What were (and are) some of the most miserable sets on television?

You don’t wanna know.

Desperate Housewives was miserable if the gossip is to be believed.

I'd say Sex and the City seemed professional, but colder (mostly towards Catrall who didn't seem to fit in with the other three).

Peter Krause and Rachel Griffiths supposedly just hated each other on the set of "Six Feet Under." I think everyone else got along, but they were two of the bigger characters on it and had so many scenes together, so I think that made things tense for a lot of people (though it helped in that the characters had a love/hate relationship). Apparently Krause is not easy to get along with: he and Alicia Witt hated Cybill Shpeherd on the set of "Cybill." But then nobody except Tom Wopat enjoyed working with Shepherd on "Cybill": Christine Baranski did everything she could to avoid having to talk to her, and Alan Ball loathed her so much he has repeatedly mocked her by creating manic, needy, insecure, bullying women (such as Catherine O'Hara's character on "Six Feet Under") on several of his shows that are supposed to be "tributes" to having worked with Cybill. And if you read Cybill's memoirs, "Cybill Disobedience," you will see that she really is a narcissistic asshole who expected everyone on that set to be subordinate to her and carry out her every whim, and that she would be furious if they resisted.

Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic hated each other on the set of "Castle," of course.

And everyone knows about Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies on "The Good Wife." They disliked each other so much they had to do many of their scenes together without the other even being there (using stand-ins and tricky camera shots), which is also what Fred MacMurray insisted upon doing with the child actors who played his kids on "My Three Sons."

Cybill did seem like a miserable set. You can even see it on the show at times. It's like everyone was just waiting for their checks to clear so they could get the fuck outta dodge. Let that be a lesson to you: never create a show around an insecure actor. They'll make everything about them and, if someone is getting more laughs or attention, they'll try to stifle them. I'm surprised Christine didn't pop a cap in Cybill's ass at some point.

"Fresh Off the Boat." If not previously, then for sure soon.

[quote] Rose McGowan was promised she would only have to do one year and cried every time the show was renewed for another

I feel her pain.

I bet Grace Under Fire was no picnic.

"ALF" was a hellscape for just about everyone involved: a tyrannical creator, troubled cast, brutally uncomfortable set, and nightmarishly long shooting schedules.

I read somewhere that there was a lot of tension between various Friends cast members.

Charles in Charge sounded pretty bad.

The Nanny by the end of it

I remember the supermarket tabloids back in the 90's constantly trumpeting the chaos on the set of the original Roseanne. Add Roseanne's insistence that her current husband/boyfriend run the show to Roseanne's general craziness, you have a formula for disaster.

Designing Women, from the second or third year, on.

Charlie's Angels, from day one.

Three's Company, from the second or third year, on.

Rosie claims The View set is very cold, and the women don't support each other.

Chicago Hope - Mandy Patinkin went on some rant and badmouthed Alan Arkin in front of his son, Adam. Something like "WTF happened to Alan Arkin? How did he end up acting in Carl Reiner movies?" And Rob Reiner was supposedly pissed off when he heard about the comments.

Gilmore Girls, last season.

I Love Lucy

I recall reading someone's account of having worked on The Middle and they said it was not a warm and fuzzy place due to Heaton and none of the cast spoke to each other between scenes. After I read that I saw Heaton and the actress who played the daughter on some talk show where they did a cooking segment together and noted some tension. I wouldn't want to work with Heaton.

Shelly Long and the Cheers cast. Actually saw a recent clip of Rhea Perlman on WWHL and they asked her about it and she didn't deny it, lol.

[quote] I'm surprised Christine didn't pop a cap in Cybill's ass at some point.

I'd say the career she's had since is a good example of "living well".

Y&R sounds like an awful place to work from all the stories I've read.

Criminal Minds sounds like it was pretty miserable several years ago.

I think There's Company was generally a very happy set, minus the Suzanne Somers stuff. Otherwise everyone got along quite well.

Dexter was apparently miserable after the lead actors split up.

[quote] I Love Lucy

This one came to mind also, although the actors were such professionals, you'd never know it

The first seasons of NCIS were supposed to be miserable because6of Bellasario's chaotic management style. Sasha Alexander left. Bellasario was given the boot after Harmon threatened to quit.

