Tom Bergeron Looks Back on Friendship With the Late John Ritter: ‘I Just Loved the Guy’

Tom Bergeron honored his late pal John Ritter by narrating a reading of a Three’s Company episode in Hollywood last week that benefited the John Ritter Foundation, which raises awareness and funds research for thoracic aortic dissection and aneurysm.

Ritter passed away in 2003 from aortic dissection. His widow, Amy Yasbeck (Wings), has championed the foundation for years, saving lives in the process.

Ritter’s comic genius is legendary, and Bergeron is the king of dry-witted comebacks, as evidenced by his years of hosting on Dancing With the Stars and America’s Funniest Home Videos.

“John and I got to know each other when we were doing Hollywood Squares,” Bergeron tells TV Insider of the syndicated game show he hosted from 1998-2004. “That’s when we got to know each other a lot more. I just loved the guy. Who didn’t? We’d go out to lunch. My wife and I went to see John and Henry Winkler (Happy Days) in a Neil Simon play [The Dinner Party] in New York.”

Bergeron also visited Ritter on the set of 8 Simple Rules (for Dating My Teenage Daughter), the ABC sitcom on which Ritter was working when he passed away.

“I was with John when he got word that that show had been picked up,” Bergeron warmly recalls.

“It was a treat to see him in that kind of [sitcom] environment again,” the Emmy-winning Bergeron adds. “We’d kid that Paul Hennessy [Ritter’s 8 Simple Rules character] was the antithesis of Jack Tripper. What would happen if [Jack] became a father, who had teenager daughters and ‘Jack Tripper’ showed up to date them?”

8 Simple Rules brought this idea to the screen in the show’s first season in an episode titled “Come and Knock on Our Door” in which Paul dreamed that Kyle (played by Billy Aaron Brown) became a version of Jack Tripper and showed up at his front door!

“John was just this wonderfully positive ball of energy, and a lovely, lovely man,” the host says.

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Bergeron has stayed in close touch with Yasbeck over the years. “I’ve been on the East Coast for other [John Ritter Foundation events],” he says. “I actually flew in for this one.”

At the event, Bergeron narrated the stage directions for a Season 7 Three’s Company episode from 1983 titled “Going to Pot.”

“There’s this whole misunderstanding,” dryly notes Bergeron. “Of course, misunderstandings were the whole cornerstone of the show!”

Having pot came with consequences when the show first aired. “Now, in 2025, they deliver edibles right to your house!” Bergeron chuckles.

Watch for the staged reading of the Three’s Company episode, “Going to Pot,” to stream on Pluto TV (date to be announced).