CELEBRITY
Joyce DeWitt Reveals the Amazing Secret Connection She Shared With Late ‘Three’s Company’ Star John Ritter
Joyce DeWitt had a special nonverbal connection with John Ritter as soon as they met.
The Three’s Company actress, 77, has recalled the strong chemistry she shared with her late costar Ritter, who died in 2003 at the age of 54.
“For John and I, the day that we met, our bodies were talking to each other,” DeWitt said, speaking to People on September 12 at The John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health’s Evening from the Heart LA Gala. “It’s like we knew instantly, like if he swung high, I ducked low. If I ran low, he would swing high.”
DeWitt felt she and Ritter communicated “kinesthetically”, and she found their connection “wonderfully joyous”.
She added, “We didn’t even have to talk. My body knew what his body was going to do and his knew what mine was going to do. And that was just there from the moment that we met.
“You rehearse it like choreography so that you know the other person is safe and you will be too. Then you just fly at each other with all your energy and hope you bounce correctly backwards and that you survive it.
“And the fun of that is extraordinary. And the audience, I think, can see and feel the realness of it and get caught up in the play of it, which is so joyful.”
As reported by the National Examiner in August, Ritter’s son, Matlock star Jason Ritter, 46, revealed that he still feels a strong connection to his late dad and regularly seeks fatherly advice from him.
“I go, ‘I need you in this corner right here, dad,’ and I just sort of sit him down and talk to him,” he told Hoda Kotb, 62, on the Joy 101 podcast. “There’s so much about this world that’s such a mystery, and whether he’s out there somewhere, or I know him so well that he’s within me somewhere, it doesn’t matter.”
“I know him. There are times where I can ask him a question that I don’t necessarily know the answer to, and I filter it through what I knew about him as a father and as a person, and I can kind of guess what he would say,” added the Parenthood alum.
