Ted Danson Opens Up About a Recent Health Scare

Ted Danson has been through something that made him stop and take stock — and he’s being refreshingly honest about it.

The beloved Cheers and The Good Place star opened up about a recent health scare during a new episode of his podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, telling guest Valerie Bertinelli that the experience fundamentally changed the way he’s living his life.

“The last thing that kind of hit me that was very liberating was I had a bit of a health scare. I’m totally fine, but it was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s real,’” the 78-year-old said. “And it was humbling and, oh, mortality is the real deal, you know. It’s not just a rumor. Ted Danson doesn’t get a free pass. Love his work, but…”

He didn’t reveal what the health issue was, and he made clear it wasn’t the result of any poor choices on his part — which somehow made it hit harder. “I hadn’t f—ed up in some way,” he said, “so I couldn’t go, ‘Oh, Ted.’” Bertinelli picked right up on that: there were no “if onlys” to fall back on. It just happened.

“It was very humbling and calming, and I’m fine,” Danson assured listeners. “I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me, and I’m doing some things differently.”

Meditating with Mary, and Meaning It This Time

The biggest change? He’s finally following through on the healthy habits he’d always talked about but never actually committed to. “I am meditating now twice a day with Mary,” he said, referring to his wife of nearly 30 years, Mary Steenburgen. “It’s like, wow, I’ve always talked about it and lied about it.” He said it with a laugh, but the honesty landed.

Danson and Steenburgen met in 1993 on the set of Pontiac Moon and married on October 7, 1995, on Martha’s Vineyard. By all accounts, they’ve been each other’s anchor ever since — and now, apparently, each other’s meditation partners.

The Bigger Shift: Learning to Really Listen

What struck Danson most wasn’t just the physical wake-up call. It was what the experience unlocked in him emotionally.

“What it’s done for me, the biggest gift of all: you can be curious about other people, you can listen, you can be supportive, caring, you can witness them,” he told Bertinelli. “And I do believe that the rest of my life is to be curious and listen. That’s the best thing I can offer.”

There’s something quietly moving about a man who has spent decades being one of the most watched faces on television arriving at the conclusion that the most valuable thing he can do now is pay attention to others.

The conversation itself had a certain serendipity to it — Danson and Bertinelli had somehow never really met before the podcast taping, despite both being fixtures of American television for decades. Bertinelli has been in the business since 1975. Danson, of course, became a household name as Sam Malone across all 273 episodes of Cheers‘ 11-season run from 1982 to 1993 — a show he ultimately chose to end by walking away, leaving executives with no interest in continuing without their lead.

Since then he’s kept busy in ways that have only deepened his reputation — from Becker to Damages to his beloved turn as Michael in The Good Place, and most recently starring in A Man on the Inside. But if this conversation is any indication, the chapter he’s most focused on right now has nothing to do with a role. It’s just about showing up — for Mary, for the people around him, and for himself.

“It just means you have experienced allowing so much pain to get to the joy and all that,” he said.

That’s the kind of thing you only really understand after something shakes you. Sounds like it shook him just enough.