Why Did Everyone Hate Nell Carter

I didn't hate her, but I didn't like the sassy stereotype roles she often played.

Because we had to wait for her to die to find out she was a big fat lesbo.

I didn't feel Jodie Foster portrayed her accurately.

I liked her, but “gimme a steak” sucked

Because she inflicted Rosie O'Donnell on the world.

Because she insisted she deserved to be given a break, and no one else thought so.

She fat.

It was her idea to put little Joey Lawrence in blackface.

They say she was a horrible person to work with. She was a fantastic singer though. Someone on YouTube has posted the tracks from a rare benefit album she did for her high school. She's great on every song, even when her voice was hoarse.

I don't know a single person who hated her.

I don't know a single person who hates Radames Pera either.

Cunt

WHET, Paul Sand?

I am sure Paul Sand is hideous now, but back in the day he didn't have BDF, he had HDF, Humongous Dick Face.

Anybody up for a Gimme A Break! reboot?

We adored her!

Why did everyone hate George Sand?

I’ve laughed out loud a few times already and there are only 17 replies.

I hated her because she was pushy and bossy and I know she was supposed to be some kind of “tough love” but eww I was glad I had a mother and didn’t have to have a Nell.

George Sand had BDF, too

No one hated her. She was amazing in that Oscar performance of alladin

Ain't Misbehaving is still one of the great nights in the theater for me and Miss Nell was a primary reason. Her singing just sliced through you and every second onstage, it was like she was your best friend and she was performing just for you. The night of her Tony win, fellow Tony award winner for "The Act", Liza Minnelli introduced her to coke (lower case "c") and if she became difficult, it was likely the drugs.

Harpo, who dis woman?

Was she monique before Monique.

As a preteen, I found her sassy ways very pleasing

From the old SUMMER STOCK MEMORIES thread:

During rehearsals for a workshop production of a new musical by Galt MacDermot (of HAIR fame), I was confronted by an angry Nell Carter. I can’t remember the details exactly, but I think I was sent out to retrieve lunch and brought back the wrong thing. I do remember how she reacted – she kicked me. Once again I was surprised and startled, and once again I said nothing. I hate it when people whose talent I admire disappoint me by childish, inappropriate behavior. I can never watch them again without remembering these moments of reality.

I loved her! She is missed.

What a stereotype.

If you had met her you’d know. Seriously. It would take less than a minute.

Imagine her size if she didn't use cocaine.

I’ve never heard a bad word about the woman. She and her sister Dixie were well beloved in the artistic community. There will never be another Carter Sisterz.

[Quote]I was sent out to retrieve lunch and brought back the wrong thing. I do remember how she reacted – she kicked me.

I hereby nominate the late Nell Carter for induction into the Datalounge Legend Hall Of Fame!

Guppy killer.

R29=Sarah Michelle Gellar

Love her voice! I have a cd she did with the sf gay mans chorus, she did it for a fundraiser and it’s great. Her brother died of aids.

Good one, r31. That was my favorite part of the opening credits.

Nell had HDF.

Nell Carter was diabetic and did not regulate it well. When her sugar was off, she was an absolute monster. She had anger management issues to begin with (hence the weight), but when her sugar was off her anger was white hot and out of control.

R29 I love you

I don't remember her being especially disliked, nevertheless hated.

I saw her once in person in a gay traffic school class I took in Hollywood many years ago. She kind of surprised everyone because she had bleached her hair blond and looked like she could barely walk. But when they first did roll call, her voice gave here a way. Even the facilitator was shocked she was there. She claimed her girlfriend was the one who got the ticket. That was the first time I even heard she was gay. Of course during the lunch break, a bunch of star fucker queens were all over her wanting to talk to her, buy her lunch so she wouldn't have to walk, etc.

Gay traffic school?

[quote] Gay traffic school?

Yes, Chile, that was a thing in L.A. in the 90s.

Yes, Gay Traffic school was around before gay marriage! Ut involved a licensed facilitator, but there were no laws about themeing out a class so Gay Traffic school was invented. Usually by a comedian or actor or someone in drag.

r40. WHAT? This is why I LOVE DL. pLS EXPLAIN.

Wow. One learns something new everyday.

Remember the episode of Gimme A Break when Nell taught the girls to do coke? That was my favorite.

Those traffic schools have kind of dried up now that you can take them online.

