Matt Bomer Remembers 'Beautiful' Willie Garson Ahead of What Would've Been His 60th Birthday (Exclusive)

Ahead of what would’ve been Willie Garson’s 60th birthday on Tuesday, Matt Bomer shared a few loving words about his late White Collar costar.

“I have only special memories of working with Willie,” Bomer, 46, told PEOPLE at the SCAD TVfest in Atlanta. “He made every day more fun. He made every day more funny. He certainly added color to any room he was in, any conversation he was in, and he was a beautiful actor to get to work with.”

Bomer starred alongside Garson for six seasons on the USA crime dramedy. Garson played Mozzie, the close friend of Bomer’s Neal Caffrey.

“Whenever I looked in the call sheet and I said that I was going to have scenes with Mozzie, coming up that next week, I knew it was going to be a fun day at work,” Bomer said.

While White Collar wrapped in 2014, Bomer said fans still identify him as criminal consultant Neal.

“It does depend where I am in the world, but I would say 90 percent of the time it's Neal Caffrey. That one tends to cover both genders, a wider demographic,” said the Emmy nominee. “And then actually, a lot of time when I'm down here in Atlanta, a lot of folks watch American Horror Story.”

When Garson died from pancreatic cancer at age 57 in September 2021, Bomer posted on Instagram that “it’s not fair.”

“This past year, you taught me so much about courage and resilience and love,” the father of three wrote in a since-deleted post. “I still haven’t wrapped my head around a world without you in it — where I can’t call you when I need to laugh, or be inspired. The last thing you did when we said goodbye was pull down your mask (I hate covid), smile, and wink at me. I know that it wasn’t reflective of the pain you were going through, but it was indicative of everything you were and are to me: someone who lifted me up, who made me better, and who always, always made me smile.”

At the time of his death, Garson was in the midst of playing fan favorite Stanford Blatch on the Sex and the City revival series And Just Like That…. He appeared in three episodes of season 1 before he died, and his absence was woven into the series, with writers contriving that the talent manager had to head to Japan for work.

“I think that's important once characters are established that, when a circumstance is handed [to] you that is tragic and less than ideal, you can still keep these fictional people alive in spite of the fact that Willie's gone,” AJLT writer and director Michael Patrick King told PEOPLE.

In the season 2 premiere of And Just Like That…, star Sarah Jessica Parker gave a nod to Garson when her character Carrie Bradshaw wore a kimono Stanford had sent her from his time abroad.  

Later that season, it was revealed that Stanford had become a Shinto monk. According to King on the And Just Like That… The Writers Room podcast: “I wanted to somehow pay tribute to Willie and put Stanford someplace where it was golden and filled with light because I hope Willie’s someplace that's golden and filled with light.”

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All six seasons of White Collar can be streamed on Hulu.