He had achieved success and put his voice on The Simpsons, but his wife killed him in his sleep: that was the murder of Phil Hartman

Pilot episode

May 27, 1998. Los Angeles. Buca di Beppo restaurant.

brynn omdahl is having a Cosmopolitan with a friend. She accompanies the drink with antidepressants and cocaine.

The 40-year-old woman returns to her home drunk and on drugs Via Encino where her husband, the comedian on the rise, awaits her Phil Hartman.

I’m already 28. It’s two in the morning. Hartman scolds Brynn for going back to drugs and alcohol. An uncontrollable discussion breaks out where there is no shortage of shouts or threats. He asks her for a divorce and goes to bed. She is left alone, helpless and again resorts to her pills.

Three in the morning. Brynn takes 38 caliber revolver that the couple had hidden. He loads it and removes the security lock. He goes to Phil’s room in the middle of which days later they will confirm it was a psychotic break.

I: The imitator

“I wanted to do SNL because I wanted to get exposure that would give me box office credibility so I could write movies for myself.”

Phil Hartman

Before being known in Latin America for his role in “Jingle All the Way” (The promised gift, 1996), Hartman was familiar with the artistic canvas. As some say, “it was done from below.”

Hartman was not Orson Welles. He wasn’t a recognized and revered author for a masterpiece he made when he was twenty-four. Nor for making a radio play as scandalous as “The War of the Worlds” created by the brilliant son of Hollywood.

Hartman’s genius was growing until the day he died.

In 1948, decades before his first meeting with a paycheck, Phil was a Canadian kid. Then he was a teenager going to high school at Redondo Union College and, years later, a young adult studying graphic design at California State University.

He began to weigh his first coins doing jobs he didn’t like so much. In the seventies he was a cartoonist and record cover artist for bands like América or Crosby, Still, Nash & Young.

At the end of that decade, Hartman tried his hand at acting. She did improvisation and impersonation in underground theatres. With little he revealed himself a genius of imitation.

Over the years, his work has drawn so many laughs that he has been rewarded with contracts and tickets: in 1986, at the age of 38, he landed on the legendary US comedy show Saturday Night Live.

II: Blind date

“I started imitating Bill Clinton and suddenly my face was in magazines on television. I became a famous person. And I no longer had to look for work”

Phil Hartman

Its success was unappealable. During the eight years she worked at SNL, she earned tens of thousands of dollars per episode. She was an in-demand screenwriter and a rising film star.

His impersonations of ronaldo reagan, Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra and Jack Nicholson, among many others, left no one indifferent. The rage for him was such that he was even able to meet the president Bill Clinton and talk to him about how he imitated him (he apologized for doing so).

They saw him as a symbol of the Hollywood family comedy of the nineties. He was a team builder type that generated good working environments. His record as a comedian was extensive and his style was unique.

Phil has his own TV shows, like NewsRadioand the voices of The Simpsons characters. Second Matt Groeningcreator of the animated series, Hartman was “a master”.

Financially he had no problems: he owned a boat, a plane and a mansion in Los Angeles. He had two wives (Gretchen Lewis and Lisa Strain) with whom things did not go well, but both marriages ended on good terms.

Riding the crest of the professional wave, Phil dived into the heart of the tide. Like a sailor listening to the song of a siren, the comedian succumbed to the notes of a very young and beautiful blonde woman he met in a blind date.

III: Jealousy and frustration

“He was one of those people who never seemed to get out of character”

Stefano Root

It was Brynn Omdahl, a swimsuit model and aspiring actress who wanted a career in television and film.

As a result of a few dates, in ’87 Phil and Brynn they got married very much in love. A few months later they had their son To be and five years later, when they were living in New York, a Birgen.

From the start Brynn showed signs that something between them wasn’t going to work out. He was completely ecstatic and she had violent attitudes, the result of her professional frustration.

When Lisa, one of Phil’s exes, sent them a letter congratulating them on the birth of their son, Brynn took charge and fired back a barrage of insults. Lisa called Hartman to ask about it and he defended his wife tooth and nail.

But the years went by and Brynn continued to straighten her acting career. Her dream of becoming a star I was walking away. Phil, on the other hand, was an artist who, like fine wines, got better with time.

Hartman made several attempts to introduce his wife. He tried to cast her in a Saturday Night Live show, but her directors didn’t want her. He also wrote the script for a series they would star in together and the producers he pitched it to didn’t accept it.

Jealous and tired of bouncing the ball off the wall, Brynn started catching alcoholaspire cocaine and overcome the Cosmetic surgery procedures.

IV: Fed up

“They had a pattern: they argued at night, then he went to sleep and the next day it was all right”

Stefano Piccolo

In 1998, the wedding it was a complete disaster. Phil and Brynn fought constantly and she ended up in rehab for her drug and alcohol addiction. It lasted four days because he ran away.

He didn’t want to see her and that’s why he spent his time traveling and smoking marijuana.

The quarrels were so frequent that both knew perfectly well the modus operandi of the other. One obsession was that they asked each other for divorces and never got through. Brynn wanted to get her husband’s attention and exaggerate things about her and when he didn’t want to fight anymore she would go to bed and pretend to sleep, or she would seriously fall asleep.

Who knows why Omdahl and Hartman honeymooned in the days leading up to May 28 of that year. They ate together publicly and booked places in different spas with the aim of trying to rebuild their relationship.

Here’s what they were doing when she she went to eat with her friend Christine at Buca di Beppo.

V: caliber 38

“Hartman was blessed with an amazing gift for creating characters that made people laugh”

Don Ohlmeyer

We have come to the pilot chapter scene.

Brynn returned from the restaurant to find her angry husband scolding her for being late. After a heated argument, he asked for her divorce and she was left adrift in her house, drunk and high on pills.

Phil went to sleep, and a few minutes later Brynn dusted off a .38 revolver they had hidden in the house.

Furious, she walked over to Hartman’s bed and exploded the face of one bullet, the neck of another, and the arm of a third.

After committing the murder, Omdahl got into his car and drove to the home of Ron Douglasfriend of the couple. She came and told him what she had done. He didn’t believe her and she fainted from the state she was in.

Douglas began to see the situation differently when he rummaged through Brynn’s purse and found a weapon. He woke her samarando and to avoid doubts he went with her to the Hartman mansion.

It was 6.20 in the morning. Ron and Brynn have arrived to find things just as they left them. When Douglas saw Phil’s body, he called the police and took the boys, who were all in their rooms, very scared.

The police arrived, and in the midst of the commotion, Brynn pulled another gun, walked over to Phil’s body, lay down next to him, and shot himself in the eye.

VI: The will

“Now two children are left without the two people most important to them and with a life full of turmoil ahead of them”

Rita Wilson

Brynn and Phil’s bodies were cremated and their ashes scattered on Catalina Island, as directed the will that the actor had written.

As if he knew what was to come, Hartman had made a detailed will that stated the following: Upon his death, each of his children would receive one-third of his estate when they turned 24 or earned a college degree. They would also be entitled to half of the inheritance at 30 and the rest of the assets at 35.

After the 28th, Birgen and Sean spent a few days with their uncle JohnPhil’s brother. So they listened to what the will said and went to live in Wisconsin Katherine Kay WrightBrynn’s sister and her husband Mikea couple who had no children.

Sean is around 35 years old. He is a musician and expert in visual arts. Birgen is a journalist and has been married since 2018.