George Wendt, who played a beloved barfly on 'Cheers,' dies at 76
By MARK KENNEDY
George Wendt, an actor with an Everyman charm who played the affable, beer-loving barfly Norm on the hit 1980s TV comedy 'Cheers' and later crafted a stage career that took him to Broadway in 'Art,' 'Hairspray' and 'Elf,' has died. He was 76.
Wendt's family said he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep while at home, according to the publicity firm The Agency Group.
'George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,' the family said in a statement. 'He will be missed forever." The family has requested privacy during this time.
Despite a long career of roles onstage and on TV, it was as gentle and henpecked Norm Peterson on 'Cheers' that he was most associated, earning six straight Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series from 1984-89.
The series was centered on lovable losers in a Boston bar and starred Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger, Kirstie Alley and Woody Harrelson. It would spin off another megahit in 'Frasier' and was nominated for an astounding 117 Emmy Awards, winning 28 of them.
Wendt, who spent six years in Chicago's renowned Second City improv troupe before sitting on a barstool at the place where everybody knows your name, didn't have high hopes when he auditioned for 'Cheers.'
'My agent said, 'It's a small role, honey. It's one line. Actually, it's one word.' The word was 'beer.' I was having a hard time believing I was right for the role of 'the guy who looked like he wanted a beer.' So I went in, and they said, 'It's too small a role. Why don't you read this other one?' And it was a guy who never left the bar,' Wendt told GQ in an oral history of 'Cheers.'
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Today
4 hours ago
- Japan Today
Tony Awards offer many intriguing matchups in a star-studded season
Joy Woods, left, and Audra McDonald appear during a performance of the Broadway musical "Gypsy" in New York. (Julieta Cervantes via AP) By MARK KENNEDY A pair of singing androids. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. A drunken Mary Todd Lincoln. A musical with a corpse as its hero. Romeo, Juliet and teddy bears with rave music. Not to mention George Clooney. Broadway has had a stuffed season with seemingly something for everyone and now it's time to recognize the best with the Tony Awards, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, set for Sunday night on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. Broadway buzz is usually reserved for musicals but this year the plays — powered by A-list talent — have driven the conversation. There's Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Othello,' Sarah Snook in a one-woman version of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and her 'Succession' co-star Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' (Clooney, Snook and Odenkirk are nominated for Tonys.) There were two Pulitzer winners — 2024 awardee 'English' and 'Purpose' from 2025 — but perhaps one of the season's biggest surprises was 'Oh, Mary!,' Cole Escola's irreverent, raunchy, gleefully deranged revisionist history centered on Mary Todd Lincoln. All three are nominated for best play, along with 'John Proctor is the Villain' and 'The Hills of California.' On the musical side, three options seem to be in the mix for the top prize: 'Maybe Happy Ending,' a rom-com about a pair of androids; 'Dead Outlaw,' about an alcoholic drifter whose embalmed body becomes a prized possession for half a century; and 'Death Becomes Her,' the musical satire about longtime frenemies who drink a magic potion for eternal youth and beauty. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' 'Death Becomes Her' and another musical nominee, 'Buena Vista Social Club,' lead nominations with 10 apiece. The 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion, making it the highest-grossing season ever and signaling that Broadway has finally emerged from the COVID-19 blues, having overtaken the previous high of $1.8 billion during the 2018-2019 season. 