Oprah should do the Nell Carter story as a biopic.

r47, No she shouldn't.

Audra Ann McDonald, maybe???

Meanwhile they liked that cute as a button size zero Sally Field. They really liked her.

Id watch oprah play Nell Carter.

Scarlett Johansen IS Nell Carter in "Nell: Not A Trans"

The gimme a break girls and Joey Lawrence have always had good things to say about her. Telma hopkins is the only other living long term semi regular from the show still living and I’ve never heard her speak ill of her.

The woman who played her friend Angie in the early seasons (pre-Telma Hopkins) apparently didn't get along with her. Probably because she got as many laughs as Nell.

Because she was so very beautiful.

I was a kid when that show was on, like 7 years old, and I remember wondering how she moved comfortably being that gigantic.

These days, she looks about normal.

Immensely and according to the people who knew her extraordinarily kind and generous, Carter was also extremely self destructive. Which probably stemmed from the childhood trauma of being raped at gunpoint and giving birth to child who was the product of that rape.

[quote] Hardy, then 16 years old, was raped at gunpoint by a man she knew who gave her a ride home from a performance with the Renaissance Ensemble. Hardy became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Tracey, the following year. Hardy attempted to raise Tracey alone, but found it too difficult. She sent Tracey to live with her elder sister Willie (Carter would later claim Tracey was the product of a short lived marriage, but revealed the truth in an interview in 1994).

I love her in Hair (the movie)

well, all I can say is her nickname wasn't smell carter for nothing.....

I love Gimme a Break. With the exception of the dreadful last season with Rosie, the show still holds up and is very funny. Nell was terrific in it. I think why the show is still funny is that it was never too maudlin. Nell always had a good comeback.

What did Rosie play on the show?

Should could camp it up, like when she accidentally called the reverend in the middle of the night:

People kept thinking she sang "Hold Me, Touch Me, Thrill Me" but that was MY SONG, not hers

Some people are just like that.

Correction:

Immensely talented and according to the people who knew her extraordinarily kind and generous, Carter was also extremely self destructive. Which probably stemmed from the childhood trauma of being raped at gunpoint and giving birth to child who was the product of that rape.

I didn't hate her and I always liked Rosy.

She was lots of fun as a regular on the '90s version of MatchGame, stirring on-camera mischief with Judy Tenuta and Vicki Lawrence.

r56 when Roseanne was originally on, I thought Roseanne Barr was monstrously fat. Now when I see a rerun, I think Roseanne looks normal.

Addy? Yo Daddy?!

In Patti Lupones memoir, they were in a show together and she implies she was terrified of her....I believe she said one night Nell wanted to "cut" someone. She was a tough lady who refused to be walked over.

In one of the gay mags, she gave an interview and said AIDS prevention affected her because she liked oral sex but didn't like eating latex so she didn't give blow jobs anymore. Loved that Nell!

Nell caused Dolph Sweat's heart attack. You don't read about it because she covered it up.

I think the better question might be: why does nobody give a fuck about some woman on some sitcom that was on fifty years ago?

A: because who goddamn cares? ENOUGH THREADS ABOUT THIS WOMAN.

r73, You should be as relevant as one of her twat hairs.

A highlight of Gimme A Break was Nell and Andy Gibb singing "Up Where We Belong," after they both hoovered up 2/3rds of Peru backstage.

I loved her, mind you, I would never let her anywhere near the buffet table.

Nell Carter and David Crosby were the only two cokeheads in the history of the world who were the size of blimps.

[quote]People kept thinking she sang "Hold Me, Touch Me, Thrill Me" but that was MY SONG, not hers

Oh, dear.

R75 Amaaaaazing. "Up High Where We Belong".

She had star quality; the camera loved her. I loved her on Gimme A Break. There were some crazy stories about drug use during that time. I've read stories about her being high on the set and not being able to work. Then, apparently she went missing for awhile, and the crew went to her home to check on here, where they found her passed out and totally nude. She apparently didn't get along with Dolph Sweet at first but became close to him before he passed away; she sang at his funeral. She also apparently doted on the youngest female cast member and later dumped her for the younger, cuter Joey Lawrence. She was close to the Lawrence family and visited them on holidays for years. She made a guest appearance on their sitcom, Brotherly Love. Every once in awhile, someone on Rosie's blog will ask Rosie about working with Nell Carter, and Rosie will say something cryptic but negative. (As if Rosie can complain about working with a difficult person.)

