Ron Cephas Jones, a veteran stage actor who received two Emmy Awards for his function as a long-lost father who finds redemption on the NBC tv drama sequence “This Is Us,” has died at age 66, a consultant stated Saturday.
Jones’ supervisor, Dan Spilo, stated in an emailed assertion the actor he died “on account of a long-standing pulmonary concern.”
“All through the course of his profession, his heat, magnificence, generosity, kindness and coronary heart had been felt by anybody who had the nice fortune of understanding him,” Spilo stated.
Jones had a double lung transplant in 2020 due to continual obstructive pulmonary illness and spent almost two months in a Los Angeles hospital.
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On “This Is Us,” Jones performed William “Shakespeare” Hill, a organic father whose life is renewed by way of his relationship with the household of his son Randall Pearson, performed by Sterling Okay. Brown.
“Some of the fantastic individuals the world has ever seen is now not with us,” Brown stated in an Instagram submit after Jones’ loss of life. “The world is rather less shiny. Brother, you might be beloved. And you may be missed.”
Jones performed a extra central function within the sequence’ early seasons, however appeared in some kind in all six seasons of the present, which included time-jumping narratives providing recurring alternatives for its actors even after their characters’ deaths.
Jones received Emmys for finest visitor actor in a drama sequence in 2018 and 2020 and was nominated for 2 extra.
“Ron was the very best of the very best — on display, on stage, and in actual life,” “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman said on X, the social media website previously generally known as Twitter. “My God: what an actor. I do not suppose I ever modified a single take of his in a reduce as a result of every part he did was excellent.”
Jones spent most of his profession within the theater earlier than and after “This Is Us,” returning to Broadway even after his transplant pressured him to be taught to breathe and stroll once more.
“My complete life has been the stage,” Jones stated in a late 2021 interview with the The New York Occasions, during which he revealed he had quietly been affected by respiratory issues since concerning the time he started on “This Is Us.”
“The thought of not performing once more appeared worse to me than loss of life,” Jones stated.
He was nominated for a Tony Award and received a 2022 Drama Desk Award for the Broadway function as a truck-stop cook dinner in playwright Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s.”
A local of Paterson, New Jersey, Jones graduated from close by Ramapo Faculty, the place he had meant to check jazz however switched to theater throughout his sophomore yr. He spent the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties touring the nation, working as a bus driver in Southern California for a number of years.
Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties he moved to New York, the place his profession acquired a jumpstart when he started hanging out and collaborating on the Nuyorican Poets Café, an important artistic hub for poetry, hip-hop and the performing arts.
A breakout function got here in 1994, when he landed the lead in playwright Cheryl West’s drama, “Vacation Coronary heart.”
He would spend the following many years continually within the theater, usually in Off Broadway performs in New York, together with a title flip as Shakespeare’s “Richard III” at The Public Theater, and in roles with the Steppenwolf Theatre Firm in Chicago.
Jones additionally had TV visitor stints on “Mr. Robotic,” “Luke Cage” and “Lisey’s Story.”
His movie appearances included 2006’s “Half Nelson” with Ryan Gosling and 2019’s “Dolemite Is My Identify” with Eddie Murphy.
He’s survived by his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones.
