Taking his time. Steve Buscemi remembered the heartbreaking impact of wife Jo Andres’ cancer battle more than one year after she died at the age of 65.
“The pain was the hardest thing,” the Boardwalk Empire star, 62, said during a rare interview with GQ magazine published on Tuesday, May 26. “People who are going through that, it’s painful. It’s painful to die from cancer. There’s just no way around it.”
Buscemi and Andres met in 1983 when they were neighbors in New York City’s East Village neighborhood. After years of admiring each other from afar, the duo tied the knot in 1987 and welcomed their only son, Lucian, three years later. Andres was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2015 and was in remission for a short period of time before the disease came back in an even more aggressive form in 2017. She eventually succumbed to the illness in January 2019.
“It’s been over a year now since Jo passed, and I’m just starting to feel lighter,” Buscemi said after revealing that he had a hard time being away from home after losing his wife. “It is very strange that, oh, now this [pandemic] is happening.”
Despite the lingering effects of his devastating loss, Buscemi felt a bit of hope by seeing communities come together to support one another amid the coronavirus health crisis. “If it was another personal thing, I think that would be really hard,” he explained. “But the fact that everybody’s going through it doesn’t feel as isolating. It feels like it’s something that we’re doing together.”
Throughout his grieving process, the Big Fish star has been leaning on his close friends and son for help. While staying home, Buscemi has begun “a one-man archaeological excavation of his life” so that Lucian won’t be saddled with all of his “junk” someday.
“He’d be the only one when I’m gone,” the actor explained. “It’s him that’s going to have to go through everything. … It’s just a slow process because I always get caught up in reading stuff.”
Since his wife’s death, Buscemi has done his best to preserve her life’s work as an artist and choreographer. After spending more than 30 years together, the Big Lebowski star admitted that he never really thought about what it would be like to not be in each other’s lives anymore.
“If I should happen to go not suddenly, I hope I could be as present as Jo was,” he said. “She led the way. She was surrounded by friends and family. She really faced it. I really don’t think she was afraid of dying. I think it was just a whole series of ‘Oh, I don’t get to do this anymore.'”
