Anthony Clark, a comedian and actor who is best known for his performance as Greg Warner on the sitcom “Yes, Dear,” died on Tuesday. He was 63.
His death was confirmed by his co-star on the show, Mike O’Malley, in a post on social media on Wednesday. He did not provide a cause of death.
“Yes, Dear” ran from 2000 to 2006 on CBS, in an era where multicamera sitcoms were still in vogue. The show followed two married couples navigating parenthood. Mr. Clark’s Greg was an uptight, first-time parent, contrasted with his more lax brother-in-law Jimmy, performed by Mr. O’Malley. The show was, in some ways, a commentary on overbearing parents overwhelmed by advice from professionals. TV reviewers were mostly tepid about “Yes, Dear,” but it drew steady ratings.
When Mr. Clark got the role, he was already an established stand-up comedian with sitcom experience. He was a regular on two short-lived series. One was “Boston Common” on NBC, where he portrayed Boyd Pritchett, a Virginia native who ends up working at his sister’s college. The other was “Soul Man,” a Dan Aykroyd vehicle where he played the Rev. Todd Tucker. Mr. Clark did not have to audition for the “Yes, Dear” role.
In a 2020 podcast interview with his longtime manager, Barry Katz, Mr. Clark described the process of shooting a sitcom as exhausting.
“It’s like taking a huge college campus test every Friday night when you shoot the show. You have to memorize 50 pages of script,” he said. “Let me tell you, if you don’t do it, there’s somebody on the next bus who will do it. So you better be good at it.”
Anthony Duane Clark was born on April 4, 1963, in Lynchburg, Va. His father, Charlie W. Clark Jr., was an assembly line worker for General Electric and his mother, Nellie R. Arrington, was a bookkeeper in a clothing store.
Mr. Clark wanted to leave small-town life, he told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. His performing career began at Emerson College in Boston, which counts Denis Leary and Jay Leno among its comedy alumni.
“I kind of realized that if I don’t get out of here I’m going to end up working a drive-through,” Mr. Clark said.
Arriving in Boston, he said, was like arriving in “Oz.” Within years, he was making a name for himself. He was in a student group that included one of his close friends, David Cross. His first time performing was at the The Punchline, a comedy club in Atlanta.
“The reaction was incredible,” Mr. Clark told The Comic’s Comic, a blog, in 2006. “I was like, ‘Finally I get to be good at something.’”
Mr. Clark developed a reputation as a commanding performer with a Southern drawl. After graduating in 1987, he jumped to Hollywood quickly, which was unusual at the time for stand-up comedians. But the success of performers like Bill Cosby opened the door.
While he loved performing stand-up, acting was his true vocation. Mr. Clark credited Carol Burnett for making him want to be an actor in a 2001 New York Post interview.
Mr. Clark’s break came when he was referred by a former classmate from Emerson, who had become an assistant at the now-defunct Bresler-Kelly-Kipperman agency in New York.
“The agency picks up a client about every three years,” Mr. Clark told the Boston Globe in 1990. “So when they take on a new client everyone wants to know who he is immediately, so they’re all breaking down the door to meet me.”
One of his first roles came in “Dogfight,” the 1991 film starring River Phoenix. That was followed by a supporting role in “The Rock,” the 1996 film directed by Michael Bay, and guest appearances on “Ellen.”
But his life changed for good when he was cast in “Boston Common.”
“In my little life growing up in Virginia, I could have never imagined CBS,” Mr. Clark said on Mr. Katz’s podcast. “Come on. It’s the Carol Burnett network. You know what I mean?”
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