Let me start off by saying, I would like to express my condolences to actor the family and friends of actor Jonathan Joss. The actor who was most famously known for voicing John Redcorn on King of the Hill. Another recurring role was as Ken Hotate on Parks and Recreation.
Joss was reportedly shot by a neighbor, Sigfredo Alvarez Cejam, who has been charged with murder. The incident happened on June 1 and Joss’ husband, Tristan Kern de Gozalez, believes the shooting was a hate crime because he alleged Cejam had been hostile to them for some time in their San Antonio neighborhood. Police are reportedly denying it is a hate crime.
But Joss’ death brings to light a dark fact about the much-loved TV show. You see, Joss isn’t the first actor to have voiced John Redcorn. The first actor was Victor Aaron (real name Victor Aaron Ramirez) who voiced the character for the first season. But he never got to see the episodes air as he was killed on Sept. 4, 1996 in a car accident in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 39 and the death was one exact week before his 40th birthday on Sept. 11. The show would premiere in January 1997.
While it’s typical for a show like King of the Hill to suffer one death like this, two years later, the grim reaper would strike another blow. Popular singer Tammy Wynette would voice the mother of protagonist Hank Hill, Matilda “Tilly” Mae Garrison. The “Stand By Your Man” singer would pass away in her sleep on April 6, 1998 at her Nashville home. Wynette died from a blood clot in her lung. She was 55.
In 2009, as the show was in the final season its first run, two more death of cast members would occur. On June 3, 2009, David Carradine who voiced Hank’s older half-brother, Junichiro, who was half American/half Japanese, was found in a Bangkok hotel dead by asphyxiation from hanging. However, many of his friends and family have denied that Carradine committed suicide or was engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation as Carradine was found nude. Rope was tied around his neck and genitals. Dr. Michael Bader, a medical examiner, was hired by his family to conduct an independent autopsy which ruled out suicide because Carradine’s body had been found bound. Yet there has been no further investigation into Carradine’s death since. He was 72.
Later that year, just a few days before Christmas, Brittany Murphy died in her Los Angeles home on Dec. 20, 2009 followed a medical report in which first responders were unable to resuscitate her. The final episode of KOTH had ended about three months prior. Murphy was only 32 and she had played Luanne Platter on the show, as the niece of Hank and Peggy Hill, who came to live with them following her hectic home life. Murphy’s death was believed to have been caused by pneumonia and iron-deficiency anemia. She also found with an “elevated level” of hydrocodone in her system as well as other over-the-counter medicines such as acetaminophen, as well as allergy and nasal decongestant medicine.
Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack, and her mother, Sharon Murphy, denied that she had been using drugs and alcohol. However, there was speculation for years Murphy was engaging in substance abuse. And then on May 23, 2010, Monjack died from acute pneumonia and severe anemia. It was suspected their L.A. home had toxic mold in it that might have led to both their deaths. However, some people have said that Monjack was too controlling over Murphy during the short time they were together.
Murphy, whose real surname was Bertolotti, had started acting as a teeanage in TV shows such as Murphy Brown, Blossom and Frasier before she was cast in the 1995 teen comedy hit Clueless. But her role as the new girl Tai didn’t make her famous as her character. I’ve often thought Tai and Murphy’s performance was poorly done. Murphy spent the rest of the 1990s in several movies but never did achieve success even though she got attention for movies like Drop Dead Gorgeous and Don’t Say a Word.
It wasn’t until she appeared alongside Eminem in 8 Mile that she became a leading A-lister…briefly. Her film roles staggered in less than stellar movies in the latter half of the 2000s. I think Murphy’s main issue was she was hard to distinguish from other actresses at the time. I remember confusing Katee Sackhoff with Murphy, which is crazy because many actresses often look alike as casting directors and filmmakers seem to pick them this way. Look at Jaime Pressley and Margot Robbie or Lizzy Caplan and Zoeey Deschanel.
It was also during King of the Hill‘s complicated run, there were issues with the show itself. For the third season, Fox made the mistake by moving it to Tuesday nights where it didn’t have the luxury of being between The Simpsons and The X-Files. However, after a bad season, it moved back to Sundays. Yet, it was aired before The Simpsons along with Futurama. During the NFL seasons, this meant many episodes were pre-empted or aired already in progress as the games ran over, even though most of it was just endless post-game commentary when on-air personalities seemed to ramble on.
