asked about a misdiagnosis - more than two years before learning he had incurable cancer - Dai Henwood admits: “It’s still something, in the pit of my stomach, I get a bit tight about”.
It’s a story he tells in the second episode of the powerfully personal docuseries Live and Let Dai. Talking to a group at the University of Auckland’s School of Medicine, he fields a question about an anal fissure diagnosis he had in 2017. It was, as a flashback to a tearful video of Henwood in 2020 explains, a “red herring”.
He’d seen a bowel specialist but hadn’t ticked the typical boxes for cancer back in 2017. It was in 2019 that he realised something wasn’t right. Henwood was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2020, a diagnosis he took public in 2023.
“I had a lot of anger about that,” he tells the audience and speculates, “Who knows how early we could have got that”.
But, with much the same humanity, kindness and resolution he’s displayed throughout the series so far, “I’ve realised there was no maliciousness in that. No one wanted to misdiagnose me”.
In hindsight, holding onto resentment is “pointless”, and he’s “generally” let go of the anger.
“Because holding on to that is going to cause me more trauma. I’ve got enough of that as it is.”
Henwood and Dr. Qing Li at Henwood's Tabidachi ceremony in Japan.
We see Henwood mid-treatment. There are chemo conversations, sports fanaticism and plenty of jokes. But the episode also follows him as he looks into the science, trials and possible next steps in his treatment journey. Chemotherapy, we’re told, won’t work forever.
As with earlier episodes, the hour opens with a punch-in-the-gut outpouring of raw emotion. Henwood, in a video he didn’t know if he’d release to the public, speaks the day after his diagnosis in April 2020.
“It’s with a sad heart I start making these videos,” he starts, his voice breaking as he explains he found out he has rectal cancer, and tearfully speaks about wanting to be there for his family,
“I wanna kick this thing in its dick and get over it.”
It was a line said in a very raw, early moment, but it seemed to fit the perseverance of the episode well.
As he lies on a clinic bed during chemo, he explains the brutal five-day hangover of the treatment. It won’t cure his cancer, but it’s a “necessary evil” while there’s currently not a better option on the cards.
In moments you’ll want to cry. In some, you’ll laugh. In others, you’ll want to fistbump the air.
Henwood shares his raw insights about his cancer journey.
His mother’s “bouyant” reaction to positive post-chemo test results later in the hour is infectious. Scenes shot with fellow comedian Sam Smith, as the pair collaborate on new material for his 2023 Wellington Opera House gig Dai Hard, bring a sense of normalcy and laughter.
Those early planning scenes are intertwined with the finished product on stage. Banter about unsolicited advice and turmeric become thought-out jokes, performed to a receptive crowd on the big stage. We see Henwood in his absolute element - both in front of a crowd and behind a microphone.
Still feeling the effects of chemo, he takes the mic with the Alternative Commentary Collective during a Warriors game. The team loses, by a significant margin, but Henwood finds an extra gear - it appears driven by pure passion and fandom - giving a fervent physical display of every sport-inspired emotion in the playbook.
It’s a fitting scene, given that the team are a “massive highlight” in Henwood’s life. It’s poring over stats and old wins that get him through treatment.
But with a focus on future steps and the science, the episode takes a look - equal parts fascinating, hopeful and frustrating - into research around Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell or Car T-cell therapy. It works by genetically altering a patient’s immune cells in a lab, to locate and destroy cancer cells. Then those cells are given back to the patient.
Henwood in his home and in his element: performing on stage to make the audience entertained.
But as successful as trials have been on certain cancers, its hope on “solid” tumours such as Henwood’s hasn’t been as promising. It’s the kind of information that makes Henwood’s heart drop. Still, the digging continues.
He and his mum visit oncologist and associate director of clinical research, Jayesh Desai, at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. There, they’ve just started working with patients with bowel cancer. There are still plenty of questions the research needs to answer, and the cost is huge.
Plus, there’s Henwood’s reality that - as promising and fast-moving as science is - waiting for a treatment to come to fruition isn’t an option. A trial would be the only avenue.
And the timing of entering one is important. His oncologist - at the time of filming - thinks it’s too early.
Back at the university, where the comedian has openly shared with the audience, there’s one conversation he has no interest in having with his doctors. That’s the one about timelines.
As he succinctly suggests, “no one tells me when I’m going to die.”
This story has been updated to correct episode labelling.
