Bob Saget always had many sides. To some, he was the patient dad on Full House and amiable host of America’s Funniest Home Videos. To others, he was also one of the filthiest stand-ups on the circuit. After his sudden passing in early January, at only 65, tributes poured in, some of them appropriately blue. We also learned he’d become more reflective, particularly about death, dying, and the afterlife, with age.
Now we have further proof of that. As per People, an unreleased episode of the podcast This Day with Radio Rahim, recorded eight months before his death, will be made available on Luminary, broken into three parts and released over the week. In the first part, Saget can be heard delving deep into how he’d come to think about mortality a lot over the years, and how the death of loved ones helped him “grow.”
“I’m proud of myself because I’m onto a new thing,” Saget explained. “At 65, I’m different than I was. We’re all rethinking what we said 20 years ago, 10 years ago, four years ago. I’m not even rethinking it, I just don’t have the same way of doing humor or conversation.
“I guess therapy, having three kids, watching people pass away in the past few years, mortality, all that stuff has fortunately changed me,” he added. “My kids tell me, ‘Dad, you’re different. It’s so nice to watch you grow.’”
Saget also discussed how he’d been surrounded by death growing up — how his father wound up outliving all his siblings, and how he even helped write a funeral speech one late night when he was only nine. That wound up driving him into the arts, first by obtaining a 16mm camera, all in an attempt to help him cope. Later in life, he lost both his sisters, including one to the disease Scleroderma. He wound up helping make a TV movie about the disease and spent the next three decades doing benefits and raising money for a foundation that researches it.
“It’s one of my life’s works because my sister died at 47,” Saget said. “That’s the best part about being an only child, man. You don’t have to worry about losing a sibling.”
The first part of the episode is now available on Luminary. The other two will be released throughout the week. The star-studded A Tribute to Bob Saget will be released on Netflix on June 10.
(Via People)