Latest news with #RheaPerlman
New York Post
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Rhea Perlman was shocked over 'Cheers' co-star George Wendt's death
Cheers to him. Rhea Perlman is weighing in on the recent death of her former 'Cheers' co-star, George Wendt. 'That was the saddest thing ever, when George passed away,' Perlman, 77, exclusively told The Post while promoting her new Netflix show, 'Too Much.' Advertisement 'Really unexpected. None of us thought he was that sick. And I don't think he thought he was that sick – because we had seen him not that long ago during the Emmys. We did some special bit during the Emmys,' she recalled, referring to the 'Cheers' reunion during the 2024 awards ceremony. 7 Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli, George Wendt as Norm Peterson in 'Cheers.' NBCUniversal via Getty Images 7 Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli, George Wendt as Norm Peterson in 'Cheers.' NBCUniversal via Getty Images Advertisement 'And I would run into George and his wife, Bernadette [Birkett], often on the street in the valley where they lived,' she revealed. 'Everything seemed just fine.' Wendt died at age 76 of cardiac arrest on May 20. His death certificate also reportedly listed congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease and hypertension as underlying causes. 'Ted Lasso' star Jason Sudeikis was Wendt's nephew. 7 George Wendt and Rhea Pearlman of 'Cheers' arrive for NBC's 75th Anniversary Special May 5, 2002 at Rockefeller Center. Getty Images Advertisement 'He's as fun and kind and as warm as any character he played on television or in films,' Sudeikis, 49, said in June after the star's passing. 'He was an incredible influence to me, both as someone that plays the trail being from the Midwest and teaching me that acting was a career you could actually have, and it's also a career where you could meet the love of your life like his wife, and AKA permanent girlfriend, Bernadette,' the 'Saturday Night Live' alum concluded. 7 John Ratzenberger, Kelsey Grammer, Ted Danson, George Wendt, Rhea Perlman and Kirstie Alley of 'Cheers.' WireImage Wendt was famous for playing Norm Peterson in the iconic sitcom 'Cheers,' which aired on NBC for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Advertisement The show followed former Red Sox pitcher-turned-bar owner Sam Malone (Ted Danson), and the various employees and patrons of the bar, including bar regular Norm (Wendt), barmaid Dianne (Shelley Long), bartender 'Coach' (Nicholas Colasanto) bar regular Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), bartender Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson), and wisecracking cocktail waitress Carla (Perlman). 'He was just the sweetest man in the world,' Perlman told The Post. 7 John Ratzenberger, Woody Harrelson, Shelley Long, Ted Danson, George Wendt, Rhea Perlman in 'Cheers.' ©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection 7 helley Long as Diane Chambers, Ted Danson as Sam Malone, Woody Harrelson as Woody Boyd, John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin, George Wendt as Norm Peterson, (center) Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli. NBCUniversal via Getty Images 7 James Burrows, Ted Dasnson, Shelley Long, John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt in 2016. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images She recalled that in 'Cheers,' Norm would sit on the bar while Carla often stood nearby. 'Every once in a while, I'd give him a punch, because that's what Carla does,' she explained. 'I'm punching him out of love.' Advertisement 'He would go 'ow!' and make me feel like I really hurt him. And I'd go, 'Oh, stop it! You didn't even feel that.'' She quipped, 'He was like a pussy cat.'
