'Cheers' star George Wendt dead at 76: 'He will be missed forever'

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George Wendt, who was best known for playing Norm Peterson on NBC’s long-running sitcom Cheers, died Tuesday at the age of 76.

Wendt’s publicist Melissa Nathan and family confirmed his death in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, telling the outlets he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep while at home.

“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.”

After getting his start with Chicago’s Second City troupe in the 1970s, the father of three caught his big break as Norm on Cheers in 1982.

The role earned him six Emmy nominations, from 1984-89, and ran for 11 seasons, from 1982 to 1993. It was a character he played in other NBC shows during its run, including Wings and St. Elsewhere. He later reprised the role opposite Kelsey Grammer in his Frasier spinoff.

Wendt, who was uncle to Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis, also had a recurring part on Saturday Night Live as Bob Swerski, a Chicago Bears superfan.

He also booked other notable roles, including parts in Dreamscape (1984), Fletch (1985), Gung Ho (1986), Plain Clothes (1987), Never Say Die (1988), Guilty by Suspicion (1991), Forever Young (1992) and Spice World (1997).

Following Cheers’ end, Wendt landed his own short-lived sitcom, The George Wendt Show, which cast him as a co-owner of a garage shop in Wisconsin. But despite his much-ballyhooed return to TV, the show was a flop, lasting only six episodes.

He later found a renewed career onstage, appearing in Broadway productions of Art, Hairspray and Elf.

In 2017, he checked off a bucket-list part when he took on the tragic Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse in Waterloo, Ont.

“If I can manage to pull this off it should be quite a capper in a career in the theatre,” Wendt told Postmedia in an interview. “It’s considered one of the classics and I’d say that’s spot-on. It’s got classic themes — fathers and sons, big picture operatic themes.”

Initially when he auditioned for Cheers, Wendt said Norm only had one line — “Beer.”

“The casting director, the late Stephen Kolzak, I was in his office and he said, ‘There’s this role, but it’s too small. You can’t just say beer.’ So he handed me the part of Norm,” Wendt recalled in a 2017 interview. “It wasn’t that big, but it was the guy who always wanted another beer and didn’t want to leave. So I read for that and they were interested but I wasn’t available, oddly. I was doing a different show. So they had me on the pilot as a guest star and then my other show got cancelled, so then they made Norm a regular role.”

Wendt said Cheers endured because the show’s writers “stayed away from topical references.”

He also said the dynamic between Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) was “timeless in the way that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn was.”

As for a reboot, Wendt thought it was inevitable something would happen one day. At one point a spinoff centring on Norm and Cliff (played by John Ratzenberger) was eyed.

“It seemed like a fairly satisfying ending and it did leave the door wide open for a sequel. In theory, those people are still walking in there every day. It’s not like Sam torched the place,” he said.

Every time he walked in the bar, Wendt’s character heard “Norm!” shouted from every patron. He would typically respond by dispensing a piece of life advice.

But Wendt said there was one little known fact from his time on the show.

“I used to be good with spitballs because the waitress station was right next to where Norm sat. There were these cocktail napkins and I used to launch spitballs across the set at Woody (Harrelson). I would wait until he had a scene with a lot of dialogue and I would just pelt him while the cameras were rolling. If you pause some of those scenes, you’ll see spitballs bouncing off his forehead.”

Norm had a saying, ‘It’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.’ Wendt’s motto didn’t stray too far from that.

Whenever someone asked him his favourite piece of advice, his response was simple. “Follow the shade.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com