American Pickers star Mike Wolfe is finally getting candid about what caused his feud with Frank Fritz several years ago. He said that his late friend had demons and developed an opioid addiction that strained their friendship and pushed Fritz's loved ones away.
Videos by Wide Open Country
"Here's the deal," Wolfe told People. "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."
He said that Fritz went through a relationship that was falling apart during the pandemic. He also suffered a back injury while moving things 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."
Wolfe said that they tried to stage an intervention for Fritz. But he still struggled with his addiction. "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.'"
Mike Wolfe Talks Feud
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.
Wolfe pushed to get his friend into rehab. Eventually it reached a boiling point. The network asked Fritz for negative drug tests that he wasn't able to provide. "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."
Wolfe said that he and Fritz stepped away from each other afterward.
"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."
But Wolfe said that he and Fritz remained like brothers despite the feud.
"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.
