Tom Bergeron talks to ET about Bob Saget's support over the years and says he's still 'in a state of shock' over his death.
Tom Bergeron is in shock over Bob Saget's death on Sunday. ET's Nischelle Turner spoke with Bergeron, who hosted America's Funniest Home Videos a few years after Saget left in 1997, and he got emotional recalling the memories he shared with the beloved Full House star over the years.
Bergeron said he was now thinking back fondly of Saget's support, including Saget showing up for America's Funniest Home Videos' 20th anniversary only at his request, as well as being there for Bergeron's last day hosting the show after 15 years.
"It meant the world to me," Bergeron noted of Saget's support. "A couple years prior to that, when the video show was having its 20th anniversary, I said to Vin Di Bona, the executive producer, I said, 'We have to get Bob for that.' So we were already friends at that point and I have to admit, I really worked him hard. I went to one of his Scleroderma Foundation benefits and wooed him a lot."
"He was still somewhat hesitant and he had a sitcom on ABC briefly ... and the network asked if I would do promos with Bob, which I was happy to do but I figured here's my attempt to blackmail him," he continues. "So I said, 'All right, Bobby, I will do the promos but you've got to do the 20th anniversary special with me,' and he finally relented and it turned out to be just a wonderful episode that the team titled 'The Summit With Saget.' And I told Bob, I said, 'Listen, look. You just do whatever you do. I will get us to the videos, I will get us to the commercial breaks.' If you see that show, you see me just laughing, just spending the hour just enjoying that lovable lunatic that he was."
Bergeron said he found out about Saget's death on Sunday when a friend texted him.
"I think she said something like, 'Just heard about Bob, I am so sorry,' and it reminded me of years ago when I got the news John Ritter had died," he shared. "Also a friend, also a shock. And just that feeling of every nerve ending suddenly coming alive and then it was just a matter of trying to find out more information and responding as best I could to friends texting to see if it was true ... The morning after, I am still in disbelief."
Bergeron said he will always remember Saget's kindness and shared how he was similarly welcoming to current America's Funniest Home Videos host Alfonso Ribeiro. On Sunday, Ribeiro Instagrammed a picture of him and Bergeron and Saget together.
"Generosity as a friend, as a fellow host performer, etcetera, and that was something I think he did for example on the 30th anniversary of America's Funniest Home Videos," Bergeron recalled. "There was an anniversary special and Alfonso and Bob and I showed up and I don't think Bob and Alfonso knew each other really well but the three of us, you would have thought we were brothers from another mother. It was just a wonderful, wonderful time, the three of us sort of have this unique history along with just a few others who posted who've hosted that show and it was just great to hang out and share stories."
Meanwhile, ET's Kevin Frazier spoke with Suzanne Somers, who also talked about Saget's death in relation to Ritter's death in 2003. Somers said learning of Saget's shocking death on Sunday brought back memories of her finding out about the sudden death of Ritter, whom she starred with on Three's Company. Ritter died after experiencing an aortic dissection -- a tear occurring in the inner layer of the body's main artery -- and was only 54 years old.
"Well, there was no foul play, no drugs and I know that that wouldn't have been a part of his scenario," she says of Saget's death in his hotel room in Florida after playing a standup show the night before. "So, you come home after a show, not many of us listen to the language of our body, our body starts talking to us. I always felt the same way about John Ritter when he had a torn aorta, you got to feel that, so did he not respond to something that he was feeling?"
"John never listened to the language of his body, rest his soul, um, typical men, you know, 'Oh it's fine,'" she continued. "We all tend to minimize, I think men tend to minimize more than we women tend to minimize."
Somers recalled being close to Saget since she filmed her sitcom, Step by Step, almost next door to where Full House was being filmed on the Warner Brothers lot.
"We would all see one another at the commissary for lunch and it was really a fun time," she shared. "I loved his humor, he was so, may I say, irreverent -- when he was not around the kids. He was just real smart and yet, there was this empathy about him that kids felt real good with him being a TV dad and I think we forget how important those sitcoms are to kids who watch them religiously and they get invested in the show and in the parents."
As for his legacy, she noted, "Well, it's a lot more than his good looks. There are people who come along once in a lifetime and he's one of those, the fact that he could walk both sides of the aisle so evenly and so perfectly. He will be very, very missed and who knows what he had coming up, you know, what he had on his plate, it was like he was getting his life back together."
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