Paulina Porizkova shares intimate and harrowing memories of her last days with her late ex-husband Rick Ocasek.
The Paulina Porizkova supermodel opened up about the Cars frontman’s final days on Wednesday’s Red Table Talk episode hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, daughter Willow, and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris. In an exclusive clip shared with the news, Porizkova reflects on finding Ochasek dead in her bedroom.
“He had surgery because they found stage 0 lung cancer,” he recalls in the clip above. “And he recovered very well. 2 weeks he was able to walk, starting to feel much better and sleeping better. And tonight, he says, you see, I’m very tired. “
The following day, Porizkova, 57, recalls thinking she slept in late but wasn’t too concerned because she “tends to stay up late because of her’ rock star hour’.” But over time, the model decided to wake him up.
“When I was 11 I thought he was sleeping a bit late, so I wanted to make him a cup of coffee and bring him,” she explains.
When he got to his bedroom, it took him a minute to realize he wasn’t sleeping. “I brought him coffee and he looked like he was sleeping,” Porizkova recalls. “Put the coffee next to him and then I saw his face. I saw his eyes. And they didn’t look like eyes anymore.” Ocasek died suddenly of natural causes at his home in New York City on September 15, 2019.
A year earlier, in May 2018, Porizkova and Ocasek announced they had separated after 28 years of marriage. However, the couple had been separated for some years when Ocasek died. They were not legally divorced also were still living together. They share two sons, Jonathan and Oliver.