Laverne and Shirley was supposed to be awful to work on, Williams and Marshall fought with each other and the writers constantly...

Were there any happy sets? MTM seemed happy on the surface, but there must've been big egos there too. Mary was not exactly the warmest person IRL

R15 He also insulted Criminal Minds and its fans when he left that show.

Everyone was miserable on My So-Called Life because the fate of the show was always in balance. Plus, ABC wouldn't let the cast/crew seek out other work.

Most of the cast of CYBILL weren't exactly charmers.

Alan Rosenburg has quite the difficult rep. Ditto Alicia Witt, who was not well liked on the set of Nashville. Deedee Pfeiffer is rumored to be looney tunes, and Krause had his well publicized feud with Griffiths.

I do think Cybill can be handful at times. But after getting the lions share of blame for Moonlighting, while the arrogant and difficult Bruce Willis walked away unscathed, I tend to think she can be an easy target for the press.

And after what Julianna Margulies proudly said about how condescending Baranski can be towards her fans, I don't think she's a walk in the park all the time either.

I'm guessing desperate housewives. I still can't figure out who's in the wrong there, teri hatcher or the rest. My gut tells me teris ok and the other girls were a gang.

ROSEANNE

Ryan Murphy himself admitted the set of Glee was a "shit-storm of difficulty"

Ed O'Neil and Amanda Bearse reportedly hated each other's guts on MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, a bad relationship that got worse as the seasons went on. His character wasn't too far off from his real persona. He apparently couldn't resist chiding her about feminist stuff (and possibly lesbian stuff) and I doubt she's the type to laugh it off. Good thing they played the same dynamic on screen!

I always wonder how he reacted when Divine began to join the cast (as Peggy's mother). Divine died right after initial cast readings had begun, but before filming started.

R34 I never knew that. That's probably why the acting is so good.

^but unlike Ed, Al's not gay....

According to Amanda, Ed was not happy when she started directing episodes and having more of a say in the show.

Ed O'Neill is just fucking disgusting in that interview. What the fuck.

R36 Has he ever acknowledged this in any way? Is he closeted? Or is it untrue? I'm not guessing one way or the other I'm just curious.

Apparently he "evolved" to the point of defending his gay son character on MODERN FAMILY, and the out gay actor, more recently to the press.

I followed the show closely in its heyday, and when I first started hearing rumors about him being closeted (I think after the time the show finally ended) I was stunned. Quite the bombshell! I remember hearing things here and there but never anything really juicy.

(above) I meant I followed MWC closely, not MF.

Wasn’t Brothers and Sisters a pretty miserable set? I imagine any show with a large cast would be ripe for conflict. LOST is another one where some stories leaked out but I bet we haven’t heard the full extent of how bad it was

Amanda Bearse is a total sweetheart, so I'm taking her side on this one. Ed was great as Al and it's fun to watch on a fictional TV show, but would anyone want to hang out with Al in real life?

I'd love to know some of the WHY here. I get why Cybill would be a miserable set. She's famously a total cunt. But why did Peter Krause and Rachel Griffiths hate each other on Six Feet Under. What happened there?

may be true, r14, but I get the feeling for Rosie "support" means always, always, always be on my side even if I'm saying or doing crazy stupid bullshit.

In fact the whole Rosie thing, not to go off on a rant, and not even to pretend it's just Rosie, but the whole fucking Hollywood thing, where "I get to be a total asshole and everyone has to stick by me through all of it or you're disloyal haters" is kinda pissing me off. Just fuck that noise.

Why would McGowan have been under the impression she only had to do one season? The show was a hit and obviously she had signed a multi year contract.

Moonlighting. Unfortunately, the tension behind the scenes helped hasten the show’s demise.

Also SNL (some seasons more than others).

which seasons r47? stories?

Working at SNL has never been a picnic due to the pace and pressure, but some of the more memorable behind the scenes feuds include (off the top of my head):

When Chevy Chase became the breakout star of the first season, he became a complete dick behind the scenes. The first time he returned to host after leaving the regular cast, he and Bill Murray almost came to blows over Chevy’s ego.

The disastrous year Jean Doumanian replaced Lorne as producer (1980). She was nicknamed “The Ayatollah Doumanian”. Cast member Charles Rocket also developed a huge ego that year, as he was pegged as “the star.” At the end of the season, all got fired except Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo.

