Cybil

If you can’t say something nice, OP...

Everyone who was involved in the casting, production, or marketing of this show is long DEAD, OP

I’ve been rewatching it on Amazon Prime and it holds up so well. It’s much better than some shows that are on air today.

With that being said, the tension between Christine and Cybil could be cut with a knife after season 2. But I hear Christine is like that everywhere she goes...

Cybil was an insufferable cunt.

coconuts, coconuts

coconuts, coconuts

OP, R3 and R4 It's CYBILL, not Cybil.

R6 = Ms. Shepherd

Cybill Shepard was so horrible, and so clueless, that one of the writers/producers left after season 4 and wrote this scathing play based on his experiences with her called Diva. It was about this narcissistic star of a top sitcom and how everyone around her hated it. When they were meeting top actresses to cast the lead, Cybill called requesting an audition having no idea the play was loosely based on her. The role went to Annie Potts.

[quote]Why did it have such a short run?

Four seasons?

I wish they would do a reboot where they are just released from prison after serving all that time for Dr. Dick's death.

I love Zoey, Tom Wopat and Ira.

It’s the first place I ever saw Christine Baranski and I thought she was fun and funny...even if the whole schtick felt inauthentic because it was ripped off from AbFab.

I liked Alicia Witt because she resembled Tori Amos and played the piano and I always thought her character was strongly inspired by Tori, who is my hero. So there was that.

I thought Cybill’s acting and Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister’s acting were pretty terrible. That’s how I remember it, anyway. It was like every episode was a pilot or an undergraduate student film for a class called Acting 201: The Magic and Mystery of The Sitcom.

Alan Ball talks about his writing gig on Cybil. He hated it and doesn't hold back.

R12 Where does he talk about Cybill? That video link is all about True Blood (which I hated, but I hate lame vampire and werewolf shit), and the video that precedes it looks like it’s all about Six Feet Under.

I only watched to see Baranksi in action. Tom Wopat was a crush so his cameo's were fine with me as well..The rest was bizarre!.

r15 the Cybil stuff starts at the 14:15 mark on Part 1.

Here is part one. Go to 14:15.

It was a poor remake of AbFab.

Let's be honest. Cybill Shepherd is an atrocious actress. The only reason she got her start in films in because she was fucking the director, Peter Bogdanovich. Her movie career in the 70s? Does anyone remember Daisy Miller? Silver Bears? At Long Last Love? There's a new biography out about Robert DeNiro; during the filing of Taxi Driver there are outtakes where director Martin Scorcese is heard screaming, "No, Cybill, no!" Moonlighting comes out; Bruce Willis becomes the superstar. Cybill debuts; Christine Baranski gets all the praise. She just doesn't have it, and never did.

R18 And it’s sad that her show is the best the US could do to copy AbFab, because Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley are such amazing comic actresses. Baranski drove what success Cybill had. CS should have been grateful.

Wendie Malick is the poor man's Christine Baranski.

R16 I found Alan's interview intriguing although I am not a fan of his dark comedy material

Cybill was actually great in Moonlighting for the first three seasons and played the perfect straight woman to Bruce Willis. When she came back to the show at the end of Season 4 after having twins, she lost all subtlety in her acting and was often shrill and over the top. Her looks also went to shit. Her work in Cybill was a mixed bag. She was better in the first year when Chuck Lorre wrote her part as the straight woman of the show. Her jealousy of Baranski did her in when she demanded the writers make her more “funny”. I remember an atrocious episode where Cybill has a mud fight dressed as a Japanese geisha. Bitch was no Lucille Ball!

The one good thing I will say about her acting in Cybill was that she had great chemistry with Baranski- just as she had great chemistry with Willis...despite a similar situation of two co-stars who hated one another. Somebody wrote above that you could cut the tension with a knife after Season Two, but I disagree. Onscreen at least I always believed that the Maryanne character was her best friend.

