The actress Rose McGowan echoed calls for a broad conversation about depression and mental illness in an open letter on Monday about her friend Asia Argento, an actress, and Ms. Argento’s partner, Anthony Bourdain, who killed himself last week.
“To the media and to the random commenter, Anthony would never have wanted Asia to be hurt, I’d like to think he would want us to have the collective conversation that needs to be had about depression,” she wrote.
In the letter, addressed to “fellow humans,” Ms. McGowan said that neither Ms. Argento nor Mr. Bourdain, the famous food writer and television host, deserved blame for his death.
“Anthony’s internal war was his war, but now she’s been left on the battlefield to take the bullets,” she wrote. “It is in no way fair or acceptable to blame her or anyone else, not even Anthony.”
Mr. Bourdain, whose 2000 memoir about the secret lives of restaurant workers sparked a second career as a journalist and food expert, died on Friday in a hotel room in France. He was 61.
In the letter, Ms. McGowan said that the pair, who had been dating about two years, “loved without borders of traditional relationships.”
