Before He Died, Silicon Valley Star Christopher Evan Welch Gave Us

The Perfect Embodiment Of Tech-World Hubris

Just a day after Christopher Evan Welch landed a career-making recurring role on
HBOs Silicon Valley, he received some heartbreaking news. The lung cancer hed been
battling successfully since the fall of 2010 had spread to his brain.
Chris was sitting with his wife, Emma, and his doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering in
New York. I have to go shoot this pilot, he said, stunned.
Welch was 47. Before his diagnosis, hed been a fanatical cyclist, winging around
Central Park on his fixed-gear bike, his thin brown hair flying behind him. Nobody could
say why the cancer had attacked his lungs, then his prostate, and now his brain. He was
a casual smoker, and he enjoyed the occasional steak at Keens, but so did lots of people.
Maybe the weeks Chris spent after the 9/11 attacks helping out at ground zero were a
factor. Or maybe it was all just the result of some horrible mutation that lay dormant in
his DNA all along.
With aggressive treatment, Chris and the doctors had kept the tumors at bay so far.
The latest news was bad, but he and Emma were used to that. One more fight in a grim
slog.
It was agreed the surgery could be put off for a month, and Chris went to Los
Angeles, where he created the role of comedically awkward, creepily soft-spoken angel
investor Peter Gregory.
Based loosely on the slightly less awkward, creepily soft-spoken PayPal cofounder
and Facebook angel Peter Thiel, Gregory is a linchpin of the series, funding the startup,
Pied Piper, around which the action revolves. More than that, hes a poster boy for the
tech worlds imperiousness, its brilliance, and its odd alienation from the very world it is
forever trying to make a better place, as one character after another is forever putting
it.
Welch shot just five episodes before further complications related to his cancer took
his life this past December.
And while the show is charming and keenly observed, and will likely thrive even in
his absence, watching Peter Gregory, TED-talk Socrates and sesame-seed tycoon, drive
his absurdly narrow Smart car off into the Northern California sunset wont be easy.
Judge has long specialized in wounded, insecure, painfully uncomfortably men (from
Beavis & Butthead and King of the Hill to Office Space), and despite Peter
Gregorys brief time on screen, he is already among the most indelible. Amid a cast that
often seems like a taxonomy of male social inadequacy, Gregory is the most awkward of
them all. Letting his hands dangle helplessly like a neurasthenic T. rex, speaking with an
exaggerated formality, hes a ridiculous, magnetic, and deeply human figure the
irreplaceable heart of the show.


Lanky and floppy-haired, Welch grew up in Dallas, the oldest child of a Korean War
vet and a homemaker. A theater geek in high school, he attended the University of
Dallas on a full scholarship, then went on to grad school in Seattle, where he fronted the
Ottoman Bigwigs, a brainy indie-rock band with a minuscule but devoted cult following.
He arrived in New York in 1997, appearing in a revival of Molieres Scapin,
opposite neo-vaudevillian Bill Irwin, delivering a slapstick tour de force that The New
York Times called a sensational debut.
In the years that followed, Welch built up an impressive career as a character actor,
one vaguely familiar to anyone paying close attention but as Vulture rightly noted,
maddeningly hard to place. Except for one unhappy attempt to wait tables in Dallas
during college, he made his living modest though it was exclusively as an actor.
Welch did his share of Law & Order episodes, like every New York actor, and was a
regular presence off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway. He made it to Broadway a couple
times as well, most notably as the tormented Reverend Parris in a 2002 production of
The Crucible, opposite Laura Linney and Liam Neeson. But he also did plenty of
experimental and regional theater, and it was while appearing in an out-of-town show, a
2005 revival of J.M. Barries Dear Brutus in Westport, Conn., that he first met Emma
Roberts. We played husband and wife, and we wound up falling madly in love, she
remembers.
Chris could be snobby about commercials, although as a newspaper fanatic he was
thrilled to land a New York Times ad. He had a great voice. He narrated Woody Allens
Vicky Christina Barcelona, and made decent money reading audiobooks, including the
young adult Last Apprentice series, The Imperfectionists, and John Grishams
Playing for Pizza.
He was a big guy, over six feet, but he exuded vulnerability. His face, hawkish but
soft, had something of a permanent wince about it, as if he was expecting to smacked at
any moment. Even when he played smarmy or sinister, that fearful look around his eyes,
that cosmic flinch, made him relatable and drew audiences in.
He became a regular on AMCs short-lived spy series Rubicon and, especially in
recent years, began building an impressive film resume, turning in uniformly stellar
work in small roles in films like Lincoln, The Master, and Synecdoche, New York
the latter two of which co-starred his friend Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose death
just two months to the day after Chris dealt a further blow to New Yorks tightly knit
theater community. In light of the two losses, Welchs existential barn-burner of a
speech in Synecdoche, a performance he pulled together with just 24 hours notice, is
shattering.