Nora Dunn was apparently difficult to work with. I believe, during one cast meeting, Victoria Jackson had a meltdown and called her the devil.

Chris Farley’s escalating drug use caused problems and concerns behind the scenes.

Tracy Morgan feuded with fellow cast members Cheri Oteri and Chris Kattan. Norm MacDonald also had run-ins with Kattan.

Then there were several hosts who were difficult behind the scenes, among them Milton Berle, Louise Lasser, Steven Seagal among them.

that is fascinating r49, thank you. but wasn't Victoria Jackson crazy?

and okay, just what little I know about Norm MacDonald, was he being a dick about the fact that Chris Kattan was probably, kinda, sorta GAY?

Yes, R50, although I think Jackson's brand of crazy emerged later in her career.

But Dunn was really difficult. Rumor has it she knew she was getting canned when she boycotted the show over Andrew Dice Clay’s appearance.

Victoria Jackson also feuded with Jan Hooks at SNL. There are stories that Jan and Nora Dunn could be total cunts and that Dana Carvey didn't really like either one of them.

In Jay Mohr's book, Gasping for Airtime he says that his during two year SNL stint he had issues with Ellen Cleghorne and Rob Schneider. He said both were assholes to him, but Cleghorne was worse. He also mentions that guest hosts sometimes made things difficult for writers and cast members. When Shannen Doherty hosted, she asked that sketch that Jay wrote be cut from air time. Somewhere in the book, Mohr mentioned someone being a dick to Sarah Silverman was a featured player on SNL with him.

Colin Quinn and Tina Fey clashed in the SNL writers room quite a bit in the late 90s. Quinn and Chris Kattan didn't get along.

R51 I think that was what on. I also recall Colin Quinn kept hinting on twitter about a former SNL cast member being gay and people were guessing Kattan or Will Ferrell.

[quote] Shelly Long and the Cheers cast. Actually saw a recent clip of Rhea Perlman on WWHL and they asked her about it and she didn't deny it, lol.

The problem there is probably more with Perlman than Long. The two did not get along at all, and from everything I've read, Rhea Perlman is a lot like Carla: a difficult, male-identified drunk

[quote] Victoria Jackson also feuded with Jan Hooks at SNL. There are stories that Jan and Nora Dunn could be total cunts and that Dana Carvey didn't really like either one of them.

Carvey didn't like them, and neither did Jon Lovitz, but that's mostly because male comedians as a whole tend to be misogynistic.

And Victoria Jackson is a crazy, hateful, homophobic arch-conservative.

That could be, R51. There are conflicting reports.

Norm talked about an incident w/Kattan on a Howard Stern interview on YouTube. According to Norm, Kattan was acting like a dick to the writers, ripping them apart in front of guest host Pamela Anderson. Kattan was also hitting on Anderson big time, so Norm said something like “hey Chris, aren’t you gay?” Neither of them came off like Prince Charming.

Chevy Chase didn't get along with castmates on Community.

[quote] But why did Peter Krause and Rachel Griffiths hate each other on Six Feet Under. What happened there?

For one thing, Griffiths refused to wear deodorant at any time, even during their love scenes.

I don't think either of them is easy to work with. I once heard Felicity Huffman mostly liked him on "Sports Night" but also said he had some trouble working with women; and Griffiths is generally supposed to be difficult to work with.

yeah, chevy seems to be an issue wherever he goes.

Chevy Chase doesn't get along with anyone. Seriously, the stories of this man's dickishness are legendary.

Another SNL incident: Guest host Nick Nolte bailed on the show at the last minute. So they had Eddie Murphy (then a cast member) host the show. That upset Joe Piscopo, who offered to host the show as his Frank Sinatra character.

Frankly, SNL backstage dramas could fill several threads!

Jon Lovitz didn't get along with Andy Dick on NewsRadio. Their issues stemmed from Andy Dick making shitty jokes about the murder/suicide of Brynn and Phil Hartman.

Grey's Anatomy

R63, I heard it was even more personal than that. Apparently, Lovitz held Andy Dick partly responsible for getting Brynn Hartman hooked (or re-hooked) on drugs. An addiction which, in turn, ultimately led to Brynn murdering Phil and then turning the gun on herself.

