Reba McEntire’s former costar Christopher Rich reunites with her 7 years after stroke
Seven years after he suffered a massive stroke and was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, former “Reba” star Christopher Rich is getting back into acting.
“I’ve basically taken the last decade off and if anybody was going to drag me out of the dark corner of the closet it would be the redhead,” Rich, who played Reba McEntire’s ex-husband on the 2001 to 2007 sitcom, joked to Entertainment Tonight of the country star on Wednesday.
Rich will play a local tattoo artist with a twisted sense of humor about the fact that he’s had a stroke and can’t use his left hand on McEntire’s new show “Happy’s Place.”
He told Us Weekly he was also excited to play a disabled character on the show.
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Christopher Rich played Reba McEntire’s ex-husband on “Reba” from 2001 until 2007, whose character left her for Melissa Peterman. The trio are pictured here in 2003. (Kevin Winter/ImageDirect)
“It’s great to be able to be a disabled person and play a disabled person,” he said. “I’m hoping that when some of this gets out there, that people that I’ve worked with in the past are going to say, ‘OK, let’s bring him back. We can work with him.’”
He said despite everything, he’s feeling “really good.”
“After my stroke and having a brain injury, it is like I got hit with an atomic bomb,” Rich told Us Weekly. “So, it all gets traumatized, and it is a hard reset. After I finally got out of the hospital, I was moving around again. Then I threw a bunch of blood clots and ended up in the hospital with lung embolisms and debris on my heart. After surviving all of that crap, I’m feeling really, really good.”
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“After my stroke and having a brain injury, it is like I got hit with an atomic bomb. So, it all gets traumatized, and it is a hard reset.”
The guest spot will serve as a reunion of sorts with Rich, McEntire and her “Happy’s Place” co-star Melissa Peterman, who also played Barbra Jean, the woman Rich’s character Brock left McEntire for on “Reba.”
“I needed some place where I could feel safe to really try and trot this broken body out again and they made the place,” Rich told Entertainment Tonight.
Christopher Rich with Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman on “Happy’s Place.” (Casey Durkin/NBC via Getty Images)
Rich also credited McEntire and Peterman with getting him out of his house after his stroke.
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“I feel so bizarre recovering from this stroke thing that I didn’t even want to go out of my house for a lot of the time, but, you know, they’ve got me back out,” he told Entertainment Tonight of McEntire, Peterman, and McEntire’s boyfriend and co-star Rex Linn. “They would invite me to parties and reunion things, football games, yeah. I spent a lot of time at her and Rex’s place watching the Longhorns.”
“There’s magic here,” Peterman said of the chemistry between the three of them.
The cast of “Reba” in 2004. ( L. Cohen/WireImage)
McEntire also commended Rich for going in front of the camera again after his injury.
“It wasn’t easy for him to come back and do this with a group that has known him 25 years,” she told Entertainment Tonight, “but for him to have the courage to come do this and make everybody feel so comfortable – he did have a stroke and he’s back acting and that gives such inspiration to other people. You can do that.”
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Rich added, “I was ready to [quit acting,] but now I’m back in the race. I’m going to get to the finish line. I may have to limp across it, but I’m getting there.”
Rich has said in the past that he suffered his stroke Easter morning in 2018, which made it hard for him to walk, talk and use the left side of his body.
