NEW YORK — The wife of 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 coronavirus.
Amanda Koots 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 care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on March 31 and has been on a ventilator and unconscious after contracting 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.