I guess Brynn and Andy ran in the same drug circles at some point.

Lena Headley (Cersie) and Jerome Flynn (Bronn). Their relationship soured so completely that she had it written into her contract that she would not appear in any scenes with him.

I did not know that about Peter and Rachel in Six Feet Under. In season 2, there is a epic fight between Nate and Brenda & on the commentary, they said that Peter and Rachel helped write lines. I wonder whethe they drew on experiences with each other.

R65 I remember something years ago that about a year or so before the murder/suicide, Phil hosted a party at his house to kick off the fall TV season and Andy Dick went into one of the bathrooms and was doing cocaine and Brynn walked in or Andy let her into the bathroom and gave her cocaine and she went back to drugs after that.

SNL women had to fight hard against the old boys club mentality to establish themselves. Jane Curtin has talked about this in the past. For example, John Belushi made it known that he didn’t think women were funny (although he liked Gilda).

In the early years, the female SNL writers often found their voices “drowned out” by the more slapstick humor of the male writers. One of the female writers developed a sketch about female construction workers catcalling men on the street (played by Dan Ackroyd and Belushi, I think). The men were actually uncomfortable playing the roles. The writer’s response was “well, welcome to our world!”

Lots of people hate Andy Dick, which is why he doesn't get much work anymore, despite his talent. He has a history of trying to get other friends addicted and having friends who were in recovery backslide. Many people who were on "Suddenly Susan" supposedly hold him at least in part responsible for David Strickland's death.

From everything I've read, Dick sounds practically sociopathic.

Chevy Chase is infamously a horrible diva. When Chevy Chase came back the 2nd season of SNL to host it, he was so mean to Jane Curtin backstage that he and Bill Murray (who had a crush on Jane Curtin) got into a fistfight.

Chase (whose real name is Cornelius Chase) is from a very wealthy and repressed old money NY family (his mother is from the Crane Paper family), and he has emotional issues. He's both depressive and belligerent, and incredibly entitled. He is very fortunate he has a wife of many decades' standing who always stands by him.

[quote]Were there any happy sets?

I've aways pictured Law and Order as being a happy place back in the days of Jerry Orbach. In. my fantasy Jerry starts singing old showtunes to pass the time between takes, and all the other old war horses join in.

If the truth is different I don't want to know.

Chase had three redeeming qualities.

I'd always heard that the problems on Moonlighting had to do more with the writers. The scripts were so fast-paced and filled with dialogue that they were almost twice the length of a regular hour drama script. The writers couldn't keep up, which led to delays delivering scripts and completed episodes to the network. That's what killed the show, not cast arguments.

I thought Jon Lovitz ran into Andy Dick somewhere in Hollywood and Andy Dick being the asshole that he is made some snarky comment about the murder/suicide. Lovitz punched him the face.

This would be more interesting if it were about set design.

Cheers was such an ugly set.

The Nanny? What supposedly went on there? That cast seemed to love each other, even to this day. The only one who held out of a party Drescher threw last year was Daniel Davis, who was on a tour.

Any scoop on CSI Las Vegas? They seemed professionally distant. The only buddies were out Jorja Fox and out Eric Szmandza.

Moonlighting has several problems

The writers being behind Bruce Cybill Bruce and Cybill

R72 I remember reading an interview with Jesse L Martin and he claimed he and Orbach would often dance together and sing show tunes while waiting to shoot.

Saved By The Bell: The College Years was a big orgy

I read an article about the women of SNL years ago and someone said that Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn fought like cats and dogs when they weren’t ganging up on Victoria Jackson. Hooks is quoted in one of those SNL biographies as “not getting” Jackson - the little girl voice, the conservative Christianity. I might be wrong but I’ve always assumed Dunn wasn’t too different from the catty character she played in Working Girl.

Fuck, there are about 300 SNL threads on here. Find one of those or start a new one instead of clogging this thread.

They two Mythbusters guys apparently deeply disliked each other IRL. Adam even made a statement after the last show that they wouldn't work together again. I never would have known if he hadn't said anything, and thought the statement was a bit too much.

Rumor had it that Eric Szmanda and George Eads hooked up.

The most miserable set in the history of television was Laverne & Shirley. Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams, Michael McKeon, and David L. Lander constantly fought among themselves and complained about the writing. The show it spun off from, Happy Days, was a happy set, so writers and producers who transferred over were desperate to get back to Happy Days.

