Treat Williams brought a lot of likeability to his role as Dr. Andy Brown on The CW series Everwood.
He had already won accolades for his early roles in the film production of “Hair” (1979) and in the Sidney Lumet crime drama “Prince of the City” (1981) before resurfacing on TV in his forties as a leading man on the fish-out-of-water family drama Everwood.
That’s where I first encountered the Connecticut-born actor, whose life was cut short June 12 when his motorcycle was struck by a car in upstate New York. He was 71.
Everwood was an early project of prolific TV series creator and executive producer Greg Berlanti. The series ran four seasons on The WB, from 2002 to 2006.
The series, which helped settle viewers still reeling from the horrors of 9/11, starred Williams as a widower who moves his son and daughter to a fictional small town in Colorado named Everwood. The pilot was shot in Calgary and Canmore, Alta., although the rest of the series was produced in Utah. Ity was the first of three four-season series runs for Ontario-native Emily VanCamp (also in Brothers and Sisters and Revenge). Another Canadian, Gregory Smith (Rookie Blue) was also in the cast, as was a then unknown named Chris Pratt as well as Tom Amandes.
The pilot was shot in apparently what was one of the coldest springs on record in Calgary and Canmore.
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“I sometimes wonder if the acting better because all they could do was just stand there and do the work. They were freezing the whole time,” Williams told critics at a 2002 Television Critics Association press tour gathering in Pasadena, Calif.
Asked if he wanted to repeat that experience for the rest of the series, Williams was blunt: “I never want to be that cold again for the rest of my life.”
On the final season of the series, Berlanti and the other producers brought in Anne Heche to try and seduce the town’s good doctor.
“The blessing of the show,” Williams told reporters attending the 2005 TCA press tour, “is that people who are pure of heart do bad things … and I think for the characters to take these journeys is much more interesting than to remain pure of heart. I think Andy still is pure of heart. I think that his libido has overridden his heart for a while.” In any event, Williams was thrilled that Berlanti, “continues to push the envelope of these characters.”
Asked if all the progressively more soapy storylines were getting a tad tiresome, Williams deflected the criticism.
“I trust Greg, and I kind of like the surprise of it all,” he said. “I get my little movie every week, and I’m making one, and then the next week, I get my next Capra film.”
Williams and the other actors also seemed playful and together on stage at the session, and happy to be shooting far from Hollywood on the side of a mountain in Utah.
“I’ve been a gypsy for the last 29 years of my life as a professional actor,” said Williams. “And for the last three years, The WB and Greg Berlanti [and the other producers] have given me an opportunity to raise my children. I come home to dinner most nights. I take them to school at least three or four days a week. And for the first time in my life, we have a stable home life. It’s an extraordinary place to raise children.”
Williams racked up over 120 IMDb acting credits. He co-starred with Shelley Long on the short-lived, post-Cheers, marriage counselors comedy Good Advice (1993-94). He also made the most of a small part as super-agent Mike Ovitz in the HBO movie based on Bill Carter’s book, “The Late Shift.”
In recent years, he found a steady home on the Hallmark Channel, particularly on Chesapeake Shores (2016-2022). He also had a recurring role on Blue Bloods.
At the time of his death, Williams had just wrapped his scenes in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX anthology series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Williams plays former CBS Chairman William S. Paley in the series, which chronicles the bitter end of the life of author Truman Capote.
Colleagues who were lucky enough to speak one-on-one with Williams have shared very warm memories of the actor, who, among other things, loved to fly and owned his own plane. One story to read is posted by my friend Ray Bennett on his site The Cliff Edge. Ray got Williams to talk a bit about the drug addiction that cost him some of his prime acting years — until the death of John Belushi snapped him out of it.
