The Broadway world has lost a star. Chris Peluso, who portrayed Sophie’s fiancé Sky in Broadway’s Mamma Mia! and toured in Wicked as Fiyero, died Aug. 15, according to Playbill and the University of Michigan Musical Theatre department. He was 40.
No cause of death has been shared. Peluso’s death comes nearly a year after his friends Rebecca LaChance and Tim Oxbrow shared that the performer had stepped away from the stage due to a schizoaffective disorder.
“This diagnosis has resulted in Chris experiencing debilitating paranoia, which has kept him from performing in recent years,” LaChance and Oxbrow wrote in a September 2022 GoFundMe fundraiser. “As well as affecting his capacity to work in the field he built his career in over the last 18 years, Chris’s mental health has affected every aspect of his life.”
Peluso reposted the GoFundMe on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Prior to the post, his last social media activity traced back to January 2021. At the time, Peluso celebrated the birth of his daughter Aria Li Gomes-Peluso with a picture of her next to his beloved King Charles Cavalier Peety, who died later that year.
In 2022, Peluso, who lived in London in pursuit of a West End performing career, moved to the United States in search of treatment. In addition to taking a break from his career—which at that point included appearances in productions The Woman in White, Death Takes a Holiday, Show Boat and the revival of Miss Saigon—Peluso’s relocation meant he had to move away from his wife Jessica Gomes and daughter.
“In recent months, the paranoia has consumed him to the extent that he is unable to work any job and has had to leave his wife and young child and return to America to seek treatment,” the GoFundMe read. “Chris has no health care insurance in the US and was recently hospitalized for about two weeks. Currently, he is seeking treatment at an inpatient mental health rehabilitation center. Peluso shared a message in the GoFundMe as well, expressing hope that his experience would reach others.
Source: eonline
In other news – Mpho Wabadimo shares adorable photos while on an outing with her child
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