Cybill must be a nightmare on the set. Every production with her has been difficult with lots of diva drama.

R23 And for what? A pretty face? Tabloid stories that drive curiosity? Not for the acting.

R23 has it though? Apart from Moonlighting and Cybill I have never heard of much drama. And on Moonlighting, Bruce Willis would have been just as bad as her, I am sure. Baranski was brilliant on Cybill though. Im glad for her she is now headlining her own show at last.

I do remember seeing Cybill interviewed on a local morning show about 4 years ago while promoting some faith movie she was in and it was around the time The Big Bang Theory hit some milestone (maybe 100 or 150 episodes) and the guy said to her something about working with Chuck Lorre, and did she wish he had stayed longer on her show as it might have ran longer given all his success since. She laughed and said something like she would rather her show had ended after one season than continue with Lorre as he was completely mysoginistic. Whether she actually meant that is another story.

I think Alan Ball was actually very kind and very accurate about Brett and Cybill both, and his thoughts probably apply to Roseanne, too.

There was no distance between the characters and the actresses, so they took everything written very personally. They didn't have the distance of, oh, this is a role.

Didn't she make a great Martha Stewart though?

After every thing we've seen since the news of HW broke I take all reports of women behaving badly on set with a grain of salt. Women being assertive, and more importantly right, in the workplace in my experience are usually labeled "bitch."

I get what you’re saying R28 and it would be wise not to rush to judgment. That said, there may be a difference between an actress who is disliked by her director or producers for having opinions and one who is serially disliked by all of her costars throughout multiple projects (eg, Katherine Heigl).

I thought she was good on the sitcom and it's better than most, especially today's crop. She was good in "Last Picture Show". I think she's a decent actress, but a terrible singer.

[quote]Cybill must be a nightmare on the set. Every production with her has been difficult with lots of diva drama.

Curtis Armstrong wrote in his book about working on Moonlighting, and made it clear that Bruce was by far the bigger asshole on the set. Cybill was no picnic, but she was more depressed and sullen than she was diva, hiding out in her trailer a lot. However, she was professional and courteous to the crew. Bruce was arrogant and unpleasant from the moment Curtis walked on the set. He had already decided he didn't want to do the show, and Curtis was added to do the "Addison shtick" since Bruce wanted more dramatic moments so studios would take notice and give him good movie roles. Bruce was moody, and if he was in one of his funks, would rip someone to shreds on the soundstage and not give it a second thought. Glenn was the only one who could handle him, and when they fired him, the cast and crew kind of new the show was numbered.

In Cybill's defense, they trashed the Maddie Hayes character so badly the last two seasons, I don't blame her for being unhappy.

Also, Curtis favorite episodes were the ones when it was just Allyce, him and the other supporting players, because there were no delays, and there was no tension.

R26 I thought he was rather kind too, until he says ' I have zero respect for either one of those two women, none"!

R11 Alicia Witt was (is) extraordinarily talented. She was a child prodigy in piano, along with having a genius IQ and first came to prominence winning Jeopardy at 12 years old, (or something like that). She still works, but I was surprised she didn't turn into a major star.

I also think she's sort of a Bebe Neuwirth mini-me. They have very similar mannerisms in both looks and speech. I've been waiting for someone to cast them as mother and daughter in something.

r19, did you see the best the US could do with their Americanized Kath and Kim? Horrific.

I have no problems believing that the strife on Moonlighting was a large majority of Bruce’s fault and it was pretty much a boy’s club (isn’t one of the Willis spawn partially named after the show’s head creator). I can also imagine that the complicated dialogue contributed to the stress of the actors.

The Cybill show is another matter. Bruce’s rise to movie stardom versus her own floundering career post-Moonlighting created a lot of insecurities which caused Cybill to be jealous of how much the audience responded to Baranski.