During the show’s second season, it was ranked No. 15 for the week. The third Tuesday broadcast season, it was ranked No. 110. Then when it moved to the 7:30 p.m. slot, it never got above No. 68. Fox would cut the number of episodes down to 15 for its ninth and 10th season. Then it was cut down to 12 episodes for the 11th season.
Co-creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels also functioned as show runners for the first two seasons and Daniels was the co-showrunner for the third and fourth seasons. But by the seventh seasons, the show changed to focus on sociopolitical humor which in a post-9/11 world as the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars started didn’t really work. The show in my opinion became a parody of himself. While its humor might have worked during the 1990s Clinton Administration era, it didn’t work as well.
During this time, Judge would return to movie-making and made Idiocracy which flopped mostly because 20th Century Fox was afraid to release it in a bigger market. It received mixed reviews but found its audience on the home video and cable markets. Now, it’s considered a satirical comedy of what society was turning into which now seems more accurate 20 years later the same way people see similarities between current events and George Orwell’s 1984, Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Judge himself tried to use the same sociopolitical humor that worked in the 1990s on The Goode Family, a poorly executed satire sitcom of liberal views that used tired stereotypes as jokes. This is probably why most KOTH fans mostly refer to the earlier seasons whenever someone screams, “That’s my purse! I don’t know you.” Or the way Peggy seemed cautious to say human anatomy words like “penis” or “ovaries” before screaming “Vagina!”
The earlier episodes had a no-nonsense character-driven style the way Hank sees a young man moving boxes into his neighbor’s house and assumes he’s a football player because he’s wearing a jersey. He makes a comment the man will be a good addition on Arlen’s football team the next season. But he soon realizes it’s Kahn Souphanousinphone, a Laotian family man. And Hank and the rest’s reaction is classic as they keep asking Kahn if he’s Chinese or Japanese.
Throughout the 2010s, the show would remain popular amongst fans especially as the full series is on the streaming service Hulu led to a revival season set to air in August of this year. Sadly in the interim, Tom Petty who had played Lucky, Luanne’s redneck boyfriend had passed away in October 2017 of an accidental drug overdose. Even though I was and still am a Petty fan, I didn’t care for the character of Lucky mainly because I felt Luanne had moved on following the death of Buckley.
A year later, Burt Reynolds would pass away on Sept. 6, 2018 at the age of 82 following a heart attack. Reynolds had voiced M.F. Thatherton, a rival propane seller of Hank’s who has more sleazy ways of doing business. He would only voice the character for his initial episode while series regular Toby Huss voiced him in subsequent episodes.
There was also the strange case of Amie Harwick, who was briefly engaged to Drew Carey for some time. Carey had voiced the character of Hal, who quickly forms a friendly bond with Hank, because they have similar likes and drive the same model truck. Harwick and Carey began dating in the summer of 2017 and they were engaged in the winter of 2018. However by the end of the year, they amicably ending their engagement and relationship.
On Feb. 15, 2020, Harwick, a marriage and family therapist and writer, was returning to her apartment in the Hollywood Hills when her ex-boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse, had strangled her shortly after 1 a.m. on that date. He was reportedly lying in wait after breaking into the apartment. He had a history of stalking and harassing her for years throughout the 2010s after their relationship ended.
As a new decade started, word began to spread that KOTH was going to have a revival and in the winter of 2023, Hulu along with Judge and Daniels confirmed a revival season. This news led to a lot of positive feedback from fans of the show on social media. Scripts were written and voice-recording sessions were set up and then tragedy struck again.
On Aug. 8, 2023, Johnny Hardwick, who had voiced Hank’s longtime friend and neighbor, had been found dead in his Austin, Texas home at the age of 64. Authorities discovered Hardwick’s body lying face-up in a bathtub following a welfare check. Manner of death was unable to determine because the body had begun to decompose. But the medical examiner’s report determined whatever happened was sudden and Hardwick had drowned.
Fans of Hardwick and Dale flooded social media with condolences. Dale, whose appearance was mostly based on Hunter S. Thompson and actor Robert Patrick, was a conspiracy theorist who was often known for his gullibility. Despite claiming to be skeptical of a lot of things, Dale was oblivious to the fact that his wife, Nancy, was having a long-term affair with John Redcorn. He was even ignorant to the fact that his son, Joseph, was actually sired by John Redcorn, which is obviously because of Joseph’s darker skin tones.
