Today, September 11, 2026, is the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers. There are several memorial specials commemorating the tragedy this weekend, including Lifetime’s adaptation “Robin Roberts Presents: Angel in the Rubble: The Genelle Guzman Story.”

Premiering Sept. 12 at 8 p.m., the story is based on Guzman’s 2014 memoir, “Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11’s Last Survivor.” 

The Lifetime description says: “The film recounts the extraordinary survival of Genelle Guzman. As she fought to stay alive, Genelle reflected on her life and the faith she had left behind, praying for deliverance and promising to change if given another chance.  Her prayers were answered when a man named Paul found her in the debris and remained by her side until rescuers pulled her to safety—the final survivor recovered from Ground Zero. When Genelle later searched for Paul to thank him, no one could confirm he was ever there, leading her to believe he was an angel sent to save her and guide her toward the renewed life she had promised while buried beneath the rubble.”

Guzman, a New York City transit worker, was buried alive under concrete for 27 hours.

Longtime “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts is an executive producer of the adaptation, which is her fourth special project with Lifetime. Shepherd, Linda Berman and Anne Carlucci are the other executive producers. Manu Boyer directed the movie.

Actress, TV host and comedian Sherri Shepherd stars as Guzman. On a recent appearance on “The View,” a show she co-hosted from 2007 to 2014, Shepherd discussed meeting Guzman and the experience of taking on a dramatic role.

Guzman made an impression on the star. 

“She is a woman of quiet strength and resilience,” Shepherd told host Sunny Hostin. “And she had to go through survivor’s remorse, because she lost all of her colleagues except one.”

She said Guzman was talking to God and also kept saying, “I want to see my daughter.”

In an interview on “Good Morning America,” Shepherd said there are so many stories in the film and that it also follows the first responders’ experiences.

Shepherd’s co-star in the film Dondré Whitfield plays Genelle’s partner Roger.  The actor said he tried to put himself in Roger’s shoes.

“We shot in South Africa, and I had just been there a couple of years prior with my family. And there were places that I would be in at certain times, and I would just recall the times where we took pictures there as a family, and then they weren’t there with me,” he said.

“The emptiness of me not having my family there, I would bring that to set because Roger needed to be in search of his love. So me not having my loves there got me plugged in.”

The actors said they took a lot away from the story.

“I think it’s so apropos now, because that was a tragic time in our life. But when so many people came together, you hugged your neighbor that you may not have known. And I think in this time and period that we are in with such divisiveness, that’s what we need now, to hug people we don’t know, to cross that bridge,” Shepherd said.

Whitfield recalled feeling a similar sense of unity after 9/11.

“I think it was the first time in my life where I felt true patriotism,” he said.

“Because when the first one hit, we thought it was user error, a pilot, an accident. When the second one hit, it was obvious that it was deliberate. And so now, it wasn’t about whether it was Black or White. It was about the country. I felt like, for the first time in my life, it was like we were all unified, like, ‘Hey, this is an attack on all of us.’”

Other cast members include Darron Meyer as Pasquale Buzzelli, Guzman’s Port Authority co-worker and fellow 9/11 survivor, Frank Rautenbach as Jeffrey Stockton, Sean C. Michael as Frank Dougherty, Colin Moss as Captain Phil Torello and Ethan Saunders as Bill Jackson.