R18 and others "Let's be honest. Cybill Shepherd is an atrocious actress. "

I wouldn't say atrocious, just not very good. Too self-aware in everything she does and her timing was always a little bit off. But in her defense, she had star quality and looked stunning on film. Bogdanovich knew what he was doing when he cast her as Jacy in Last Picture Show. All she had to do was basically be herself and it was perfect. (btw, for anyone who doesn't know, Sharon Stone's character in Irreconcilable Differences was loosely based on Cybill). Same with her follow-up, The Heartbreak Kid. And Scorsese recognized that her vapidity and aloofness would work perfectly in Taxi Driver. So basically, she lucked out with really great directors early in her career. So she was under the mistaken delusion that she could actually act, which was shattered whenever she attempted to essay a character that was anything unlike herself.

She did have moments in Moonlighting, though. And Martha Stewart was the best acting role of her career.

I'm a TOTAL victim of the male patriarchal system

Oh and female jealousy of my stunning good looks and outstanding talent

Never my fault

She probably was jealous of Baranski's talent and Emmy win (She admits the Emmy jealousy in her book). But I'm also sure that there was some resentment from Baranski when she hit it big so early in the shows run and was immediately offered good supporting roles in movies, yet was still saddled with playing second banana on a TV sitcom too. And unlike Willis, she had been doing movies for a few years before Cybill.

Interstingly enough, it seems similar to the Julianna/Archie feud on Good Wife, only both ladies on Cybill were professional enough to still work together for the duration of the shows run.

[quote]Curtis Armstrong wrote in his book

Booger wrote a book?

Alicia Witt is the poor man's Lauren Ambrose.

**I'd say the other way around. And where is Ambrose these days?

She's about to open in My Fair Lady on Broadway, R42. Yes, she's 20 years too old for the part but she still looks good and in previews she's getting raves for her singing. The director, Bartlett Sher, had tried to put up a revival of Funny Girl with her and DL fave Bobby Cannavale a few years ago, but couldn't get the financing. That may change.

Where is Alicia Witt again?

"Where is Alicia Witt again?" Maybe she's R41?

Cybill and Maryann were the only interesting characters of the cast...the gay waiter was a distant third. Hated Alicia Witt. I did enjoy Peter Krause’s character but only because he was so fucking hot. The best thing to come out of this series besides Baranski was Alan Ball becoming acquainted with Krause and casting him in SFU.

I found my leading man.

Remember when Cybill was reduced recently to co-starring in a Christian film and then claimed in the press she "found Jesus?"

She found Jesus in her garden

after she ran out of cake and cheeseburgers

Didn't she fuck Elvis?

R33 Oh, I missed that part.

I'm sure Peter Krause slipped Alan Ball his big, meaty cock to land the role on SFU.

[quote]the gay waiter was a distant third.

very nice guy who was a former client of my friends mid-90s West Hollywood tanning salon. Much cuter in person.

[quote]And on Moonlighting, Bruce Willis would have been just as bad as her, I am sure.

I can vouch for this, as I am friends with two people who worked in very senior positions on the show.

Willis let all the attention go to his head. He became a complete diva/asshole.

He would hold up production. One time, he was due on the set, but was skiing in Utah instead. He told the showrunner that he wouldn't return until they sent a private plane to bring him and guests back to LA. So they chartered a plane.

Willis still was not back the next day. The plane was too small.

The guy had been tending bar a year ago.

Bruce let it all go to his head. All he knew was that the suits loved him, the audience loved him and he had a double digit endowment. A whole lot of good press blew up his head, and a lot of advisors encouraged him to move out of TV quickly.

I liked her in Witches of Eastwick, the verrry brief tv version.

I've loved Cybill ever since I was a teenager. Later, reruns were aired on the Oxygen network when I was in college and I watched it every morning before attending classes.

Does anyone remember the episode when Cybill was having hot flashes and discovered that her former mother-in-law (played by the fabulous Florence Stanley) smoked marijuana? Hilarious!