New York Post
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Why Rhea Perlman was 'scared' on Lena Dunham's 'Too Much'
Cheers to imposter syndrome. Hollywood veteran Rhea Perlman doubted herself — and often — while filming Lena Dunham's new Netflix show, 'Too Much.' 'There was a lot of improv we had to do. I had never done improv, so that was scary to me,' Perlman, 77, exclusively told The Post. Advertisement 5 Rhea Perlman and Rita Wilson in an episode of 'Too Much.' Netflix The 'Matilda' actress added, 'I called Lena at night a couple of times, like 'Lena, I don't think I should have said what I said in that scene – it was a bit over the top.'' In response, Dunham would reassure her that she wouldn't use material that didn't work. Advertisement Created by Dunham and her husband, Luis Felber, 'Too Much' follows Jessica (Megan Stalter), a New Yorker who moves to London and finds a romantic connection with Felix (Will Sharpe, 'The White Lotus.'). 5 Rhea Perlman at the Hollywood Legion on May 1, 2025. Jesse Grant/Peacock via Getty Images Perlman plays Megan's grandmother, Dottie, Dunham plays her sister, Nora, and Rita Wilson plays her mom, Lois. Despite having a long and storied career, Perlman said that 'Too Much' is 'much more risqué than a lot of things' she's done before. Advertisement 'Meg and Lena, they're both so free with their bodies,' she explained. 'Life is different now in the world. Women can be so much freer, and be beautiful. I didn't get to do that, but I did get to be part of it.' 5 Megan Stalter in 'Too Much.' Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection The Emmy-winning actress wanted to do 'Too Much' because she's a 'huge fan of Lena Dunham.' 'I watched every episode of 'Girls,'' she told The Post. 'I think everyone I know did!' Advertisement Perlman, who shares two children and three grandchildren with Danny DeVito, 80 – who she is separated from but has no plans to divorce – added that she 'loved the idea of being a grandmother, because now I am a grandmother.' 5 Megan Stalter and Lena Dunham in 'Too Much.' Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection '[Dottie is] a very different grandmother than I am, and my grandmother was. This grandmother I play is very modern, like an open book grandmother. She talks to her granddaughter about sex,' she explained. 'That is something I would never have heard from my grandmother. And, although I might talk to my grandchildren about sex at some point, they're too young for me to say that now.' The 'Cheers' alum also made waves in the 2023 'Barbie' movie, playing Ruth Handler, the creator of the iconic doll. 5 Rhea Perlman at Peacock's 'Poker Face' Season 2 Los Angeles Premiere held at The Hollywood Legion on May 1, 2025. Variety via Getty Images She quipped that she doesn't know if there will be a sequel because, 'I can't say I hang out' with Margot Robbie or Greta Gerwig. But, the role was 'a gift.' Advertisement 'I'm so delighted that I was part of it. It came out to be one of the greatest movies ever. It'll be as iconic as 'Matilda,'' she gushed. 'People come up to me on the street now, young girls walking with their parents, asking 'aren't you Barbie's mother?' That's how they see it.' Perlman said that movies kids love, such as 'Matilda' and 'Barbie,' are 'something that lives forever.'
Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Cheers star Rhea Perlman: ‘All we cared about in the Sixties was sex and drugs'
She was the beating heart of one of the best-loved, most-watched sitcoms of all time. In 269 episodes of Cheers, Rhea Perlman made the hard-to-love waitress Carla Tortelli the emotional core of the show. She was brash and bad-tempered with a sharp tongue, the mother to an ever-growing brood of children, who once begged Ted Danson's bar owner Sam Malone, 'You can't fire me, think of my kids, if I didn't have this job, I'd have to stay home with them.' Carla sparred continually with the barfly Norm, played by George Wendt, who died in May from a heart attack at the age of 76. 'I can't even think about his passing without crying,' Perlman tells me today, her voice breaking. 'I tell you, he was such a wonderful man, one of the sweetest people I've ever met.' Of course, Carla 'got to beat him up sometimes', she notes, smiling at the memory; it was a running gag that she would punch Norm on the arm when he annoyed her, 'and sometimes he'd go, 'Stop! It's hurting!'' The two shared a natural comic rapport. And Perlman's timing still comes easily to her, at 77, as she proves in Lena Dunham's follow-up to her groundbreaking HBO drama Girls (2012-17). Too Much is an offbeat love story, mostly set in London (where Dunham now lives). Perlman plays grandmother to Megan Stalter's (Hacks) Jessica, who has lost the man she loves to a social-media influencer (played by tabloid favourite Emily Ratajkowski) and has moved in with the matriarch of the family. Dunham has leant in to Perlman's talent for playing tell-it-like-it-is women and given her one of the smuttiest opening scenes for a grandmother ever seen on television. But the actress revelled in the opportunity to play a character who subverts expectations, especially those relating to what people of a certain age are supposed to do or say. 'That's a gift, when somebody writes those kind of lines for an old lady, something totally out of character for any old lady. I mean, I don't feel like an old lady, but I'm certainly not a young lady.' Girls was lauded for its no-filter depiction of millennial women living sometimes messy lives, and for not trying to people-please by making the audience like them. Its lead character, Hannah Horvath (Dunham), had an openly autobiographical element. Many will draw similar conclusions about Too Much, and Dunham's break-up from Taylor Swift's producer Jack Antonoff (who's now married to the actress Margaret Qualley). But the sexual frankness of Perlman's role, at least, bears few similarities to her life growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s. 