Friends of the late actor Heath Ledger often talk of his kindness, and the latest to do so is his former A Knight's Tale co-star Alan Tudyk.
During an appearance on Mythical Kitchen's Last Meals YouTube series, the comedic Resident Alien actor, also known for his work in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Moana, and the Star Wars movie, Rogue One, opened up about a time when Ledger comforted him while they were filming the medieval action comedy.
When they were living and working in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, in 2000 Tudyk's friend back in America died from a heroin overdose.
He told Mythical Kitchen host Josh Scherer that while he was struggling with the news, Ledger, who died at age 28 in 2008, offered him his support.
Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Tudyk for comment Tuesday.
"I was feeling very alone in Prague. We shot that in the Czech Republic for five months, two weeks, two days—not that I was counting. I had never been out of the country for that long, and there weren't a lot of Americans to hang out with, so I was pretty homesick," Tudyk explained.
"And then my buddy died—don't do heroin, kids. It kills for real and stuff. My buddy was an amazing guy. He was like one of those larger-than-life people. [He] actually knew Heath. Heath knew him. Heath had stayed at his house for some reason."
Tudyk explained that his friend was a fellow actor in his class at The Juilliard School, a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. He then shared how he found out the news of his death.
"So I got an email and made a call and found out, and I was, I was pretty … I was way down. And Heath called me and said, 'What are you, what are you doing?' I was like, 'I'm drinking,'" he said.
Ledger then gave Tudyk his new address, as he had just moved to another part of town. The comedic actor ended up living with Ledger and his then girlfriend, the actor Heather Graham, for "a few days."
"So Heather Graham and Heath Ledger were sort of my nurses. It was a bizarre time, man. He just kept me together for me until I got on a plane," Tudyk continued.
"We had that relationship. He sort of took—he was a little like, older than me that way but he wasn't older than me."
Scherer asked the actor if Ledger was like that with everybody or if he just saw "extreme need" from Tudyk in that moment.
"He was fantastic. I don't know that he was like that with anybody else. I feel like it was kind of just with me," Tudyk replied. "I was really, sort of, broken at that point. It was—yeah, it was just a time."
Tudyk shared that this was the first time he had dealt with grief of that magnitude, and would often think he would see his late friend walking on the street, even though he had died.
"You're walking down the street and there's the person who died, and it's like the person, they're turning their head, they're turning their head and it's like, 'It's them, it's them, it's them.' And then just right at the last second, it's not them," he explained. "And it's weird how your brain wants that. Also, the guy, the particular person, he seemed indestructible, and he believed it himself to the point where, you know, it killed him."
Elsewhere in the YouTube episode, Tudyk revealed that he was working alongside comedy legend Robin Williams when he had a serious allergic reaction. The actor spoke of how his girlfriend had given him some chocolates and they ate them and drank scotch to celebrate his landing a role in the 1998 comedy film Patch Adams.
"Then I went to the set next day, and my windpipe started closing up when I was in the makeup chair," Tudyk said. He added how he was "having trouble breathing and hives were all over my neck and they were going all over my scalp and they were just running all over my system."
He was rushed to a doctor who gave him a shot of adrenaline and told him the danger foods to avoid if he had hives.
"The doctor's like, 'Whatever you do, don't have any brown liquors or chocolate,'" Tudyk said. "I'm like, 'You just described my dinner.'"
After the injection Tudyk was taken back to set, where he had to play an "insane person with Robin Williams."
"If you watch the scene, it's right in the first few minutes of the movie. You can tell how the drug starts to wear off, because, in the beginning, my eyes are truly, like, rolling back in my head," Tudyk added.
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