“Ron was the best of the best — on screen, on stage, and in real life,” “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “My God: what an actor. I don’t think I ever changed a single take of his in a cut because everything he did was perfect.”
Mandy Moore, who played Randall’s adoptive mother, also noted Jones’s passing, writing on Instagram that “Getting to know and work with Ron on the wild ride of ‘This Is Us’ was the greatest gift- he was pure magic as a human and an artist.”
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Despite his on-screen fame, Jones remained active in the theater, and last year was nominated for a Tony award for his role of Montrellous in the Broadway production of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage’s drama, Clyde’s. The role came a year after Jones underwent a double lung transplant at UCLA Medical Center, an effort to treat a case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that emerged during his This is Us stint.
“I was in total denial,” Jones told the New York Times of his diagnosis of emphysema and COPD in 2021. “I told myself that it would pass, or that I was just getting older. I was afraid and didn’t want to change what I wasn’t ready to change.” As his symptoms worsened, however, he grew to understand the severity of his illness, eventually ending his decades-long 12-cigarette-a-day habit and seeking treatment.
It was a decision that vastly improved his remaining years, his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, told the NYT in 2021. “You can see in his eyes that he made the right decision … I feel like I have my dad back.”
Eventually, there was no other option but the transplant, which Jones characterized to Today as “a very difficult and arduous recovery,” but “There was no other alternative but to try to go with a transplant and see if I could pull my life together.”
The life-saving procedure allowed Jones to return to the stage and continue to act on-screen, including a role in upcoming Disney+ series Genius: MLK/X.
Speaking with Today in 2022, Jones said that he hoped that his late-blooming success provided inspiration for others. “After 50-something years of being on the boards and doing a little spot television,” he was cast in This is Us at age 59.
The ABC hit “gave me a chance to show people my level of work,” Jones said. “So, I’m getting work because of my work as opposed to trying to toil. I’ve done that all those years in New York. It’s the idea that my work, after all, is perseverance. It took a little while, but it paid off in the end.”
Eve Batey
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