Stockard Channing Recalls ‘Shock’ of Learning of Costar Courtney B. Vance’s Father’s Suicide (Exclusive)

Stockard Channing recalls learning about the hardest moment in Courtney B. Vance’s life.

In 1990 between Broadway performances Six degrees of separation, Vance (63) learned from his mother that his father had died by suicide. As People vs. OJ Simpson the star reveals in his book Invisible painthe first call he made was to Channing—his friend and actor in the play.

“I just remember the shock,” Channing, 79, tells PEOPLE of that phone call. “I’ll never forget it.”

“You know in life when something happens, do you remember where you are, where you are standing, what room you are in, all that? I think that’s what happens to all of this.”

She adds: “I remember it very clearly. It was such a terrible shock.”

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As Vance told PEOPLE, Fat the star was the first person he thought of calling because the actors had agreed with them Six degrees costar John Cunningham, to never miss a performance of their Broadway play.

Her response after hearing the tragic news, Vance recalls: “’Courtney. Go home.'”

IN Invisible paina healing guide for black men co-written with Dr. Robin L. Smith, Vance calls Channing both a “wonderful actress” and a friend: “Given the intensity of our experiences doing that show, she was more than an actress. She would have been my comrade .”

Courtney B. Vance. Gregg DeGuire/Getty

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What was it like performing the first play without Vance? “It was really hard on every freaking level,” Channing recalls with characteristic candor.

Plus, he recalls, the performance that day was to be recorded by Lincoln Center for the New York Public Library’s Theater on Film and Tape Archive, meaning that Vance’s “wonderful work would not be preserved. And so his replacement continued and that is what was preserved. Which I now feel is a bit trivial compared to your father’s suicide, but still, it must have been a big deal too because he was so wonderful in the role.”

After returning from settling his late father’s affairs and rejoining Six degrees, Vance relied on his New York theater community and the regularity of shows, he told PEOPLE. “I came back from my mom, taking care of her chores… and the whole company embraced me.”

He added that Laura Linney, who was a substitute for another role in Six degrees at the time “changed my life” by recommending a massage therapist who then introduced him to a longtime therapist who helped Vance work through his grief.

Stockard Channing. Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock Stockard Channing remembers late Costa Rican ‘Grease’ Olivia Newton-John: ‘She will be greatly missed’

Channing remembers how she, Linney and the rest of the cast and crew rallied around a grieving Vance. “It was a very close company, very relaxed, relaxed. We were really an ensemble.”

Vance, she continues, “must have been through so much on every level” that it might have been a relief to “go back to a neutral place where you just did your job, people hugged you and you went — cliché —’ Let’s put on a show. ‘”

Channing, who now lives in London, says she, Vance and his wife Angela Bassett have remained close over the years. “He called me,” she says, when their fellow Emmy winner Mary Alice died in July 2022. “He just sent me a nice text saying he was thinking of me, which is really sweet.”

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Line by dialing 988, texting “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Line at 741741 or going to 988lifeline.org.

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Source: HIS Education