'We're going through this strange period, which I would think someday we can draw the line from COVID to this, as you can draw the line from the early 1980s with AIDS to the explosion of big musicals again,' says Harvey Fierstein, who will get a special Tony for lifetime achievement. Audra McDonald, the most recognized performer in the theater awards' history, could possibly extend her Tony lead. Already the record holder for most acting wins with six Tonys, McDonald could add to that thanks to her leading turn in an acclaimed revival of 'Gypsy.' She has to get past Nicole Scherzinger, who has been wowing audiences in 'Sunset Blvd.' And Kara Young — the first Black female actor to be nominated for a Tony Award in four consecutive years — could become the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively, should she win for her role in the play 'Purpose.' Other possible back-to-back winners include director Danya Taymor, hoping to follow up her 2024 win with 'The Outsiders' with another for 'John Proctor Is the Villain,' and 'Purpose' playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who won last year with 'Appropriate.' Other possible firsts include Daniel Dae Kim, who could become the first Asian winner in the category of best leading actor in a play for his work in a revival of 'Yellow Face.' And Marjan Neshat and her 'English' co-star Tala Ashe could become the first female actors of Iranian descent to win a Tony. Broadway this season saw a burst in alt-rock and the emergence of stories of young people for young people, including 'John Proctor is the Villain' and a 'Romeo + Juliet' pitched to Generation Z and millennials. Sunday's telecast, as usual, will have a musical number for each of the shows vying for the best new musical crown, as well as some that didn't make the cut, like 'Just in Time,' a musical about Bobby Darin, and 'Real Women Have Curves.' This year, there's also room for 'Hamilton,' celebrating its 10th year on Broadway. But the musicals 'BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical' and 'SMASH' didn't get slots. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Today
3 days ago
- Japan Today
Broadway has found its Gen Z audience — by telling Gen Z stories
This image shows Rachel Zegler as Juliet, right, and Kit Connor as Romeo, during a performance of "Romeo + Juliet" in New York. By ELISE RYAN Kimberly Belflower knew 'John Proctor is the Villain' needed its final cathartic scene to work — and, for that, it needed Lorde's 'Green Light.' 'I literally told my agent, 'I would rather the play just not get done if it can't use that song,'' the playwright laughed. She wrote Lorde a letter, explaining what the song meant, and got her green light. Starring Sadie Sink, the staggering play about high schoolers studying 'The Crucible' as the #MeToo movement arrives in their small Georgia town, earned seven Tony nominations, including best new play — the most of any this season. It's among a group of Broadway shows that have centered the stories of young people and attracted audiences to match. Sam Gold's Brooklyn-rave take on 'Romeo + Juliet,' nominated for best revival of a play and led by Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler with music from Jack Antonoff, drew the youngest ticket-buying audience recorded on Broadway, producers reported, with 14% of ticket purchasers aged 18-24, compared to the industry average of 3%. The shows share some DNA: pop music (specifically the stylings of Antonoff, who also produced 'Green Light'), Hollywood stars with established fanbases and stories that reflect the complexity of young adulthood. 'It was very clear that young people found our show because it was doing what theater's supposed to do,' Gold said. 'Be a mirror.' The themes 'John Proctor' investigates aren't danced around (until they literally are). The girls are quick to discuss #MeToo's impact, intersectional feminism and sexual autonomy. Their conversations, true to teenage girlhood, are laced with comedy and pop culture references — Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, 'Twilight,' and, of course, Lorde. Fina Strazza, 19, portrays Beth, a leader who is whip-smart and well-intentioned — but whose friendships and belief system are shaken by the play's revelations. 'You have so much empathy and are so invested in her, but she still has these mishaps and slip-ups that young people often have,' said Strazza, nominated for best featured actor in a play. Some audience members have given her letters detailing how Beth helped them forgive themselves for how they handled similar experiences. The script is written in prose, with frequent line breaks and infrequent capital letters. Director Danya Taymor, nominated for best direction of a play a year after winning a Tony for another teenage canon classic, 'The Outsiders, ' was drawn to that rhythm — and how Belflower's depiction of adolescence captured its intensity, just as S.E. Hinton had. 'There's something about the teenage years that is so raw,' Taymor said. 