Alan Hamel, Widower of Suzanne Somers, Has Taken Next Step With Actress Joanna Cassidy

Nearly two years after the death of his wife of 46 years, Suzanne Somers, Alan Hamel has taken a significant step forward in a new chapter of his personal life. The 89-year-old Canadian entertainer confirmed to the Daily Mail this week that he and actress Joanna Cassidy, 80, have begun sharing a home — an arrangement he characterizes as “living together ‘light.’”

The pair, who will mark their first anniversary as a couple in the coming weeks, made the move after months of shuttling between residences became impractical. Cassidy has retained her own home. “When she needs a few days alone at her home, she’s OK that I see my girlfriends, who are only good friends, no romance,” Hamel told the Daily Mail.

There is a kind symmetry to their new relationship. Cassidy, best known for her role as Zhora in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” costarred with Somers in the 1985 ABC miniseries “Hollywood Wives,” based on the Jackie Collins novel. Cassidy played socialite Marilee Gray; Somers played aspiring serious actress Gina Germaine.

Some Background on Alan Hamel & Joanna Cassidy’s Romance

Hamel and Cassidy’s reconnection was engineered without Hamel’s knowledge. Following Somers’ passing, Hamel had reconciled himself to solitude. His son Stephen, from his first marriage, had met Cassidy at a Los Angeles film screening and concluded she was a fitting match for his father, unaware the two had crossed paths before.

They had, more than once. Cassidy appeared on Hamel’s Canadian talk show “The Alan Hamel Show” in 1978, and the two had met repeatedly during the production of “Hollywood Wives” in the mid-1980s. Their first date after the reintroduction, Hamel told Page Six, lasted three days.

“There was that connection,” he told Fox News Digital. “We have both been very active in the entertainment business most of our lives, so neither one of us has anything to prove. We’ve both relaxed into what I refer to as the cocktail hour of our lives.”

Hamel Got Somers’ Blessing to Find Love Again

Getty

Somers died of breast cancer in October 2023 at age 76. Hamel has been candid his new romance is proceeding with the full endorsement of his late wife. In Somers’ final days, he has said, she made him promise not to retreat into grief.

“Don’t mope around,” he remembers her saying, per Page Six. “Live your life. We will see one another after you cross over.”

Hamel and Somers, who met in 1969 on the set of the game show “Anniversary Game,” were married for 46 years and, in his telling, did not spend an hour apart for more than five decades. In a public reflection on the anniversary of her death, he acknowledged a rocky start to the marriage but described an enduring partnership.

Cassidy — who won a Golden Globe for the 1983 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill” and earned Emmy and SAG Award nominations for her role as Brenda Chenowith’s beyond-wacky mother in HBO’s “Six Feet Under” — has been equally direct.

“I’ve lived alone for a long time,” Cassidy told Fox News Digital in August of 2025. “I’ve met people, but no one really floated my boat like Alan did. I just met him, and I went, ‘Wow, this is a solid connection. This is great.’”

The couple made their public debut earlier this year, walking the shoreline in Malibu and lunching at the Broad Beach Oyster Company.

The post Alan Hamel, Widower of Suzanne Somers, Has Taken Next Step With Actress Joanna Cassidy appeared first on EntertainmentNow.