Fans can always count onMarc Maronto make them laugh. But on the May 18, 2020 episode of hisWTF with Marc Maronpodcast, the host brought a somber tone to his biweekly show.
An emotional Maron, 58, shared the news that his girlfriend,director Lynn Shelton, diedsuddenly two days earlier from undiagnosed acute myeloid leukemia. Maron opened up about Shelton’s final days, sharing that she had a high fever and swollen glands in her throat. She made an appointment to see a doctor, but Maron woke up to her collapsed before she made it to the doctor. She was 54 when she died.
“There’s no way to explain what happened there,” Maron, who voices Snake in the new animated filmThe Bad Guys, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “You’re in a state of shock.”
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“My producer was like, ‘Look, man, we can take time off,’ And I’m like, ‘It might be important for me to be honest with my feelings right now,'” Maron recalls. “I set it up in the place that I was in. And it was gnarly and horrible and hard.”
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The actor leaned on his brother and friend, novelist Sam Lipsyte, in the time following Shelton’s death. Maron and Lipsyte talked nightly — and still do. “Nothing’s going to make it really easier, but if you have people to talk about other things with and just be present for your sadness, that’s helpful,” Maron says. “A lot of people showed up for me. It was very beautiful how much love I got around that from the community.”
Almost two years later, Maron says the “grief sort of comes and goes.” But “I think about it every day really,” he admits of Shelton’s passing.
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The New Jersey native talks abouthis battle with drugs and alcoholfor the same reason. Maron, now 22 years sober, recognizes that “in terms of getting sober or getting off drugs, most people don’t think that they can. It’s a day-to-day fight.”
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So he aims to offer a beacon of light. “If somebody who somebody respects or is in the public eye cops to being a fairly bad addict or alcoholic, yet they’re okay now, it provides a hope,” Maron says, “whether it’s for a day or for the long haul.”
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Today, Maron finds pleasure in the simple things in life. He still enjoys performing stand-comedy at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where he got his start.
But “most of the time,” he continues, “I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat and whether my cats are okay. And hopefully, something funny will come into my brain. That’s my life.”
The Bad Guysopens in theaters April 22.
source: people.com