'None of us can escape it.' During his Tony-winning production of 'An Enemy of the People,' Gold found himself having conversations with young actors and theatergoers about climate change, politics and how 'theater was something that people their age and younger really need in a different way, as the world is becoming so addicted to technology,' he said. That conjured 'Romeo and Juliet.' The original text 'has it all in terms of what it means to inherit the future that people older than you have created,' Gold said. Building the world of this show, with an ensemble under 30, was not unlike building 'An Enemy of the People,' set in 19th century Norway, Gold said: 'I think the difference is that the world that I made for this show is something that a very hungry audience had not gotten to see.' Fans, Gold correctly predicted, were ravenous. Demand ahead of the first preview prompted a preemptive extension. Word (and bootleg video) of Connor doing a pullup to kiss Zegler made the rounds. 'Man of the House,' an Antonoff-produced ballad sung by Zegler mid-show, was released as a single. With the show premiering just before the U.S. presidential election, Voters of Tomorrow even registered new voters in the lobby. Audiences proved willing to pay: Average ticket prices hovered around $150. Cheaper rush and lottery tickets drew lines hours before the box office opened. Every week but one sold out. 'The show was initially really well sold because we had a cast that appealed to a really specific audience,' said producer Greg Nobile of Seaview Productions. 'We continued to see the houses sell out because these audiences came, and they were all over online talking about the ways in which they actually felt seen.' Thomas Laub, 28, and Alyah Chanelle Scott, 27, started Runyonland Productions for that very reason. 'We both felt a lot of frustration with the industry, and the ways that we were boxed out of it as students in Michigan who were able to come to New York sparingly,' Laub said. Runyonland was launched in 2018 with the premise that highlighting new, bold voices would bring change. This spring, Scott, known for playing Whitney in HBO's 'Sex Lives of College Girls,' acted off-Broadway in Natalie Margolin's 'All Nighter.' 'I was standing onstage and looking out and seeing the college kids that I was playing,' Scott said. 'I was like, 'I respect you so much. I want to do you proud. I want to show you a story that represents you in a way that doesn't belittle or demean you, but uplifts you.'' Producing 'John Proctor,' Scott said, gave Runyonland the opportunity to target that audience on a Broadway scale. Belflower developed the show with students as part of a The Farm College Collaboration Project. It's been licensed over 100 times for high school and college productions. The Broadway production's social and influencer marketing is run by 20-somethings, too. Previews attracted fans with a $29 ticket lottery. While average prices jumped to over $100 last week (still below the Broadway-wide average), $40 rush, lottery and standing room tickets have sold out most nights, pushing capacity over 100%. The success is validating Runyonland's mission, Laub said. 'Alyah doesn't believe me that I cry every time at the end,' Laub said. Scott laughs. 'I just want to assure you, on the record, that I do indeed cry every time.' The final scene of 'John Proctor' is a reclamation fueled by rage and 'Green Light.' Capturing that electricity has been key to the show's marketing. 'The pullup (in 'Romeo + Juliet') is so impactful because it's so real. It's like so exactly what a teenage boy would do,' Taymor said. 'I think when you see the girls in 'John Proctor' screaming ... it hits you in a visceral way.' That screaming made the Playbill cover. 'In my opinion, the look and feel of that campaign feels different from a traditional theatrical campaign, and it feels a lot closer to a film campaign,' Laub said. The show's team indeed considered the zeitgeist-infiltrating work of their sister industries, specifically studios like Neon and A24. In May, 'John Proctor is the Villain' finished its second 'spirit week' with a school spirit day. Earlier events included an ice cream social — actors served Van Leeuwen — a silent disco and a banned book giveaway. For those not in their own school's colors, the merch stand offered T-shirts, including one printed with the Walt Whitman-channeling line said by Sink's Shelby: 'I contain frickin' multitudes.' Julia Lawrence, 26, designed the shirt after the show's team saw her TikTok video reimagining their traditional merch into something more like a concert tee. 'It's just so incredible to bring Gen Z into the theater that way, especially at a time when theater has never been more important,' Lawrence said. 'In a world that's overpowered by screens, live art can be such a powerful way to find understanding.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Times
4 days ago
- Japan Times
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
