After receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 2006, “Baywatch” actor Michael Newman passed away on Sunday, according to confirmation from his friend and director. He was sixty-eight.
Newman’s close friend and director of the new Hulu documentary series “After Baywatch: Moment in the Sun,” Matthew Felker, verified the news on his Instagram on Monday.
According to Felker, there were moments when he considered giving up on doing the documentary series, but he “remembered Mike” and “couldn’t let him down.”
He added that he played movies and read letters from people from all walks of life to Newman before he passed away, so “he knew he was loved.”
“My friend passed away. A hero. “My hero,” he wrote. “I appreciate you entering my life, Newmie. even if it was only for a short while.”
Newman passed away on Sunday night from “heart complications,” surrounded by friends and family, according to Felker, who spoke to People magazine.
After being given a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis at the age of fifty, Newman shared what it was like to live with the condition in the documentary series that followed the lives of the cast members who starred in “Baywatch.” He claimed that he frequently woke up feeling “jittery” after taking ten pills in a single day.
In order to help find a treatment, Newman worked with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to raise money for years prior to his passing.
He was born in Los Angeles and became well-known in the 1990s as Mike “Newmie” Newman, the popular lifeguard on “Baywatch,” the only cast member with actual lifeguarding experience. He made 150 appearances during the 1989–2001 duration of the show, second only to David Hasselhoff.
Under the leadership of Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon (Hasselhoff), “Baywatch” followed a group of lifeguards as they fought crime, handled personal conflicts, saved lives, and explored the beaches of Los Angeles. Pamela Anderson, Nicole Eggert, Yasmine Bleeth, and Jeremy Jackson were all on the same screen as Newman.
In addition, he worked as a full-time firefighter, juggling his filming schedule with his responsibilities at the firehouse. He worked as a firefighter for another twenty-five years after the series ended, and then he retired.
For three episodes in 1995, he played “Newmie” again in the spinoff series “Baywatch Nights.”
Newman’s wife, Sarah, whom he married 36 years ago, his grown children, Chris and Emily, and his granddaughter, Charlie, age 1, are all living.