I have a Cybill story. In the early 90s I moved down to London from Scotland when I was 19 and got a job in a club that had singers on every weekend and for 3 nights Cybill Shepherd was on doing a sort of cabaret act. On the Friday afternoon it was closed but a few of us were working and setting the place up and she was in with her piano player rehearsing. She finished and they both came and sat at the bar where I was and she was talking away and was asking about my accent and where i was from and I told her I was from Scotland and moved to London as my family were not happy with me being gay and I needed a fresh start. She told me her sister was a lesbian but still hadn't told a lot of people but she hated seeing her sister be miserable in silence as in her community people were still not very tolerant at that time. She said she did work in the US for gay rights and her gay piano player said that I was actually fortunate to be in the UK as he thought it was more open minded at that time. She was nice to me and genuinely sincere about gay rights I thought. And there were no diva moments (on the day I was in at least!)

I think its speled Sy'billee.

R57 I met Cybill at the March on Washington for gay rights. She was a speaker. She was very charming to everyone who talked to her.

You can tell Alan Ball had a LOT of good therapy to get over that shit.

Also hilarious that there's an obvious cut in Part 1 of that video, where he must have said "Enough fucking Cybill/Brett questions, now about me!"

Bumping this after seeing this behind the scenes of Cybill episode of Marilu Henner's old daytime show. This is obviously just the first season as Cybill says Chuck Lorre is still involved and Christine says she adored Cybill and everyone is clearly enjoying the experience. Cybill comes across well actually.

Any wig stories?

Her greatest accomplishment was that she gave us Peter Krause and Christine Baranski. And she had nothing to do with that.

Cybil showed up for the Bruce Willis Roast on Comedy Central a few years ago. She was very gracious. I'm team Cybil in that situation. She pissed Baranski off by saying she 'discovered' her which infuriated Baranski who pointed out she already had two Tony awards and had been working consistently for years. Sorry, but Baranski gives off major cunt vibes.

Caaaaaaan Do!

Cybill was better in the ensemble Moonlighting.

Being petulant was the way to handle her in her own show.

WHET Peter Krause?

I knew Cybill's costume designer on MOONLIGHTING and CYBILL, the late Robert Turturice. He had nothing but good things to say about Cybill as a person, and I do remember him saying that she gained and lost weight quicker than any other actor he'd worked with and would try and gauge her mood (e.g., depressed and eating) in order to avert last-minute alterations. Wish I had something more exciting.

As for Baranski - I just don't get her appeal. I find her terribly mannered and affected. She plays attitudes as opposed to playing "in the moment." Blech. I find her strangely amateurish and community-theater grade.

What's your fucking problem?

Girls, girls! You are both c*nts.

Forgive me if someone upthread has already mentioned this but to speak to the "short run" of OP's posting, Cybill recently claimed that Les Moonves cancelled the show after she refused to sleep with him. Take it or leave it.

Cybill's claim about Les Moonves....

R68 Did Cybil or Christine wear wigs?

r64 It was a few months ago.

I think Cybill supports gay rights as her daughter is gay, and the other daughter gave it ago with Linda Perry for a bit. I can see Baranski being pissed at the discovered bullshit. Cybill let her ego get in the way, and Brice Willis is a fuckwit.

I can see Baranski may not like Cybill saying she "discovered" her but let's not pretend winning 2 Tonys made Christine a household name. Before Cybill, she could have walked down any street in America beside Broadway completely unrecognized.

Is Cybill from Memphis?

I love Cybill’s intermittent southern accent.

Whoever chose that green room for Alan Ball’s interview did him no favors. Smart, thoughtful man.

Her oldest daughter has MS. I liked the show, and I thin it exposed Baranski to a lot of movie roles and tv roles she may not have had opportunity to before, but I think she is also the better actress. Will Cybill make a return to the L Word now its being rebooted?

Didn't Baranski's husband pass away?

WEHT CYBIL?