A flight and a bus or several trains, a line, a boat, another line, a bus, a walk and 96 stairs is all it takes to get to Naoshima's newest art sanctum. Benesse Art Site Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea, popularly shortened to just Naoshima or 'the art islands,' is a veritable art theme park of six museums and 22 spaces across four islands. Last week it welcomed a new member. The building, imaginatively named Naoshima New Museum of Art, opened May 31. Tadao Ando, Naoshima's inextricable architect, designed the space, making the museum his 10th contribution to the art site. Three floors of about 3,200 square meters of gallery begin at ground level and descend into the hill on which it rests. Architecturally the museum feels very much same-same as the rest of Naoshima, with a humble facade that looks out over the lesser-used Honmura port on the east side of the island. The staircase in the new Tadao Ando building creates a single line through the museum. | Thu-Huong Ha Unlike other Naoshima museums, whose collections are permanent, the new museum will change periodically, with the first update scheduled for February 2026. The new museum opens under the directorship of Akiko Miki with the exhibition 'From the Origin to the Future,' which contains installations and site-specific works by 12 living Asian artists. This is an important departure from the rest of Naoshima; the roster that's made it famous — Yayoi Kusama, Claude Monet, Walter De Maria, James Turrell, Hiroshi Sugimoto — skews heavily white and Japanese — although the new museum is consistent in that it's still predominantly male. The art site is jointly run by the Fukutake Foundation and Benesse Holdings, which were both founded by the Fukutake family. The vision for the art islands originally came from Tetsuhiko Fukutake, but when he unexpectedly died in 1986, his son, Soichiro, took over and presided over the island's cultural transformation over the next several decades. The billionaire publisher turns 80 this year, and the new museum, which draws from his collection, may well be his swan song. 'I started the Asian collection based on the hypothesis that the era of the West, of Europe and America, was coming to an end, and that an era of Asia would begin,' Fukutake told the press. 'And now, it feels like the times are actually heading in that direction, so I feel like it was the right decision.' Benesse signaled its commitment to the region in 2016, when it moved its ¥3 million Benesse Prize from its home at the Venice Biennale to the Singapore Biennale, with a new focus on Asian art. Works shown at the Naoshima New Museum of Art include past winners of the prize. Pannaphan Yodmanee, 'Aftermath' (2016/2025) and Henri Dono & indieguerillas, 'Consciousness of Humanity: a Journey to the Center' (2024-25) | Thu-Huong Ha Detail of Pannaphan Yodmanee, 'Aftermath' (2016/2025) | Thu-Huong Ha On the first floor, Southeast Asian artists make statements about religion, harmony, colonialism and memory. 'Aftermath' is an intricate and expansive mixed-media mural installation by Thai artist Pannaphan Yodmanee. The 11th Benesse Prize-winning work explores Buddhist cosmology using rocks and found objects. The artist paints traditional Thai art motifs directly onto stone and displays stupas below, while figures who seem straight out of Buddhist hell look on. Moving right across the mural, horse-backed Europeans shoot at loin-clothed natives in an endless cycle of suffering. Indonesian husband-and-wife pair indieguerillas, comprising Dyatmiko 'Miko' Bawono and Santi Ariestyowanti, collaborated with established Indonesian artist Heri Dono for seven pieces that make up the installation 'Consciousness of Humanity: a Journey to the Center.' Bright cartoon-like acrylics on wood draw on imagery from traditional Javanese puppet theater. The figurative illustrations were originally meant to be a public art work connecting a mosque and a church, says Bawono. But the commission didn't work out. '(The government) preferred a more neutral work with only shapes, like circles and triangles,' he says, adding that he's glad their vision could be executed on Naoshima. Do Ho Suh, 'Hub/s, Naoshima, Seoul, New York, Horsham, London, Berlin' (2025) | Thu-Huong Ha One floor down is a gallery containing Do Ho Suh's 'Hub,' an ongoing series that's brought the London-based Korean artist to global renown. Suh creates to-scale fabric and steel replicas of rooms and spaces he's lived in in Seoul, New York, Berlin, among others. For this iteration, he adds the hallway of a house from Naoshima, connecting it to previously made spaces. Though other works in this architectural series feature detailed fixtures like stoves, toilets and radiators, the ones here appear as one extended hallway, connecting place to place to place, smooth and nonspecific. On the lowest floor are three provocateurs of Japan's contemporary art world. Makoto Aida's newly commissioned 'Monument for Nothing — Red Torii Gate,' part of his ongoing project of the same name, critiques Japan and its leadership. A distorted torii gate sculpture looms over the space of the gallery, covered in low-res images collected from the news over the past three decades, a period in which Japan's economy has suffered and its birth rate has declined. The faces of Japanese politicians, with appearances by U.S. President Donald Trump and Steve Jobs, adorn the gate. One image shows former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wearing his infamous 'Abenomask,' while another shows him flanked by other former heads of government and cracking up. Thin sprouts rise up from all over the deformed figure, intended to represent hope for Japan's future — but they only manage to make the form look even more grotesque and diseased. Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, 'The Sweet Box: Michi in Transit' (2024-present) | Thu-Huong Ha The artist collective popularly known as Chim↑Pom shows elements from its Michi (as in, 'street') work in Tokyo's Koenji neighborhood, part of their 'Sukurappu ando Birudo' ('scrap and build') project. Documents, sofa parts, hoses, pipes and other debris from the demolitions of the former Parco building in Shibuya and Kabukicho Shopping District Promotion Association building are squashed into a box reminiscent of a shipping container, in a statement on Japan's constant construction and rebuilding. Stretching between the two works is Takashi Murakami's 13-meter-wide 'Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP,' based on Iwasa Matabei's Edo Period (1603-1868) National Treasure screens depicting life in Kyoto, which the artist has updated since 2023. Finally, 99 life-sized wolf sculptures in Cai Guo-Qiang's 'Head On,' which has traveled all over the world from its debut in Berlin, now live on Naoshima as part of Fukutake's collection. Cai Guo-Qiang, 'Head On' (2006) | Thu-Huong Ha After the subterranean wolves, there's respite at the museum cafe. Breezy at the same time that it feels slightly weighted by the sea air and charged by the energy of trees tossed by the wind, the space contains a newly commissioned work by Indian artist N. S. Harsha. Harsha seized the chance to work on the cafe. 'I really like when art is positioned in a place where it's not exactly a museum, it's at the threshold,' he says. 'Happy Married Life' consists of panels telling three stages of a story about a wedding. 'It's been a longtime idea of mine to get a microscope and telescope married. I wanted them to get married. It's time!' the artist says, chuckling. It's playful and joyful — Harsha's name means 'happiness,' so it sort of goes with the territory, he says — but the work also represents a union between what he sees as two components inside each of us, internal and external visions. That cheer is somewhat at odds with the depictions of suffering and political critiques on display throughout the rest of the museum, but it's a nice moment of whimsy against Ando's sleek, spare monochrome. It's worth noting that the new museum is one of the few art spaces on Naoshima that allows photography. Perhaps that's why the museum leans a bit too heavily on large-scale, Instagram-worthy crowd-pleasers. Which is unfortunate because the mix of critical Japanese works and works by younger Southeast Asian artists makes the Naoshima New Museum of Art otherwise a welcome addition to the larger Western-focused Benesse complex. N. S. Harsha, 'Happy Married Life' (2025) | Thu-Huong Ha Most of the indoor Naoshima spaces have long had a no-photo policy, which allows for more actual art-viewing, as opposed to the kind of look-at-me-looking-at-art experience that has become the norm at clogged art shows. One has to wonder if the new photography policy is pandering in a way Naoshima has largely been able to avoid (with the exception of its famous pumpkin, the rare public artwork that has its own self-governing line). Fukutake's shift to Asian art is more than a lofty vision of the world's future creative center — it's a shrewd commercial move for the tycoon who's already completely remade the island and region. Takamatsu Airport serves daily low-cost flights to and from Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, making Naoshima an international weekend getaway that's as convenient (or inconvenient) from East Asia as from Tokyo. Streets of old-style Japanese houses are wedged in with cafes catering to foreign tourists, and a quiet slope is quickly interrupted by visitors shouting to each other as they fly by on motorized bicycles. The ferries and long queues are filled with the bustling excitement of languages from around the world, people holding up their phones, ready to look and be looked at. The entrance to the Naoshima New Museum of Art displays its oddly hard to read logo. | Thu-Huong Ha For more information about the Naoshima New Museum of Art, visit
