Staggering amount raised for family of star who died from coronavirus complications

Two days after the death of Broadway actor Nick Cordero, donations are pouring into a GoFundMe account started to help pay for his hospital bills.

Friends first started the fund to benefit Cordero’s wife Amanda Kloots and their one-year-old son, Elvis, on April 18.

That was two-and-a-half weeks after Cordero first entered the hospital with what was originally misdiagnosed as pneumonia and turned out to be COVID-19.

People donated as little as $5 and as much as $200. As of Tuesday morning, more than 17,700 people had donated something. With the total sitting at almost $1M ($1.5M AUD).

Amanda met husband Nick Cordero in 2017, when they worked together — she’s also a performer — in the show Bullets Over Broadway, while she was married to her first husband.

“We were friends first and then fell in love,” Kloots has shared on social media. They relocated from New York to Los Angeles in September. “Nick dreamed of living in LA, buying a home and raising Elvis in Laurel Canyon,” Kloots wrote.

Nick’s many celebrity friends have also been paying tribute to him.

Sara Bareilles, who co-starred with him in Broadway’s Waitress, described him as “light. Kind and gentle. Talented and humble. Funny and friendly. The best laugh.”

Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda said the loss was “devastating.”

Cordero’s friend Zach Braff, who he met while co-starring in Bullets Over Broadway on the stage in 2014, said he’d never met a kinder person.

“The last thing he ever texted me was to look out for his wife and one year old son, Elvis,” Braff said in an emotional remembrance.

“I promise the world they will never want for anything. I feel so incredibly grateful I got to have Nick Cordero enter my life.”

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