In an eerie interview that was recorded just months before his death, Bob Saget shared that he came to accept his own mortality after watching so many of his family members die.
Saget told Radio Rahim last year that his aunts, uncles, cousins and sisters died at a rate of almost every two years as he grew up.
“We had so many deaths growing up that my dad would just instill [the notion of enjoying life] in me,” Saget said on Rahim’s “Til This Day” podcast. “He didn’t teach it to me, I just saw how he reacted.”
The “Full House” star watched his father bury four brothers and one sister, and came to accept the finality of life.
“I’m proud of myself because I’m onto a new thing. At 65, I’m different than I was,” the late comedian said.
Saget died at 65 on January 9, 2022, of head trauma inside a hotel room in Orlando, Florida, where was on a stand-up comedy tour.
“I just don’t have the same way of doing humor or conversation,” Saget added in the interview. “I guess therapy, having three kids, watching people pass away in the past few years, mortality, all that stuff has fortunately changed me.”
“My kids tell me, ‘Dad, you’re different. It’s so nice to watch you grow.’”
“The [deaths] started when I was like 7, and then every two years somebody died,” he shared. “[I had] a cousin die — she died at 23 of cancer after giving birth to her child — and then a lot of cousins went through a lot of hardships, so I was like 9, 10, 11, 12, 14” when he lost people, he said. “It was a lot.”
The comedian opened up about how he leaned into the arts as a way to cope with death and loss.
When his sister, Gay, died of scleroderma in 1994, Saget had already been involved with the Scleroderma Research Foundation. Though the actor was “not really successful yet” at the time of his sister’s death, he was able to use his connections at ABC to create a television movie about the condition.
“I was working with ABC, so they let me make this TV movie with Dana Delany starring in it, playing my sister,” he explained of the film, titled “For Hope.”
“I’ve done over 30 years of benefits and we’ve raised over $50 million for the Scleroderma Research Foundation,” he added.
The interview with Radio Rahim was recorded on May 29, 2021, and the first part was made public Monday. The conversation is being released in three parts, with the other two coming out this week.
