Joe Flaherty, who is best known for his roles in Freaks and Geeks and Maniac Mansion, has reportedly passed away at the age of 82.
Mad Men actor Joel Murray announced Flaherty’s death in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, April 1. “We’ve lost another of my idols,” the actor wrote. “RIP Joe Flaherty 1941-2024.”
Murray worked up Flaherty on the set of the 1986 film One Crazy Summer.
Actress Jennifer Tilly, who co-starred with Flahery in the 1997 film The Wrong Guy, also announced the news. “Joe Flaherty played my dad in The Wrong Guy,” she wrote on X. “I was so thrilled to be able to work with him. His performance was pitch perfect. A great comedian. Gone too soon.”
Flaherty started his acting career in the early 1970s. He appeared in National Lampoon Radio Hour from 1973 to 1974. He went on to star in the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV from 1976 to 1984.
Among his major acting roles was Donald the Heckler in Adam Sandler’s 1996 sports comedy Happy Gilmore.
Flaherty’s other roles included the Western Union postal worker in Back to the Future Part II and Something, Something, Something Dark Side. He had a regular role on Maniac Mansion throughout the 90s and he starred in the short-lived Police Academy series from 1997 to 1998. He then played Harold Weir, the father of Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and Sam Weir (John Francis Daly) in Freak and Greeks in 1999.
Along with his acting career, Joe Flaherty taught comedy writing at Humber College. He was also part of the program’s advisory committee.
Flaherty was previously married to Judith Dagley. Their marriage lasted for 22 years before ending in divorce. They shared two children, Gudrun and Gabriel.
The cause of Flahery’s death currently remains unknown.
Joe Flaherty Recently Spoke About His Time On ‘SCTV’
In early Jan. 2024, Joe Flaherty made an appearance on The Best Show With Tom Scharpling podcast to discuss his acting career and time on the set of SCTV.
“My life has been pretty uninteresting, I gotta say,” Flaherty joked. Speaking about SCTV, the comedian said that it was a “private little show.”
“We never had ratings,” he said. “Lemme just put it this way, we never had very good ratings. It was just only on NBC. It was sad. you look at the numbers it was really sad.”
Joe Flaherty also said the SCTV cast was cautious about the jokes made on the show. “We didn’t wanna do jokes about who was the president at the time or that stuff. We just did stuff that we thought was funny.”
“And it was great ‘cause we had a great group of people. I can’t believe how pretty much accidentally we just got that group together.”
Among the cast members of the show were Eugene Levy, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis, and Martin Short.
SCTV ran from 1976 to 1984.