Did you spot a familiar face in last night’s the premiere of “Almost Family” on Fox?
That was Brackenridge native Chris Conroy playing the part of Sam.
Here is the network’s back story for the show: “Only child Julia Bechley (Brittany Snow, the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) finds her life turned upside down when her father, Leon Bechley (Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton, “American Crime,” “Leverage,” “Ordinary People”), reveals that, over the course of his prize-winning career as a pioneering fertility doctor, he used his own sperm to conceive upwards of a hundred children.”
In the premiere, Julia discovers two new sisters and struggles to form relationships with them.
And then there’s Sam, who Conroy says, “not to give away any spoilers, is potentially her half-brother — same dad, different mothers.”
(Also in the cast is McKeesport native Tamara Tunie.)
Speaking from his home in New York City, Conroy said he also will appear in the show’s third episode.
“They write as they go along,” he says, so he isn’t sure what happens beyond that.
A 2005 graduate (and basketball standout) of St. Joseph High School in Harrison, Conroy has the recurring role of journalist Adam Gray on “God Friended Me” on CBS.
Earlier this year, he starred in a Super Bowl LIII commercial for the Mercedes Benz A-Class model.
There is “sweet victory” in how well his career is going, Conroy says: “Last year I almost died, so it’s crazy to even be here.”
After splitting headaches led him to a series of doctors, but no diagnosis, Conroy ended up in the emergency room of New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in July 2018.
A CT scan reveal a mass on the right side of his brain that turned out to be an abscess from an infection. When he woke up after a 5-hour surgery, the headache was gone.
Doctors also found that he had endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the heart valve. They theorized that bacteria broke off from the valve and traveled to the brain via a hole in his heart.
He’s made a full recovery and, at his manager’s urging, has stepped out into to world of social media.
“I really value Pittsburgh and I love representing it,” he says. “I like Pittsburgh people knowing what I’m up to.”
