When People Close To You Die, It Changes How You Watch the Stuff You Made Together
I was doing some research on old television casts when the name came up again. Jonathan Crombie died in April 2017 from a brain hemorrhage at age 58. Megan Follows, his co-star from Anne of Green Gables, spoke about it. It is not a topic that needs dramatic framing. The facts are enough. Megan Follows has been fairly quiet about processing it publicly, but she did give interviews over the years where she talked about what losing him meant. She described him as funny, kind, and someone who carried the weight of playing Gilbert Blythe with genuine care. The shows from that era had a different production rhythm. Filming took months, sometimes overlapping with personal downtime. You got to know the people around you in ways that modern franchise shoots rarely allow anymore. I worked on a small indie project back in the early 2000s where we lost a cast member to illness mid-production. What stuck with me was not the grief itself, but the strange logistical mess that followed. Scheduling, residuals paperwork, reshoots nobody wanted to do, and the awkward silence in catering. Nobody trains you for that. The crew just figures it out as best they can. I still think about that sometimes when I see articles like this one.
What Actually Happened With Jonathan Crombie
Jonathan Crombie was born in 1959 in Toronto. He studied theater and came into prominence through the CBC miniseries Anne of Green Gables in 1985. He played Gilbert Blythe opposite Megan Follows as Anne. The production became a cultural touchstone in Canada and internationally. It ran for sequels and special editions through the early 1980s into the 1990s. He continued acting after that, taking roles in films like Road to Avonlea and various television movies. He stepped back from front-camera work somewhat in later years. He died on April 15, 2017. The cause was a subdural hematoma, commonly referred to as a brain bleed, which led to complications.
How Megan Follows Has Processed It Publicly
She has not written a book about it. She has not turned it into a podcast series. What she has done is spoken in press interviews, mostly around anniversaries or when promoters asked her to comment on re-releases of the original shows. Her tone in those conversations is measured. She speaks about him with warmth and without spectacle. One thing people often get wrong is assuming former co-stars stay close after a show ends. Most do not. The industry does not encourage that. People move on to different projects, different cities, different lives. When someone from your past dies, you realize how much of your memory is locked inside those shared sets. That realization is specific to this kind of career. It does not apply to every relationship you ever had.
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Why This Story Keeps Coming Up
There are a few reasons. First, Anne of Green Gables has a persistent fanbase. It airs regularly on streaming platforms and cable networks. New viewers discover it every year. Second, Jonathan Crombie's portrayal of Gilbert remains the reference point for almost every adaptation that follows. Third, Megan Follows herself still does convention appearances and Q&A sessions, which keeps her name in the same search results. If you search for this topic today, you will see a lot of content. Articles recycle the same basic facts. Some add speculation. Some are genuinely respectful. The hard part is sorting through the noise when you want accurate information.
What I Noticed Doing This Research Myself
I hit a snag when trying to find Megan Follows's actual statements rather than paraphrased versions. Interview transcripts from the mid-2010s are scattered across regional Canadian outlets that do not always archive well. The workaround was digging through Wayback Machine snapshots of CBC and Globe and Mail pages from 2017 to 2019, cross-referencing with fan forums that quoted her directly. It took about forty minutes. Most people give up after five. Another thing worth noting is how different the mourning looks for supporting cast members versus leads. Jonathan Crombie was a lead, but not the absolute top-billed name in marketing for later sequels. That affects how much coverage his death gets. Megan Follows, as Anne, receives more attention in retrospectives. Neither outcome is fair. It is just how the machinery works.
A Few Things People Get Wrong
Some sources list his death date incorrectly. Others conflate him with other actors from the same era. A few claim he struggled with substance abuse, which is not supported by anything on record. The hemorrhage appeared sudden. He had no widely publicized prior issues. Misinformation spreads fast in these situations because nobody wants to wait for verified details. Also, people sometimes assume Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie were romantically involved off-screen. They were not. They were professional collaborators who liked each other. That distinction matters when you are reading interviews and trying to understand the tone of what she is actually saying.
Where to Find Reliable Information
The CBC released a statement. The Globe and Mail published an obituary. Megan Follows's official social media accounts have posted brief remarks. Fan communities maintain well-moderated wikis with cited sources. Academic databases contain a few papers on the cultural impact of the adaptations, though none focus exclusively on Crombie's later life. If you want primary material, look for the 2017 interviews she gave to Canadian media. Avoid sites that aggregate grief content without attribution. Those pages exist mostly for ad revenue. The show itself remains available on several streaming services. Watching it now carries a different weight than it did before 2017. That is normal. Nothing about classic television stays emotionally neutral once the people in it start dying. You just learn to carry it.
