Entertainment

Nick Cordero, Broadway star from Ontario, faces leg amputation due to COVID-19 complications

The wife of Hamilton-raised, Tony Award-nominated actor Nick Cordero, who specialized in playing tough guys on Broadway, says her husband will have to have his right leg amputated after suffering complications from the COVID-19 illness.

Cordero entered L.A. hospital on March 31 and has been on a ventilator

Actor Nick Cordero, shown here attending the after-party for the opening night of Bullets Over Broadway in New York, has had his right leg amputated due to COVID-19 complications, his wife says. (Brad Barket/The Associated Press)

The wife of Hamilton-raised, Tony Award-nominated actor Nick Cordero, who specialized in playing tough guys on Broadway, says her husband will have to have his right leg amputated after suffering complications from the COVID-19 illness.

Amanda Kloots on Instagram said Saturday that Cordero had been treated with blood thinners to help with clotting in his leg, but his doctors had to stop the treatment because it was causing internal bleeding.

"We took him off blood thinners but that again was going to cause some clotting in the right leg, so the right leg will be amputated today," she said.

Cordero entered the intensive case unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on March 31 and has been on a ventilator and unconscious while undergoing treatment for COVID-19.

His wife has been sending him daily videos of her and their 10-month-old son, Elvis, so he could see them when he woke up, and urging friends and fans to join a daily sing-a-long.

Cordero played a mob soldier with a flair for the dramatic in 2014 in Broadway's Woody Allen 1994 film adaptation of Bullets Over Broadway, for which he received a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical.

The lanky Cordero originated the menacing role of husband Earl opposite his estranged wife, played by Jessie Mueller, in Waitress on Broadway, as well as the role of Sonny in Chazz Palminteri's A Bronx Tale.

On the small screen, Cordero appeared in several episodes of Blue Bloods and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as well as Lilyhammer, and he had a role in the film Going in Style.

The virus has sickened other Broadway veterans, including the actors Danny Burstein, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Gavin Creel, Aaron Tveit and Laura Bell Bundy, as well as composer David Bryan. It has also claimed the life of Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally.

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