Jason Ritter reflected on getting to work with Beau Bridges, who plays his onscreen dad, Howard “Senior” Markston, in Matlock, and how the actor reminds him of his late father, John Ritter.
At the Matlock panel at PaleyFest on Sunday, March 23, Jason, 45, opened up about Beau’s addition to the star-studded cast and his connection to the actor.
“Beau is so lovely. It was this strange thing when Beau was cast. Throughout my entire childhood my dad and Beau would get mistaken for each other all the time,” Jason said. “There is a bit of physical similarity. One time my dad got a fan letter from someone who listed all these things he’d done, performances they’d loved and said ‘can you please sign the enclosed picture’ it was a Beau Bridges photo. So I already had this weird feeling of connection to him.”
Jason said that he had met Beau prior to working together on Matlock with Kathy Bates, Skye P. Marshall and David Del Rio.
“Also, strangely, I had done a play reading with him where I played a character that he had originated when he did the play originally in the ’70s,” the Parenthood actor explained. “And so, I had met him at that time.”
He also talked about meeting John’s Three’s Company costar Don Knotts when he was younger.
“As a kid I definitely met him a bunch of times and then I saw him a couple of times,” Jason recalled of his father’s costar. “But I think most of the times I ran into him were after my dad passed [in 2003], at various events and things like that, or TV Land Awards, I think at some point.”
“He made me laugh so much,” Jason said of meeting Don, who died at 81 in 2006. “And his facial expressions and just his whole vibe was so funny to me on that show. And so it was a thrill for me to see him, to meet him.”
John died at age 54 on September 11, 2003, from an aortic dissection. In addition to Jason, he also shared kids Tyler Ritter and Carly Ritter with first wife, Nancy Morgan.
More than a decade after his father’s passing, Jason told Closer that he tried to “live as honestly and simply as possible.”
“I feel his presence every day,” the Emmy nominee told Closer. “Sometimes I will turn on the TV and catch an old episode of Three’s Company. I always watch it. Occasionally, there is even an episode I haven’t seen before. It’s special to be able to do that.”
“I do wish he’d been able to see all the things [I’ve done] since his death,” Jason said. “I also think somewhere maybe he is seeing them and all the things in the future.”
Jason said that John’s death made him “realize how fragile we all are.”
“Of course, I wish things could have been different,” he said. “He was such wonderful man and I miss him always.”
