The doctors wanted to admit him immediately, but Welch was in a play, “The Little Foxes,” at the New York Theatre Workshop, and like most stage actors, he was determined never to miss a performance. A radiologist diagnosed Welch with stage IIIA lung cancer. It started with a persistent cough, which led to an X-ray, which led to a CT scan. Even when he played smarmy or sinister, that fearful look around his eyes, that cosmic flinch, made him relatable and drew audiences in. His face, hawkish but soft, had something of a permanent wince about it, as if he expected to be smacked at any moment. He was a big guy, over 6 feet, but he exuded vulnerability. He narrated Woody Allen’s “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” and made decent money reading audiobooks, including the young-adult “Last Apprentice” series, “The Imperfectionists,” and John Grisham’s “Playing for Pizza.” “We played husband and wife, and we wound up falling madly in love,” she remembers.Ĭhris could be snobby about doing commercials, although as an obsessive newspaper reader he was thrilled to land a New York Times ad. Barrie’s “Dear Brutus” in Westport, Conn. But he also did plenty of experimental and regional theater, and it was while appearing in an out-of-town show - a 2005 revival of J.M. He made it to Broadway a couple of times, as well, most notably as the tormented Reverend Parris in a 2002 production of “The Crucible,” opposite Laura Linney and Liam Neeson. Welch did his share of “Law & Order” episodes, like every New York actor, and was a regular presence off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway. rex, speaking with an exaggerated formality, he’s a ridiculous, magnetic, and deeply human figure - the irreplaceable heart of the show.Īt the opening night party for “Romeo & Juliet” at Shakespeare in the Park Letting his hands dangle helplessly like a neurasthenic T. Amid a cast that often seems like a taxonomy of male social inadequacy, Gregory is the most awkward of them all. While the show is charming and keenly observed, and will likely thrive even in his absence, Welch’s Peter Gregory, TED-talk Socrates and sesame-seed tycoon, will be missed.Įxecutive Producer Mike Judge has long specialized in wounded, insecure, painfully uncomfortable men (from “Beavis & Butthead” and “King of the Hill” to “Office Space”), and despite Peter Gregory’s brief time on screen, he is already among the most indelible. Welch shot five episodes before further complications related to the cancer took his life in December, 2013. More than that, he was a poster boy for the tech world’s imperiousness, its brilliance, and its odd alienation from the very world it is forever trying to make “a better place,” as one character after another puts it in one of the show’s running gags. It was agreed the surgery could be put off for a month, and Chris went to Los Angeles, where he created the role of comedically awkward, creepily soft-spoken angel investor Peter Gregory.īased loosely on the slightly less-awkward, creepily soft-spoken PayPal co-founder and Facebook angel Peter Thiel, Gregory was a linchpin of the first season of the series, having funded the startup -Pied Piper - around which the action revolves. The latest news was bad, but he and Emma were used to that. With aggressive treatment, Chris and the doctors had kept the tumors at bay so far. Or maybe it was all just the result of some horrible mutation that lay dormant in his DNA all along. Maybe the weeks Chris spent after the 9/11 attacks helping out at ground zero were a factor. He was a casual smoker, and he enjoyed the occasional steak at Keens, but so did a lot of people. Nobody could say why the cancer had attacked his lungs, then his prostate, and now his brain. Before his diagnosis, he’d been a fanatical cyclist, winging around Central Park on his fixed-gear bike, his thin brown hair flying behind him. “I have to go shoot this pilot,” he said, stunned. The lung cancer he’d been battling successfully since the fall of 2010 had spread to his brain.Ĭhris was sitting with his wife, Emma, and his doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. Just a day after Christopher Evan Welch landed a career-making role on HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” he received some heartbreaking news. Aaron Gell wrote this tribute to Welch early last year. It was written into the story after Welch himself died of complications from cancer in late 2013. Peter Gregory’s death in the show was unplanned. The episode featured a funeral for one of the first season’s leading characters, the eccentric venture capitalist Peter Gregory, who was played by a 48-year old actor named Christopher Evan Welch. The new season of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” debuted yesterday.
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