Mike Wolfe is shedding light on the life of his late friend Frank Fritz.
The two were co-hosts of the History Channel reality show “American Pickers” for 22 seasons. Fritz died last month at 60 years old, and now Wolfe, 60, is reflecting on their decadeslong friendship and Fritz’s private battle with opioid addiction.
“Here’s the deal,” Wolfe told People magazine on Monday. “I don’t have the right to tell his story — only he does. But I do have, I feel, the right to tell the personal story of how myself and so many people struggled to navigate what was going on in his life.”
The reality star noted how he and Fritz were both dealing with “relationships that were falling apart” during the pandemic. The late star also suffered a back injury while moving things around at home and underwent surgery.
“With that time off and him having surgery, it was like the perfect storm,” recalled Wolfe. “He became addicted to opioids, and that’s when everything changed.“
He admitted that Fritz’s loved ones staged an intervention.
A month after the intervention, Wolfe bumped into his friend.
“I remember running into him … He said he was just going to handle everything on his own, and I asked him how he was doing,” continued the History Channel star. “He said, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. No, I’m really fine.'”
But it was clear to Wolfe that Fritz was still struggling. “Watching Frank doing some of the things that he was doing, it was really hard,” he confessed.
Once filming for “American Pickers” started up again post-lockdown, Wolfe “fought really hard to get [Fritz] into rehab.” Despite the fact that Wolfe “never, ever gave up” on Fritz, when production asked for negative drug tests, his best friend wasn’t able to provide them.
“The network just finally made the decision,” said Wolfe. “They’re just like, ‘Listen, we have to move on. We have to keep going with this.’ I had mixed emotions about doing that … and we were just trying to figure out what we were going to do.”
In a 2021 interview with the Sun, Fritz opened up about seeking treatment for alcohol abuse. He told the outlet he hadn’t spoken to Wolfe in two years and shared that he felt that he took “second place” while Wolfe was considered “No. 1” in the show’s eyes.
Wolfe touched on the longtime friends’ rift, but stated that he and Fritz “never disconnected.”
“I stepped away for a little because I was watching what he was doing, but I still fought for him to go to rehab and I still had those conversations,” he told the outlet. “I never stepped away from him completely. That would be impossible for me to do. But I watched all of it unfold. I tried to help him as best I could, and we did speak.”
Losing Fritz’s friendship at the time was like “losing a brother,” shared the TV personality. Wolfe even acknowledged that Fritz’s words against Wolfe came from a place of pain.
But eventually, the two reunited.
“It was beautiful. He was struggling with addiction. I know how judgmental the public can be. And so that’s why when we did end up speaking again, it was so easy for me to forgive him, because I knew it wasn’t him talking. It was his addiction talking,” Wolfe remembered.
Fritz was hospitalized for a stroke in 2022 and his health never recovered. On Sept. 30, he died from stroke complications at age 60. Wolfe shared that when Fritz took his final breath, Wolfe, Wolfe’s mother and Fritz’s late mother’s best friend Annette were by his side.