It started with a persistent cough, which led to an X-ray, which led to a CT scan. This
was in 2010. A radiologist diagnosed Welch with stage IIIA lung cancer. Emma was six
months pregnant.
The doctors wanted to admit him immediately, but Welch was in a play, The Little
Foxes, at the New York Theatre Workshop, and like most theater actors, he was
determined never to miss a performance. Besides, they needed to process the news.
Were getting out of here and we are both going to drink a glass of wine, Emma said.
I dont care if Im pregnant.
Welch went onstage later that night. Then, even as he began chemo, he continued the
run while spending his days rehearsing for yet another show hed been offered, The
Coward. He finished that run as well. Once he even went onstage after waking up from
general anesthesia.
Things kept happening; life marched along.
A few weeks after The Coward closed, their daughter, June Harper, was born.
The lung surgery happened not long after that.
Chris health was much improved by February 2013 when his agent called to tell him
about Silicon Valley. The producers wanted him to read for either one of the rival
Internet moguls, Gavin Belson or Peter Gregory, and he picked Gregory. Since he had to
stay in New York, where he was appearing in an off-Broadway show, The Madrid, with
Edie Falco, he taped his audition. Chris knew basically nothing about the tech world.
Except for an addiction to Words With Friends on his iPhone, he was basically computer
illiterate. But out of the blue, he decided to give Peter Gregory an odd vocal inflection.
Im setting my voice back in this weird way, he told Emma excitedly. He felt instantly
hed found the character.
Chris didnt know then how right the choice was, but as it happens, Peter Thiel also
happens to speak ... rather ... haltingly. Chris was offered the role immediately.
The timing was perfect. With the illness, Chris hadnt been working as much, and
money was tight. Suddenly, things were looking up. Every actor dreams of an HBO
series. This was the job that changes the game, Emma says.
After taping the pilot, Chris underwent surgery to remove the brain tumor, and the
operation was a success. But then came yet another blow. His blood-cell counts were
dropping, and the doctors diagnosed AML, acute myeloid leukemia, most likely brought
on by the earlier radiation treatments.
He was just really unlucky, Emma says. So unlucky.
There was really nothing to do but keep fighting. After a grueling summer, including
six weeks in the hospital, and repeated visits to the emergency room, Welch began what
seemed like a miraculous recovery. The lung had been removed and that was the end of
it, Emma recalls. The brain was fine, the leukemia was in remission, the prostate was
under control. During a physical with a doctor working with the network a standard
requirement for an actor signing on to a TV series he disclosed his medical history
and was declared fit for the job. Youd be surprised how many people I see who have
cancer, the doctor told him.
We thought we were home free, Emma says.
Chris and Emma moved into a rented bungalow in Santa Monica with June, who was
then 2. He was in remission and holding steady. They were living near friends, in a great
house a few blocks from the beach. Welch was needed on set only a couple of days a
week, and the rest of his time he devoted to June, playing elaborate games, telling
stories, singing songs, and going to the park.
Things were good. Welch enjoyed being the old guy on a set full of young comics,
and he was thrilled to discover that one of the shows producers was Clay Tarver,
guitarist for one of his favorite bands, Chavez. Mostly, he loved inventing Peter Gregory.
Im just locked in, he said. He even began to fantasize about being nominated for an
Emmy.
The work seemed to be contributing to his recovery. He was putting on weight and
feeling healthier than he had in awhile.
Then, the show took a break for Thanksgiving.
The Sunday after the holiday, Chris suddenly felt awful. He couldnt get out of bed.
He was vomiting, and his blood pressure dipped. Thered been rough days before,
though. Nobody panicked. Emma started making calls, first to the ambulance, then to
some friends, to come look after June.
Do I need to make a call to HBO? she asked.
I dont know, maybe, Chris replied.


That evening, Chris lay in intensive care with Emma by his side. He was suffering
from septic shock. Five hours after heading to the hospital, in the early hours of Dec. 2,
his heart gave out.
Emma thinks it may be for the best that Chris died the way he did so suddenly,
during such a high point, without time to brood about what hed be missing. The last
months of his life were idyllic, she said. June missed her dad, of course, but she was just
3. She would be OK. And Chris had written to her in case something happened letter
after letter she could reread when she was old enough.
But Chris was a dedicated performer, and knowing that he wouldnt be able to finish
what hed started on Silicon Valley would have been unbearable in its own way. It was
good he was spared that.
Faced with a similar situation, many producers might well have opted to put off a
shows premiere and reshot a characters scenes with another actor.
Executive producers Mike Judge and Alan Berg never even considered it. The
brilliance of Chris performance is irreplaceable, and inspired us in our writing of the
series, they said in a joint statement. It was bad enough that they had to rewrite
subsequent episodes in which Peter Gregory was originally going to appear, reimagining
several major story points. Cutting Chris out of those scripts was among the most
difficult things we have ever had to do as writers, they said. The entire ordeal was
heartbreaking. But we are incredibly grateful to have worked with him in the brief time
we had with him. Our show and our lives are vastly richer for his having been in them."
For the shows viewers, too, the loss will be acutely felt. We wont have seen nearly
enough of Peter Gregory or of Christopher Evan Welch. Then again, it was so nice
getting to know them both.