It’s been two months since we reported that Suzanne Somers‘ widower Alan Hamel had found love again with the Three’s Company actress’s former co-star Joanna Cassidy.
Over the weekend, we reported that Hamel had confirmed that he and Cassidy are still going strong. He also revealed that it had been Somers’ final wish for him to move on and find love again after her death.
Now, Hamel, 89, is speaking out to gush over Cassidy, 80. Indeed, it seems that the two of them are happier than ever with their new romance.
Hamel Is ‘Grateful’ For New Romance
“I know a lot of people and I have a lot of wonderful friends, but I’ve never gone out of my way to connect with people,” Hamel told People Magazine. “It just happened naturally. And I’ve introduced Joanna to many of my friends, and there’s still a whole pack of them that you haven’t met yet. These are people that we just met somewhere, and a relationship happened, and it marinated over a bunch of years and brought along other people. And that’s really it. I never put any real energy into it.”
“I’m blessed. I’m grateful for that. And I’m grateful for the relationship that I have with Joanna. It’s very special,” he continued. “And she has given kudos all her life to everybody around her other than herself, which is very selfless. I can’t do that. I’m not built that way, but I admire it.”
Hamel and Cassidy initially met decades ago when she was a guest on his eponymous talk show. Cassidy and Somers later starred together in the 1985 miniseries Hollywood Wives. The official log-line for the miniseries describes it as being “a three-part, six-hour adaptation of Jackie Collins’ book about a group of very wealthy, attractive, snobbish women who are caught up in the low life and high society of Hollywood.”
Somers passed away in October of 2023 one day before her 77th birthday. This came after a 23 year battle with breast cancer. Somers and Hamel had been together for 55 years and married for 46 years at the time of her death. This left Hamel understandably lost and devastated after her passing.
Find out more about Hamel’s grief in the video below.
Hamel Finds Love Again With Cassidy
As he mourned Somers, Hamel happened to run into Cassidy one day for the first time in years. They quickly reconnected, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“I’m grateful for my relationship with Joanna,” Hamel gushed. “We have good times together, and we were talking about it the other day — and do you call me your boyfriend, or did we leave that in high school? It’s really weird to use the term ‘boyfriend’ at this place in life. So we talked about different things like ‘companion’ and ‘partner.'”
“You’re a buddy,” Cassidy chimed in to joke. Hamel was quick to correct her, saying, “You’re more than my buddy. You’re a lot more than my buddy.”
Cassidy, who is best known for her role in the 1982 classic movie Blade Runner, then elaborated on how happy she is in their relationship.
“I think that there’s a safety, there’s a measure of safety in that where you just feel comfortable, but more than comfortable, you just want to be around that person because you feel good,” she said.
When asked directly if they’re in love, however, Hamel and Cassidy played it coy.
“Love has so many definitions. There’s romantic love, there’s family love… I think that people see one another for the experiment,” Cassidy explained.
“They have a date, they have a coffee, they have a dinner. And then you are with someone where you go, ‘Oh, this is pretty good. Wow, I’m going to hang in here for a while,'” she added. “And then I get to the three-month part. Well, we’ve gotten past that, so I think we’re in good shape, and I think who knows where this will go, but every time we are together, it’s exciting. It’s fun.”
Hamel And Cassidy Are Long Distance
Hamel chimed back in to point out that they are in a long distance relationship.
“We live in different cities,” Hamel explained. “I live in the desert [Palm Springs], and Joanna lives in Los Angeles. And so the geography, it’d be a lot easier if we lived in the same city, because when we do get together, it’s for a number of days. We’ve been actually testing, I think so far we’ve been able to spend six and a half days together, and we’re okay with this. Yeah. So I think the next one, we’ll probably add another day or two. And so we’re doing it very gradually.”
Hamel went on to say that one of the best parts of their long distance relationship is their ability to “sit on the phone for hours.”
“We talk about anything and everybody, really,” he stated. “So whatever it is, I always look at relationships that happen as being like a jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly all the pieces are starting to fit together, and you don’t really understand why. And haven’t you been staring at that puzzle for years, and you haven’t been able to put it together, and then all of a sudden, one day, you pick up the right pieces.”
Somers’ Final Wish
This comes days after Hamel revealed that Somers would want him to find love again now that she’s gone.
“When we knew the end was near, she said to me, ‘Once I’m gone, I don’t want you to mope around,’” Hamel told Fox News. “‘I want you to live your life.’ I told her OK. But then she looked at me and said, ‘I’m serious. I don’t want you to mope around.’ Again, I said OK.”
Though some fans have been surprised that Hamel has moved on with one of Somers’ former co-stars, it seems that the late actress would have been just fine with that. We’d like to wish Hamel and Cassidy many years of love and happiness together to come!