Russell Andrews, a veteran actor who appeared in major shows like Better Caul Saul and Grey’s Anatomy, has shared his diagnosis with ALS.
The 64-year-old revealed the news live on CNN’s The Story Is with Elex Michaelson Saturday alongside his fiancée, Justified actor Erica Tazel.
ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) is the most common type of Motor Neurone Disease. It is a rare, degenerative disease that affects motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, impacting movement, speech, and independence.
The condition has been in the spotlight recently after another Grey’s Anatomy star, Eric Dane, announced his diagnosis in April 2025 and died in February this year.
“I was diagnosed in the late fall of last year,” Andrews told Michaelson in the interview. “And it’s been humbling, but there’s… Elex, there’s also something in the fact that I walked into a family of very caring people I did not know a year ago — the cliché family, but they have not let us miss a step in terms of care, the attention, the awareness and the ability to get me here today.”
Andrews said he initially feared he’d suffered a stroke during the Covid pandemic, before later recognising what may have been early signs of ALS.
“It was a stressful time. We didn’t work for three years, about, and then we had the back-to-back strikes and so a lot was going on,” he said, referring to the 2023 actors’ strikes and writers’ strikes in Hollywood.
“There were twitches… I thought I was having pinched nerves in my neck and they were quite frequent,” he continued.
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“I was not able to do things that I normally do. I was dropping cups and glasses at night. It felt like things were running up and down my arm at different times and it was the nerves.”
“It took him longer to clean the pool,” Tazel said of the early signs of ALS in her fiancé. “The way he walked, there was just the subtle little things like that and I had questions. I was like, ‘Something is definitely wrong.’”
Recalling the moment they received Andrews’s diagnosis, Tazel told Michaelson: “I was uncharacteristically calm and in a way, it was an answer to a lot of questions that we had.
“[There] was not a sigh of relief, but some understanding of what was happening,” she recalled. “And I looked at him across the room and I said, ‘At least now we know what it is, and I still want to be your wife.’ ”
Reflecting on what her fiancé’s ALS journey has taught her about love, the actor said it showed her that “there are cases where it is truly unconditional.”
Russell also announced his partnership with the ALS Network as it marks ALS Awareness Month this May.
“Receiving this diagnosis changed my life,” Andrews said via the network’s website. “What I didn’t expect was the depth of connection and support that comes with it. There’s a community here that shows up in ways that matter.”
Andrews played Detective Salerno in AMC’s Breaking Bad spinoff, Better Call Saul, and a patient in Grey’s Anatomy. He also played a pastor in Straight Outta Compton (2015) and held minor roles in the HBO series Insecure and CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans.
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