Being someone who believes in karma and that sometimes there are forces in the universe, curses, like conspiracy theories are usually just a matter of coincidence that people cherry pick to make it seem it’s something else. Out of 14 seasons and over 250 episodes, there are numerous actors on the show. And considering production began almost 30 years ago, eventually people will pass away over time.
Actors such as Ed Asner, Henry Gibson, Carl Reiner, Lane Smith and Fred Willard delivered their voice-acting talents to the show and all have passed away over the last 20 years. But Joss’ murder comes less than two months after the reported suicide of actor Nicky Katt who had voiced characters in three episodes in 2003 and 2004. Katt was 54 but hadn’t worked in acting since 2018.
But even if Hardwick had died of natural causes, passing away at 64 is still considered younger than usual in today’s world. Years ago, I made a post about if Billy Bob Thornton has a curse because several of his co-stars have died at younger ages than normal. There’s also the unfortunate series of events that have happened to the cast and crew members of the first two Home Alone movies. And the Poltergeist movies have longed been the result of a curse that some people believe was because of the use of real skeletons during a scene, even though real skeletons have been used prior.
Other horror movies like The Exorcist and The Omen also had a lot of odd deaths and incidents connected to their production and afterwards. An adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces has been delayed for decades because of the deaths of the cast and crew of its numerous attempts. Originally John Belushi and Richard Pryor were considered for the two main roles. But Belushi died of an accidental drug overdose and Richard Pryor who had survived a suicide attempt where he set himself on fire was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Harold Ramis was set to write and direct it but he would later be diagnosed with autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis and lost the ability to walk. Both John Candy and Chris Farley were also considered to play the book’s protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly. Both would pass away early in their lives. Candy died of a heart attack while Farley died of an accidental drug overdose. Even John Waters was considering adapting the book at one time with Divine (real name Harris Glenn Milstead) as Igantius. But Divine also died at the age of 42 of a heart attack in his sleep.
It’s no surprise the book itself might have a curse as its writer John Kennedy Toole spent years trying to get it published to no avail. He would later commit suicide in 1969. The book wasn’t published until 1980. Finally in the early 2000s, it seemed ready to go into production in New Orleans with Steven Soderbergh writing, David Gordon Green directing and Will Ferrell as Ignatius. Paramount Pictures was supposed to produce and distribute it but some reorganization among executives led to lack of interest. Then in the summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area, which is the central location of the book.
Then in early January 2007, Helen Hill, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission was shot and killed during a home invasion. Her killer has never been identified and no arrests have been made as the case has gone cold. Soderberg claimed that he thinks the book is cursed, even though he doesn’t believe in them.
Another movie adaptation has been in limbo for years. Attempts to adapt the 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk has had many celebrity deaths connected to it. Originally just titled Atuk, Belushi was being considered for the movie adaptation when he died in 1982. Candy, Farley and Phil Hartman have also been connected to the movie adaptation. Hartman was killed by his wife, Brynn, in late May 1998. Michael O’Donoghue, known for his dark humor and writings for National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1994 at the age of 54. He had reportedly written one of the screenplay drafts.
But Judge himself has had difficulty in the movie industry. Even though Office Space and Idiocracy are now considered classic comedy movies, they didn’t do well at the box office. He hasn’t directed a movie since 2009’s Extract. Despite a cast that includes Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons and Gene Simmons, it received mixed reviews and was a box-office dud.
Judge would find later success on TV with the live-action Silicon Valley. But the voice of Peggy Hill Kathy Najimy, who was famous following Sister Act and Hocus Pocus has mostly done character actor work in movies and TV . But that’s always the case. Some actors and filmmakers do better on TV than in the movie industry.
Shows like Diff’rent Strokes and the Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts are known for the odd deaths of the actors as well as the incidents that followed. On Strokes, Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges and Dana Plato all had legal issues and Plato died of a drug overdose. Coleman’s death is still controversial 15 years later as some speculate it could have been prevented but his partner, Shannon Price, didn’t seek medical aide to him in time following a fall at his house in Provo, Utah.
The timing of Joss’ murder comes within days of the release of the first teaser for the revival. It also happened on the first day of June, which is also Pride Month, a reminder of the violence and harassment people of the LGBTQIA community still face in 2025. Hopefully, more people will tune in and give KOTH the same response it once had. If anything else, it’s a good way to honor the legacy of Joss and Hardwick who made us laugh. We need more people in the world like them.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 