This 12 months’s Massive Slick charity occasion in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, is lacking one high-profile visitor, following the demise of George Wendt. However Wendt’s nephew Jason Sudeikis paid tribute to the late Cheers star throughout a kickoff press convention on the Kids’s Mercy Hospital on Friday, Might 30.
“He was a tremendous man,” Sudeikis stated, shortly earlier than his microphone reduce off, as seen within the KSHB video under. “That’s him. That’s him messing with the soundboard. Like, ‘Don’t discuss me.’ Simply good Midwestern humility and sound know-how.”
And Cheers followers will probably be glad to know Wendt was simply as toast-worthy as his character, Norm. “With regard to my uncle George, I imply, there’s that outdated saying of like, ‘Don’t meet your heroes’ — often ‘[because] they allow you to down,’ I assume, is the again half of that assertion — however he’s not a kind of individuals,” Sudeikis stated. “He’s as enjoyable and type and as heat as any character he performed on tv or in movies.”
The Ted Lasso star additionally spoke about his uncle’s “unbelievable affect.” Wendt confirmed him, for instance, that appearing is “a profession you might even have, when you actually care about it” and “additionally a profession the place you might meet the love of your life, like his spouse, a.okay.a. everlasting girlfriend, Bernadette.” (Wendt wed Bernadette Birkett in 1978, and he or she voiced Norm’s offscreen spouse, Vera, on Cheers.)
Sudeikis went on: “He additionally all the time saved related to his household, to his roots, each in Chicago, after all, the place he’s from, however then additionally the time he spent right here, going to Rockhurst School and to a bar known as Mike’s an entire bunch, the place I feel he logged, perhaps, 18 credit score hours. But it surely was all in preparation of a job that everyone knows him for, on Cheers. All time properly spent. However yeah, we miss him drastically, and yeah, I like him dearly.”
Wendt, who died in his sleep on Might 20 at age 76, was one of many stars who returned to Kansas Metropolis in 2010 for the very first Massive Slick, an annual occasion that raises cash for Kids’s Mercy with the objective of eradicating pediatric most cancers.
“George was all the time prepared to take part,” Rob Riggle stated on the press convention on Friday. “He was all the time an lively participant in Massive Slick, whether or not he was umpiring the sport, on stage, no matter it was. He was straightforward with amusing and all the time enjoyable to be round.”
Paul Rudd stated, “It’s going to be felt, his absence this 12 months, though he’s so part of it simply as a lot as any of us. He’s a very, actually candy man. I imply, I like him.”
And Eric Stonestreet recalled hanging out with Wendt at a resort at a time that Wendt obtained a longing for cheeseburgers from the Kansas Metropolis chain Winstead’s. “He’s like, ‘We must always ship someone to order us a bunch of them.’ And miraculously, 100 cheeseburgers confirmed up,” Stonestreet stated. “And we sat there and toasted one another with cheeseburgers. It was excellent.”