'I came from a very middle-class Jewish family,' she says. 'We never talked about sex. And when I did start going out with guys, I never brought them home.' Home now is Los Angeles, where she is today, and where she attended one of the anti-Trump 'No Kings' marches that took place in more than 2,000 locations across America on June 14. Hers was in her local neighbourhood of West Hollywood – away from the area of the city where the president had sent National Guard troops, yet Perlman's anxiety about what is happening in the US is palpable. 'There are a lot of people here who feel scared,' she says, 'because of this administration that seems to be, without any thought, dissolving our democracy.' Her opinion of Trump is unequivocal. 'He's a dangerous man. I thought he was awful as the president to begin with and was never presidential. And now he's almost anti-presidential. He's just taking anything that we have away from us because he can. And we don't trust him. You can't trust a guy who has no respect. We've all lived with this constitution that we respected, and it served us well for a long time.' It's happening at a moment when Perlman is having something of a renaissance. She has played a casino mob boss in Poker Face and recreated the inventor of the Barbie doll, Ruth Handler, in Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie's 2023 blockbuster Barbie, although, she confesses, 'I had no idea it'd be that big. I mean, I thought it was a great idea... [but] I thought it was remarkable that it became that huge of a hit. 'And then there was the competition with the Christopher Nolan movie [Oppenheimer], which was night and day, but I thought, if anything, Barbie was the better movie. And I didn't like when people complained about it being about a toy. It's about what children like to do and need to do. They need to have dolls. When you're a child, they're not just a toy. My granddaughter has a baby doll that she rolls around in a carriage. It's a very important part of their upbringing. I didn't like when people came down on it – 'Oh, of course, it's going to be big. It was a famous toy.' Barbie was an important piece of life.' Married to fellow diminutive actor Danny DeVito – 'I am definitely still married to him. We just don't live together' – Perlman's granddaughter's mother, Gracie, is a painter of lush, colour-filled impressionistic works; she also has a grandson by her other daughter, the actress Lucy DeVito; her son Jake is a film producer. Perlman and her future husband began dating at the start of the 1970s and went on to play a fictional couple on the much-loved sitcom Taxi, which also launched the careers of Andy Kaufman and Christopher Lloyd. Cheers would have a similar stellar-nursery quality, making stars of Danson, Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammer, as well as Perlman. 'Ted's a legend, he was a legend in the show, and he still is – and these are all good people,' she says. 'There weren't a lot of assholes around our show.' Harrelson took over the role of bartender from Nicholas Colasanto's 'Coach', after the actor died from a heart attack, aged 61, following the third season. 'He was so much the right person to take that part and he's a lot of fun to be with,' she says, before adding, 'he got into a lot of trouble off camera in those days.' (Harrelson earned a reputation as a wild partier during his time on the show, reportedly claiming to have sex with several women a day and joking that he felt trapped in a relationship after three hours.) Perlman has seen huge changes during her more than 50 years in the industry. She started out in a more permissive era, coming of age in the 'let it all hang out' counterculture days of the 1960s. She contrasts it with her character's advice to Jessica in Too Much about why her boyfriend left her – 'You know, 'If you had just gotten yourself together better, he would never have left, and you could still get him back, if you just dress right, do a little something...' that wasn't anything we thought about,' she insists. 'I mean, all we cared about was sex and drugs.' She's not talking about her teenage years at home. '[Sex] just wasn't part of my life... [comic pause], unfortunately. Any relationships I had were when I got to college, and then we were having relationships with everybody every day.' She recognises that some of the shifts in sexual attitudes since then have been positive, including how the subject is portrayed on television. 'In lots of ways, you feel freer, but it's shown in a different way. In those days, people started working nude. That happened. I don't know what year it was, but I was a very young actress and that's when I did that play called Dracula Sabbat. It was a Dracula story, and nobody was wearing any clothes. And I invited my parents to it, and they were appalled. 'How could I dare invite them?' you know?' This was a 1970 off-Broadway production, which The New York Times suggested made 'The Dirtiest Show in Town seem like Charley's Aunt', writing that, 'these people get up to capers in Transylvania that Bela Lugosi never dreamt of in his wildest nightmares'. 'It was a crazy time, and now people have seen a lot of things in film and on television – if the network lets them,' she adds. 'But a lot of things are censored now.' Of course, Dunham made a habit of appearing nude in Girls, and there's certainly very little that's censored about Too Much. But it also has charm and an all-star cast that includes Richard E Grant, Andrew Scott and Stephen Fry. Perlman is optimistic it will find its audience. 'I hope people have fun watching it; it's light-hearted and has a lot to say. I think it'll be very successful and enjoyable, as Girls was. I mean, that was a very risqué show, all those years ago. Wow. Lena's relationship with Adam Driver? I'd never seen anything that sexual on a show before, and enjoyably so, because they were so great together and so free. I never get those parts. Where's my Adam Driver? Where's my Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with Adam Driver in it?' Too Much launches on Netflix on Tuesday 10 July
