Canadian Broadway actor Nick Cordero passes away after coronavirus battle

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Amanda Kloots, the wife of Canadian Broadway actor Nick Cordero, delivered a sad news to loved ones, co-stars, and fans of her husband, saying that the actor passed away after battling with complications from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Confirming the 41-year-old actor’s passing in an Instagram post on Sunday, Kloots said her husband was “surrounded in love by his family, singing and praying as he gently left this earth.”

“I am in disbelief and hurting everywhere. My heart is broken as I cannot imagine our lives without him,” she said.

Kloots remembered Cordero as a “bright light” and a friend who loves to listen, help, and talk. She also described him as a loving husband and a father to their son, Elvis.

“Elvis and I will miss him in everything we do, every day,” Kloots said.

Kloots expressed her gratitude to people who were there for them all throughout Cordero’s battle, especially the actor’s doctor, whom Kloots described as a “diamond in the rough.”

Thanking their supporters, Kloots said, “You have no idea how much you lifted my spirits at 3pm every day as the world sang Nick’s song, Live Your Life.”

“We sang it to him today, holding his hands. As I sang the last line to him, ‘they’ll give you hell but don’t you light them kill your light not without a fight. Live your life,’ I smiled because he definitely put up a fight. I will love you forever and always my sweet man,” she added.

It was on March 30 when Cordero, who had no known pre-existing health conditions, was brought to the hospital and was later on intubated on a ventilator, according to Kloot’s Instagram post in May. Kloots shared that her husband later on suffered health setbacks, including an infection that caused his heart to stop, two mini-strokes, a sepsis infection that caused a septic shock, a fungus and holes in his lungs, and that he had to have his right leg amputated.

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She, however, choose to remain hopeful even though she said she had been told several times that her husband “won’t make it.”

“Well, I have faith. Faith that is small as a mustard seed sometimes, but that is all you need sometimes,” she wrote in her Instagram post in June.

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Kloots, who has been active on social media to give updates on the actor’s condition, had also been asking the public to pray for the actor’s speedy recovery. Earlier this month, Kloots was interviewed by CBS This Morning where she revealed that Cordero might need a double lung transplant so that he could “live the kind of life that I know my husband would want to live.”

Some well-known personalities in the entertainment industry including Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis, Filipino-American actor Darren Criss, and Scrubs star Zach Braff, took to social media to express their grief and condolences upon learning the news of Cordero’s death.

“RIP Nick Cordero! My condolences to you Amanda who fought and loved so hard….so sorry for his little one. My heart is with you. May flights of angels…..” Davis tweeted.

Criss, meanwhile, said he is “lucky enough to have never missed a Nick Cordero bway role.”

“I got to see him as Dennis, Cheech, Earl, and Sonny, and I always loved seeing him on stage,” he wrote in a tweet.

For his part, Braff, who starred alongside Cordero in the 2014 Broadway musical Bullets Over Broadway, shared a photo of Cordero and his wife on Instagram, saying that the last message he received from his co-star was to look out for Kloots and their son.

“I promise the world they will never want for anything,” Braff said.

“I feel so incredibly grateful I got to have Nick Cordero enter my life. Rest In Peace. Rest in Power,” he continued.

Cordero got a Tony nomination for best-featured actor for his role as Cheech in the Bullets Over Broadway.

Aside from his Broadway roles, Cordero was also part of television shows like Blue Bloods and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and appeared in films like Inside Game and Mob Town.