“No one dies in New York without my speaking,” Fran Lebowitz said, arriving for lunch with Bill Maher in late June, a few hours before speaking at a memorial service that afternoon. “That’s how I know I’m immortal. Who would speak at all those services without me?”

Under different circumstances, Ms. Lebowitz, 66, a writer and humorist, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, might have presided over a memorial service for Mr. Maher’s television show, “Real Time With Bill Maher,” a popular weekly talk show hosted by the comedian and political satirist on HBO.

Their lunch date came just a few weeks after Mr. Maher’s much-decried use of a racial epithet while telling a joke on his show. Many called for its cancellation. The guest Mr. Maher was interviewing on that show, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, later tweeted his regret at not condemning its use immediately. (“Me just cringing last night wasn’t good enough,” he said.) But a public apology by the host and a subsequent episode of “Real Time” that examined his error kept it on the air.

Mr. Maher, 61, who just received his 40th Emmy nomination, is no stranger to controversy. His previous show, “Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher,” was canceled by ABC in 2002 after he made allegedly insensitive remarks about 9/11. Since the inception of “Real Time,” he has brought sarcasm and independent thinking to his critiques of Republican and Democratic politics, and especially to the administration of Donald J. Trump. (Early in July, he stirred the waters again with a questionable joke linking North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons with the presumably Korean manicurists at his nail salon.)