Keanu Reeves has paid a touching tribute to his late co-star Lance Reddick, crediting him for making people love the John Wick films.
Reddick died at the age of 60 last March of natural causes. In addition to the John Wick films, he was known for his appearances in The Wire, Rick and Morty and Oz.
In the action series, Reddick played Charon, the concierge of The Continental, the luxurious hotel that serves as the neutral ground for the various parties that come into contact with each other in the films. Reddick has appeared in all four films to date, with the fourth film arriving in cinemas shortly after the news of his death broke.
Speaking to People at the 2024 Saturn Awards, Reeves said that he wrote Reddick a letter, thanking him for making fans invest in the film franchise.
“He had such a passion and a fire for creativity, and for his craft, and for art. I had the chance to work with him on four films over the course of eight years, and over that time, we got to know each other better,” said Reeves.
“But also, he had such a grace, and he was funny. I mean, humor-wise. I don’t know. I think favorite memory… it’s the scenes that I had with him and the relationship that he and John Wick had, Charon”.
“I once told him… Well, actually I wrote him a letter and I said, ‘people love John Wick because Charon loves John Wick’. Because that character loved John Wick, that made John Wick okay. And so when I got to act with him, we had such an affection.”
“The characters had such an affection, and offscreen, we had such an affection and just really enjoying working on the John Wick films, our characters, getting to work with Chad [Stahelski] and on that series,” he added. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime project. I think he knew that, I knew it, and we just loved working together on it.”
At the Saturn Awards, awarded to genre fiction films, Avatar: The Way of Water walked away with four awards, while Barbie, Oppenheimer and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny each took three. The biggest television winner was Star Trek: Picard, which won four prizes.