Fans of the series Alf We have been shaken this week by the rsudden death of one of its performers. On Wednesday, although it took us another day to find out, the news broke of the discovery of the body in his car. Benji Gregorywhom we knew simply as Alf’s boy. A fact that indicates how little we had heard from him again, since he was currently 47 years old. Nothing could be further from the truth than being a child, but for some reason in our memories he has remained frozen forever at that age. As if we were facing a character from The Simpsonsthinking it would remain unchanged over the years. The long-lived yellow family hit the small screen a year before Alf was cancelled and is already on its way to its season 35.

Since the end of Alf, Gregory had been away from acting, as had almost all of his co-stars. Despite the success of the NBC sitcom, which multiplied after the international broadcast of the series, all of its actors fell into oblivion. Although it was one of the most followed sitcoms in the late 1980s, even having its own comic series by the hand of Marvelthe truth is that its protagonists have hardly appeared during this time and, when we have heard from them again, it has normally been to receive the worst of news. Behind that facade of idyllic family that they played in fiction, most of the actors ended up fed up with the show and remembered the filming as a a real nightmare. Their lives seem to have been imbued with a tragic aura after their time on the series. As devastated as the planet Melmac, which collapsed because the entire population turned on their hairdryers at the same time.

The last news we had of Alf was that HBO Max brought it back to its catalog a couple of years ago. It’s not Friends, but it’s still one of those sitcoms that platforms make money off of by rescuing for nostalgic and new viewers. The series has continued to be sold in DVD packs that compiled the entire series and arrived on HBO Max almost at the same time as Disney It also brought us back another emblematic title of the time, The Golden GirlsHowever, a year later Max removed it, as he has done with other titles that disappeared overnight. Cuts worthy of the plot of The Leftovers. But that’s another story.

Alf was a kind of parody of ET in which a family of California ends up welcoming into his home an alien, the last survivor of the planet Melmac. The Tanners housed him secretly, keeping him away from the eyes of their nosy neighbors, lest he be taken by the Army to experiment on his physiology. Although the truth is that there was little Science fiction in their arguments and it would have been the same if Alf was an alien or the typical freeloading relative who always ended up getting the rest of the family into trouble. And that was when he didn’t try to eat the cator exhaust all stocks of beer or pizzawhile saying that “No problem”. The modest budgets barely allowed for dazzling special effects. We all remember the episode of the giant cockroachwhere precisely the vulgarity was used to reinforce the comedy of the scenes. In the end, Alf was like the rest of the family sitcoms of the time, like those it parodied Bojack Horseman in Frolicking. The alien would be like Will Smith in The prince of Bel Air. The comedy is in taking someone out of their environment and putting them in another one where they have nothing to do. The hairy visitor lived with the Tanner couple and their two children, the typical teenager and the red-haired boy with freckles. That was Brian Tanner, who would be like the equivalent of Elliot, the best friend of the alien from the most iconic cinema of the 80s by the hand of Steven Spielberg.

Benji Gregory was found dead in his car along with his dog, victim of heat stroke, although his sister had revealed that he suffered from bipolar disorder and depression. It seems that the death occurred more than a month ago, but the family had not wanted to make it public until now. I understand that this was to rule out that it was a suicide. The news reached us the same week that we learned of the death of Shelley Duvalco-starring alongside Jack Nicholson of the mythical The glow. Another of those titles with a child whose performer we never saw again on the screen. Years later, the novelist Stephen King He took on the character of Danny Torrance as an adult in a novel entitled Doctor Sleep and was Ewan McGregor who was in charge of interpreting him in his adult age. Coincidentally, it was Mike Flanagan who was the director in charge of bringing it to the big screen. The director is one of the new kings of horror in streaming and the architect of the resurrection of the career Henry ThomasThat is, the actor who as a child was Elliot in ET and who spent years without finding other roles.

Would Benji Gregory have been interested in relaunching his career? The truth is that it seemed that in the last years of his life he was totally removed from acting, even joining the Army. In 2019, we had already been shocked by the death of Max Wrightthe head of the Tanner family, and the only cast member who did appear in hit titles after Alf. After the show was cancelled, he did go on to appear in Murphy Brown and even in Friends, but it didn’t take off. The normal thing would have been for the series to revolve around the relationship between a boy and his alien, if the reference was going to be the mythical Spielbergian film. But it was the fights between Will and Alf that generated the most comic moments. The two characters on screen, almost always arguing, generated great chemistry. The cast of Alf had become so iconic that Wright could no longer separate himself from that character. Just like the rest of his colleagues. Diagnosed with lymphoma, his life began to descend into hell until he reached a sordid story in which he was caught in a crack den, in an episode in which there was talk of pornographic scenes recorded with homeless people. In 2016 he also died. Michu Meszarosthe actor, who was just 80 centimetres tall and who wore the Alf suit when full-length scenes of the character were required, was found dead in the bathroom of his home at the age of 76.

Other cast members appear to have escaped the curse. The one who played Kate Tanner, Ann Scheedenthe mother, left acting in 2001 and became a decorator and antique dealer. As for the teenage daughter, Lynn (Andrea Elson) suffered from bulimia problems, but managed to overcome them and rebuild her life. Paul Fusco He was the puppeteer who provided the voice and movements of Alf. He was one of the creators of the series and has remained active in the industry with other puppet shows and as a film editor.

The difficulties in moving the puppet The shootings were extended to endless hours and the actors confessed that they came to hate the doll. His overwhelming personality eclipsed them all. What happened behind the cameras was not as funny as what we were told in the plot. The series was suddenly cancelled after the fourth season with a cliffhanger in which the Army finally managed to capture Alf. fan protests Six years later, they managed to bring the plot to a close with a special made-for-TV movie. There was just one problem. None of the actors who played the Tanners wanted to join the comeback and they didn’t show up. Alf and the Tanners parted ways and the filming became part of a long list of television projects where the shoots ended up being hellish. Many people’s smiles froze.