Globe and Mail
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Lena Dunham on her new show Too Much, the allure of New York and TV's double standard
I love Lena Dunham. She's generous with her candour, despite the vitriol of her haters. She wants to get to the bottom of what she notices, even if the bottom isn't the prettiest place to be. With her new Netflix series, Too Much (arriving July 10), she gives us a messy heroine at a messy moment in her life – messy meaning human – and invites us to ponder whether all those romantic comedies we've internalized are good for us or not. Jessica, played by Megan Stalter (the overconfident nepo-baby agent on Hacks), is a fledgling producer at a New York commercial agency. She has a loving but chaotic family – grandmother (Rhea Perlman), mother (Rita Wilson), older sister (Dunham) – and a callous ex-boyfriend (Michael Zegen), who stopped loving her and then found countless ways to blame her for it. She accepts a short-term assignment at the London office, where her co-workers, led by Richard E. Grant, dismiss her in new, British ways. And then she meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a musician whose own screwed-up-ness is disguised by his dreamboat exterior. Jessica's three-steps-forward, two-back progress is mirrored by the flashbacks Dunham employs to deepen her story, and Stalter is as physically and emotionally fearless as Dunham herself was on her previous series, the zeitgeist-grabbing Girls. Reader, she made me cry. Yeah, yeah, parts of Too Much sound semi-autobiographical: Dunham made some blunders amplified by social media; moved from New York to London in 2021 (I recommend her New Yorker essay about breaking up with the city she grew up in, as the child of two artist parents); met and married a musician, Luis Felber, who co-created the series. But name a decent piece of art that isn't. Here are highlights from a recent video interview with Dunham. What questions were you asking yourself while writing Too Much? I was trying to look at and deconstruct the influences that gave me my idea of what being an adult woman is supposed to look like. As a kid I was obsessed with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, Gidget. That unflappable, 'She's always getting herself into a sticky situation and getting herself out of it.' In your 20s, you don't know what you're supposed to be like; that's what Girls was about. Once I hit 30, I started thinking about all these 'supposed-tos,' and the ways in which my life didn't look like that. I remember calling my mother, really upset: 'I see all these women in the street, it's seven in the morning and they've already exercised and made their own coffee at home and the coffee is in a canister, and I cannot get out of bed before 9:30 if I'm not working, and that's on a good day.' I realized that Mary Richards, if she was around now, would definitely make herself a smoothie and put on exercise pants and a matching vest, because Mary was equipped and ready. I had this consistent feeling of being behind, being unprepared. Looking around the room, thinking, 'There's supposed to be an adult here' – oh god, it's me. So I wanted to centre in a romantic comedy a woman who realistically struggles with the things I and many people I know struggle with. Minus the montage of her suddenly cleaning her apartment and blowing out her hair and she's ready for life. There's a beautiful moment where Felix tells Jess he loves her body. How important was that to you? It was important to me and to Meg that whatever Jess is beating herself up about, it's not about what her body looks like. We talked a lot about how to do it. I've dated people who said a version of this to me: 'I don't want you to worry, your body not being size zero is not a problem for me.' They may have said it lightly more elegantly than that, but only lightly. When I met my husband, 'Don't worry' was not a part of the dialogue. The compliments were never, 'Insert light neg, but.' He never said anything that made me feel like there was another reality in which I could look a different way. I didn't realize I'd been missing that until I had it. Because even the body positivity movement is saying, 'Don't worry, it's okay.' What if we just took all that out of the picture? Did moving to London reawaken you creatively in the way you hoped it would? Yes. Although I published that essay about leaving New York, then promptly headed back to shoot all over the city all summer. It was the most me thing ever. My timing has never been ideal. I met my husband in London, that was obviously a big thing. I've found great collaborators here. But it also created some space for me to reimmerse myself in reading, watching films, painting. Girls was an amazing but all-encompassing experience. New York is such a productivity-based culture, it's easy to forget that you can't drive a car that's out of gas. I feel lucky in a way that my chronic health condition told me that I was burnt out. Typically for you, you've been open about your Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, endometriosis and fibromyalgia. It doesn't always feel like a luxury when you get sat on your butt by your own body turning against you. But it was a luxury to be able to pause. Let's talk about this maddening phenomenon where women who write some version of their experience get dismissed as limited, while men who do the same are hailed as authentic. I do get frustrated, not even on my own behalf, because I so often see women or queer people who are making things that are deeply developed pieces of work, which are being treated like they're attention-seeking tweets. It's hard for some people to believe that I got into this for reasons other than attention or fame. But truly, I don't even like compliments that much; they stress me out and make me turn red, and I immediately have to turn around and compliment the other person. I'm always like, 'Am I making enough of an appreciative face that they'll think I'm humble, but also like the compliment?' The reason I do any of this is the work. Do the harsh comments bother you? If I make you so angry, please go find something you enjoy. There's more content than there's ever been. I actually cannot relate to the way people act as if they're having their eyes held open and images forced into their brains like in Clockwork Orange. I wouldn't even click on a picture of Trump on Insta. There's an Easter egg in the final episode of Too Much, where we hear your voice call 'cut.' You sound so happy. It's a bit embarrassing, I sound like I'm a fourth-grader directing a school play. But my directing style is enthusiastic. I really get in there with actors, we're working it out, I'm gesticulating a lot. I'm super collaborative; I hire people I love and trust and try to give them a lot of agency. I can't help but notice that men are often treated like auteurs, whereas people will ask me stuff like, 'Were you in the editing room?' Of course I'm there. There's this assumption that the craft, the aesthetic, aren't yours, and my favourite part is the craft. Tell me a craft-related story. When I directed the film Catherine Called Birdy – A fantastic film, starring Bella Ramsey. On Netflix. On the first day, I showed up early to walk through the medieval village alone. I will never forget it as long as I live. It was my favourite book when I was 10, I wanted to make it for 25 years, and there I was, walking in a village we created. I cannot believe this is my job. I hope everyone who works on my sets feels that way: 'I can't believe that we get to do this together.' This interview has been edited and condensed.
Fox News
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Cheers' star George Wendt's cause of death revealed
"Cheers" actor George Wendt's cause of death has been revealed. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health listed Wendt's immediate cause of death as cardiac arrest with congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease and hypertension as underlying causes, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. Wendt died on May 20 at the age of 76, the document stated. He died peacefully in his sleep, a family representative previously shared in a statement to Fox News Digital. "George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him," the statement read. "He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time." In all 275 episodes of the beloved NBC sitcom, "Cheers," Wendt starred as Norm Peterson. Throughout the show's course, Wendt earned six consecutive Emmy nominations for his role. His "Cheers" co-stars honored Wendt in heartfelt tributes following his death. "I am devastated to hear that Georgie is no longer with us. I am sending all my love to Bernadette and the children," Danson wrote in a statement at the time given to The Hollywood Reporter. "It is going to take me a long time to get used to this. I love you, Georgie." Kelsey Grammer, who portrayed Frasier Crane on "Cheers" before he starred in his own spinoff, said, "I believe mourning is a private matter. But I liked George a lot. He was beloved by millions." "Cheers" co-star Rhea Perlman echoed a similar sentiment, saying, "George Wendt was the sweetest, kindest man I ever met." In one of his last interviews before his death, he shared how his one-word audition sparked into him landing his iconic role. Prior to his death, Wendt reunited with his "Cheers" co-stars Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson for their podcast, SiriusXM's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." During their conversation in August, he looked back on how he nearly missed out on the role that would define his career, all because of a scheduling conflict. Wendt was asked to walk into the bar and say "beer" to Shelley Long's character, Diane Chambers. Although the audition was just one syllable, it would eventually echo through sitcom history. Wendt's beloved "Cheers" character, Norm Peterson, became a fan favorite, as the frequent customer had a punchline for every pint. "Cheers" aired for 11 seasons on NBC, from 1982 to 1993, and was set in a Boston bar "where everybody knows your name." The cast evolved over the show's 11 seasons, but key members included Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman and John Ratzenberger. Later cast additions included Kelsey Grammer, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Bebe Neuwirth. The beloved show took home 28 Emmy Awards with a total of 179 nominations. After "Cheers" went off-air, the actor pivoted to his own show, "The George Wendt Show." Wendt also appeared on the big screen in movies like "Alice in Wonderland," "The Little Rascals," "Santa Buddies," "Airplane II: The Sequel" and more.
