In a recent episode of the Still Here Hollywood Podcast with Steve Kmetko, John Ritter‘s widow, Amy Yasbeck, talked about how she orchestrated a reunion between her husband and Suzanne Somers after a long falling-out period.
The two starred opposite in the hit sitcom Three’s Company. Somers exited the show in season 5 in a salary dispute with producers.
“I didn’t do it in a sneaky way,” Yasbeck, 61, recalled to Kmetko of the reunion. “We were at the premiere of Victor/Victoria on Broadway [in 1995], and at the intermission, I went to the ladies room and all of a sudden, Suzanne is standing there next to me.”
She introduced herself, and Somers told her that she would be singing at the after-party.
At the after-party, Somers performed Can’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me, and Ritter went to her.
“And she like, turned around. And they hugged it out and stuff, which was great. You know, it was a big thing,” Yasbeck remembered.
“I think they were great together and I don’t think they ever maybe got each other, like where each other was coming from after that kind of split,” she said. “Because John never felt like it was never about a woman being paid — and John was, like, the most liberal and whatever. It was pretty even [as far as their pay was concerned]. And John, he didn’t ever want to talk about it.”
Yasbeck said her husband was careful not to speak about it publicly.
“He didn’t want to refute anything that Suzanne was saying or get into any kind of a weird thing,” she said. “He just loved her — and for a while, from afar. So it was tricky.”
“And it was sad when she passed away. It was sad when John passed away because that’s then 20 years lost for a friendship or any kind of furthering of a reunion,” she added.
Ritter died suddenly in September 2003 at age 54. Somers died in October 2023 at 76.
