Katey Sagal reflects on her last moments with late John Ritter

Katey Sagal spoke about her final moments with the late John Ritter ahead of his unexpected pᴀssing at the age of 54 in 2003.

The 72-year-old actress, appearing on the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, said that she was on hand on September 11, 2003 when the famed actor fell ill on the set of their ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules.

‘I was there, yes,’ the Los Angeles native Sagal told the podcast’s host Ted Danson. 

‘We were doing press pretty much at four in the afternoon on that day and then by 10 o’clock that night, he left us.’

Ritter had been working on the show when he collapsed, and was rushed to Burbank, California’s Providence St. Joseph Hospital.

Doctors first thought he had suffered a heart attack, as his cause of death was subsequently declared the result of an aortic dissection.

The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Sagal for further comment on the story.

Katey Sagal, 72, spoke about her final moments with the late John Ritter ahead of his unexpected pᴀssing at the age of 54 in 2003 

(L-R) Katey Sagal, the late John Ritter, Martin Spanjers, Amy Davidson, Kaley Cuoco and Billy Aaron Brown pictured in a promotional sH๏τ for the series 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter

Sagal told Danson that she occasionally feels Ritter’s presence in the years since his pᴀssing.

‘It’s interesting – I don’t know what your belief system is, but I feel him around a lot,’ she said. ‘I just feel him around. His energy and his love of laughter and life.’

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Sagal added, ‘Even though I think he had his darker side too, he just brought so much light that I just feel him around.’

She recalled about the late Three’s Company star, ‘When I worked with John Ritter, he used to always, he would make such big jokes about face acting.’

Sagal said that Ritter ‘had that rubbery face,’ while Danson remarked he had ‘a sweet soul.’

She previously addressed the sad day Ritter pᴀssed away in a 2012 appearance on The Howard Stern Show.

‘We sH๏τ a promo and he didn’t feel well, and so at four in the afternoon, he went to his room, after we sH๏τ the promo’ she said. ‘And we all went home – we were done for the day.’

She said she was told five hours later that Ritter had been hospitalized as his health was failing.

Ritter and Sagal pictured at The Pantages Theater in Hollywood in March of 2003 

Sagal and pictured at an event in August of 2003 at the Family Television Awards

8 Simple Rules first hit the air in September of 2002 and starred Ritter and Sagal as Paul and Cate Hennessy, parents to three children portrayed by Kaley Cuoco, Amy Davidson and Martin Spanjers.

The series took a hiatus following Ritter’s pᴀssing and aired a total of three seasons, wrapping up in 2005.

Cuoco last September appeared at a charity event in the actor’s memory, The John Ritter Foundation Evening from the Heart Los Angeles Gala, where she opened up on the impact the late legend left on her career.

‘He changed the course of my life,’ the Big Bang Theory star told People. ‘He was there at the beginning for my career. I spent a year-and-a-half with him, but it changed my life, my entire life.’

She added, ‘I talk about him like it was yesterday, and he affected me as if he’s been here up until this point.

‘He taught me to make people laugh, he told me to not take yourself so seriously, and he taught me to do anything for the joke. He had a heart that was bigger than this planet.’