I forgot Rosie got her start on this show. She played the dyke who lived next door to Nell, when the show moved to NYC.

That Andy Gibb was hot.

Nell really was a great singer. Here she is singing Steve Winwood's 'Back In the High Life.'

r77 That was icing sugar.

I actually enjoyed the last seasons in New York. Nell--on the show--was really amped up and an absolute cunt. I loved it.

I do remember seeing a photo of the girls at her funeral and they were so grief-stricken they had to hold each other up. It was touching.

[quote]I forgot Rosie got her start on this show.

Rosie got her start on "Star Search."

Ed McMahon got his start as a Bingo caller.

Gimme A Break was Rosie's first professional gig.

Some of these comment's are hilarious.

I thought the guy that played Chief’s Father was still alive.

The youngest daughter, Lara Jill Miller, was in school with me at NYU, and then randomly I worked as her temp legal secretary for a summer while she was a lawyer in NYC.

Very sweet, very down to earth and self-effacing. She ended up leaving law to go back to Hollywood and make a mint doing Nickelodeon/Disney voiceovers for kids shows.

Rosie went public with her Nell hate.

Shut up r74, or your tank will run out of oxygen.

She's pointless, and so are you and your entire Gimme a Break-centric existence, you fucking dinosaur.

[quote]I thought the guy that played Chief’s Father was still alive.

Jesus, he’d be what...214-years-old by now? He must look DEATHLY.

John Hoyt who played the chiefs father died in 1991. Dolph sweet died of cancer not a heart attack. I forgot Jonathan Silverman was another semi regular on the show.

Tracey was a year ahead of me in high school. She's the spitting image of Nell.

Dreamgirls was Taylored to her. She jumped ship and went to Hollywood

"everyone" did not hate her

Those kids on "Gimme A Break" adored her. I was in the Denny's across from KTLA one day back in the mid 80's when the whole ast came in for their lunch break. She treated those kids like they were her kids and they obeyed every word she said. But you could see they loved her.

She farted

Whitney on Gimme a Break

John Hoyt was a hot silver daddy. He was in a lot of old TV shows like "Twilight Zone" (the one where he was robot Inger Stevens's father) and "Perry Mason."

Gimme a Break is preachy and conservative like all those 80s shows, but Nell and Thelma were fantastic, their fights were epic. Two great comedians. Where's Thelma BTW?

Tracey keeps a low profile but has done well for herself—she's a graduate of Hampton University and has worked for the CDC as a public health officer for nearly 30 years.

Telma has worked steadily for almost 40 years (mostly in tv) and looks great. Besides her work with dawn she was a highly sought after backup singer (she did the shut yo mouth part on the theme from shaft and backed up johnnie Taylor on disco lady)

Rosie complained that Nell would only call her by her characters name when they were weren’t shooting. Nell said it wasn’t a slight against her, but that when you’re working with young kids you call the other actors by their characters name during production so the kids won’t get confused during the shoot.

Yet Nell had zero problem calling Telma by her real name off camera.

Many have theorized that Rosie represented a real threat to the Kraft services table and that is why Nell despised her.

R106, Telma was in show business longer than Nell and probably didn't tolerate her shit. Rosie was a newbie.

On her blog, Rosie had nothing but good things to say about Telma and Rosetta LeNoire.

Rosetta LeNoire! What a delight she was. Evene in Gimme a Break, playing the cold, cunty Nell's mother.

I’d totally blow Jonathan Silverman. Even today. Where is he right? Tell him to whip it out for a quick suck.

r109

She wasn't the REAL Nell Harper mom.

For some reason, I remember the one where the youngest thinks she's pregnant. Nell is shitting bricks til she founds out all they did was kiss.

Do you think Kari Michaelsen and Lauri Hendler hate the Lawrence brothers?

Omg, wrong thread. Oops.

R3, you made me laugh really hard! Thanks for that.

Has Datalounge ever parsed Nell Carter's various versions of the Gimme A Break theme the way we did for Linda Lavin and Alice? I'm partial to the original super cheesy version myself.

I was always jealous of her trim figure.

r106, LOL. I spit out my drank. Thanks.

R85, I don't recall any press about Nell's funeral. Were the Lawrence brothers also in attendance? What about Telma?

