Lou Ferrigno Jr. has offered up his condolences to his S.W.A.T. co-star Shemar Moore. On Wednesday, Moore posted a heartfelt message to Instagram informing his fans that his mother, Marilyn Joan Wilson-Moore, had passed away on Feb. 8. Not long after, Ferrigno wrote a touching response in the comments.
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“So so sorry to hear this terrible news, my brother,” Ferrigno wrote. “You are a man of strength and honor that she forged from fire, and she will forever be proud, looking down upon you from heaven. My heart hurts for you and your family.”
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In the clip, Moore refers to his late mother as “my mother, best friend, and partner in crime passed.” At the tail-end of 2019, the actor shared a photo of his mother along with his uncle when he returned to their hometown of Boston for the holidays. Moore’s mother was born just outside the city, though Moore himself was born in Oakland, California. He would later grow up in Denmark, as his parent’s interracial marriage was still a bit too taboo for the U.S. at the time.
“When I lived here, I got my first taste of Boston,” Moore told The Boston Globe back in 2007. “The snow, the Red Sox, and playing in my first Little League team.”
Ferrigno plays the recurring character Donovan Rocker on S.W.A.T., which premiered back in 2017. The crime drama is a reboot of the 1975 series of the same name, as well as a companion series to The Shield, as both shows exist in the same shared universe, and both are produced by Shawn Ryan.
Moore stars as Sergeant II Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson Jr., and it was his commitment to the series that stopped him from showing up in tonight’s two-part Criminal Minds series finale. Showrunner Erica Messer had said that Moore’s schedule prevented him from reprising the role of Derek Morgan, but teased that his character would be involved in some way.
“I wanted to be able to acknowledge the history of the series, certainly in that finale and was able to do it in a different way,” she told TVLine.
And, like fellow series alum Thomas Gibson, Moore did get to “appear,” courtesy to some old footage from earlier seasons.
