Kaley Cuoco was just 16 years old when she landed her breakout role on the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules, which starred John Ritter and Katey Sagal as Paul and Cate Hennessy, a married couple trying to navigate raising their three children.
But tragedy struck soon after filming for Season 2 had begun in September 2003, and after three episodes had been completed, 54-year-old John fell ill during a rehearsal one afternoon.
Speaking to Howard Stern on SiriusXM back in 2012, Katey recalled: “We shot a promo and he didn’t feel well, and so at 4 in the afternoon he went to his room, after we shot the promo, and we all went home — we were done for the day.”
“Literally five hours later, at 9 o’clock at night, I get a call saying John’s in the hospital and he’s had a heart attack,” Katey continued. “So we get to the hospital, and within a couple of hours, he’d passed. It was a shock.”
Sadly, the heart attack was actually a misdiagnosis, and John’s cause of death was an undetected aortic dissection, which is when the body’s main artery tears. John’s family sued the hospital for negligence, and in 2008, Amy said she believes her husband would still be alive had he been correctly diagnosed.
Meanwhile, Kaley was just 17 years old when her beloved co-star passed, and remembered going to the 8 Simple Rules set the day after he died in the 2021 documentary Superstar: John Ritter.
“Everyone was just crying, bawling, and then people started telling stories,” she said, later tearfully adding: “I really love him so much, to this day.”
Kaley has been proactive in keeping John’s memory alive in the 22 years since his death, regularly sharing tributes to him on social media.
And on Monday, the star, now 39, revealed that she had won an auction for John’s jacket from his time on the TV show Three’s Company at a special event raising money for the John Ritter Foundation.
Sharing a selection of photos of herself at the event on Instagram, Kaley concluded her carousel with a picture of herself wearing the jacket.
After a brief hiatus, 8 Simple Rules continued filming, with John’s death written into the show. The rest of Season 2 and the third and final season of the series followed Cate and the kids as they struggled to come to terms with Paul’s death.