This was always one of my favorite musical performances by Nell on the show:

And this one with Telma and the late, great, Tony-winning actress Lynne Thigpen as her sister (jump to 4:20):

That was really great r121. What a wonderful trio.

WEHT to Telma Hopkins? She was all over tv in the 80s and most of the 90s then she just disappeared. She was damn good at comedy, too.

R123 Nell Carter ate her just before she died

I still say the closing theme was recorded by Lara Jill Miller on the Casio keyboard she got for Christmas back in 1983.

LMAO, r125!

Wasn’t Irene cara fired from the same production of ain’t misbehavin that Nell carter was in and won the tony for. I think right before it went to broadway she hadn’t shown up for a performance and the producers found her strung out in her bathroom and replaced her.

I think Richard page wrote the second gimme a break theme. He was a very successful writer and session musician that went on to fame in mr. mister in the mid 80s.

Interesting info about Irene Cara, R127. I knew that Cara was in the original Off-Broadway cast of “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, never heard any reasons for her replacement. I do remember some bad press she received around the time of “Fame” for her arrogance and entitlement.

She was originally scheduled to play a superhero in "The Greatest American Negro." But she demanded she be able to sing the theme song "Believe It Or Not," so they retooled it and the part went to William Katt.

Little Irene on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.....

R128, in that article, she sounds like a Grade A cunt.

Agreed, R131!

That article is amazing, r128! Way to throw serious shade back in 1980, David Sheff!

Irene Cara queefed a lot on set. Maureen Teefy loved sniffing Irene’s Seat when she got up.

^ How can someone be so knowledgeable yet so weird.

She sure does r131. My brother and I crushed on her when she was in the ROOTS sequel. She was so pretty. Scavullo even featured Irene in one of his beauty books. Right up there with Gia, Lauren Hutton and Beverly Johnson.

Wow that article was amazing at r128. These days, publicists would not let an article like that get out.

Agreed, R137, it’s unlikely you’d see such an unflattering article in a magazine like “People” these days, and I wondered if it was combination of publicists wielding more power, celebrities being more media-savvy, and journalism being more bland.

Hunh, R134??? I don't get it.

All three r138

The only good episode is when Nell and her fat group were on the elevator and they realized it was going to break.

Was that really the plot of an episode??? I'd be pissed if I were Nelly and I had to learn about that episode at the read-thru .

[quote]Kraft services

Bless your heart R106.

I seem to recall a very funny episode when Nell was in a bank just as it was about to get robbed. Somehow this woman got the idea that Nell was the bank robber, got right up in Nell's face, and screamed at the top of her lungs, to which Nell replied in a very deadpan delivery, "Ooh, honey, you need to do somethin' about yo' breath."

My favorite episode was when Nell was having her weight watchers group at her house. Each time a member of the group would enter, everyone would sing "you're a disgusting fat-soooo"...which I guess was supposed to be camaraderie?

Anyhow, everyone from the group is present and having their meeting, and then Chief walks in, because of course it's his home...

Then everyone turns around and sings the song to him.

Oh good lord did I laugh my ten year old little ass off at that, back in the day.

Found it!!

She used to shart into the bean dip.

R146, they just showed that very episode on Antenna TV just last week and I turned to it just as the scene you posted above was coming on.

R145, I love that episode. The scene between Nell and the Chief in the kitchen binging is great too. "I hate myself." "I'll eat yours." "The hell you will!"

The writers thought up some crazy scenarios for the chief. One time Nell set him up on a blind date with a transgender woman.

People did a similar hatchet job on Andy gibb r128 also in 1980. Supposedly he was devastated about how bad it made him look.

Thanks, R150 — I remember that one, too! (Told you I was an eldergay!)

They got stuck in the elevator because the leader of their weight loss group, showed up and was fat again. And Nell and her fat group made fun of him because he was now fat again, and he runs off crying and is going to jump off the roof (or from a high floor). The group races to save him and the elevator gets stuck. Nell reads the sign that says "Weight limit 2000 lbs"

...........

She was always the first one at the craft services and the last one to leave.

There was so much of her to hate.

No one I knew hate her

She hogged all the coke.

Love her.

[quote] Nell Carter and David Crosby were the only two cokeheads in the history of the world who were the size of blimps.

Uhm... Hello???