[quote]Why would McGowan have been under the impression she only had to do one season? The show was a hit and obviously she had signed a multi year contract.

You can find her discussing it at the link.

To her slight credit, she was a film actress and Charmed was her first regular TV series.

From the sound of things she didn't seem to know how much work actually went into doing the same thing, week after week for years on end which is understandable.

At least she didn't talk about it while she was actually ON the show.

What did Lenny and Sqiggy have to fight about r85?

wow r73. That photo is the only time I've ever found Chevy attractive.

More on McGowan: an extract from her book on Charmed.

R87 they hated the writing.

I think the Nanny friction stemmed from Fran’s divorce, which happened during the run of the show while she and her gay husband still had to work together. The divorce did not become amicable until years later.

This illustrious thespian broke the hubrisomieter with his response to Q-1, Huh-WOW-suh.

That's KUH WOW SUH

Lena Heady and Jerome Flynn used to be a couple. No-one knows exactly why but their break-up was very bitter and they won't be in the same room as each other.

Regarding Rachel Griffiths, I don't know anyone who's ever worked with her who has a good word to say about her. Great actress but an outright nasty cunt.

The set of Brothers and Sisters turned into a hot mess upon Rob Lowes arrival. Poor Sallie couldn’t bear filming scenes with him.

According to Alyson and Amber, Joss Whedon liked to play mind games with the cast on Buffy. Then there's the whole Charisma drama on Angel. Followed by Adam Baldwin bullying Sean Mayer for being gay on Firefly.

I've heard the Arrow set isn't too much fun. And the Supergirl cast seem to be happier now that Andrew Kreisberg is gone. Plus the ongoing tension between Danielle Panabaker and Candice Patton on The Flash.

As for Ed O'Neill, whatever problems he had. It doesn't look like playing gay is one of them now.

I gotta admit--at first, I was rolling my eyes at the extract from McGowan's book BUT by the end of it, I think I was kind of enlightened. She comes across as naive, affected and victimized all at the same time. I mean...she wasn't raising children and working two jobs but her description of her time on the show puts things into perspective for me. Holly, Alyssa, and Shannon were used to reciting dumb lines, working 16 hours a day, etc, as they've been doing it since birth but to be a fairly self-aware young woman dropped into that atmosphere must've been jarring.

The Family Matters cast which got sidelined by Jaleel White's Urkle character.

Person of Interest: Jim "Christ" Cavaziel and Taraji Henson absolutely loathed each other and eventually Taraji, realizing she had a great career ahead of her insisted her character be killed so she wouldn't have to listen to any more of Cavaziel's constant Christian bullshit.

Best scene in the show: when she dies, and he weeps over her body and she manages one last loving look -- and you know they're both happy as hell.

The Vampire Diaries set must have been so toxic for its female lead Nina Dobrev, after her break-up with Ian Somerhalder, that she rather quit the show.

Has anybody already mentioned the Lethal Weapan set? Must have been super extra with all the male egos.

Sorry, Lethal Weapon, of cource.

Some of the mentions like Friends and Grey's Anatomy - simply not true. Specific "incidents" do not make a "miserable" set especially on shows lasting 10 or more years.

The friends cast got along great. It was the guest stars that were treated poorly according to many of them. The cast were very cliquie and tended to shun everyone else.

R104 Yeah, Tom Selleck said something in an interview that Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston wouldn't talk to guest stars between scenes on the set.

For the Friends cast it was all about being a united front when it came to salary negotiation. That's what made them the highest paid actors on TV at the time. They were stand offish towards guest stars (especially the female ones) because they feared that they were hired to be added to the main cast later and then fuck with their salary negotiations by piting them against each other.

R66, I bet more will come out from GoT as the years pass. I don’t think that set was as happy as portrayed to be. R96, Joss Wheadon is a total asshole.

I wonder if Paul Rudd was treated like crap on the Friends set.

"What's My Line'" I wanted to kill that chinless BITCH .

Weren’t there stories at the time that Jennifer Anniston didn’t get along with Paul Rudd when he was on Friends? I remember noticing that they rarely interacted on the show and thought it was odd since they had done The Object of my Affection together.

R53 Colin actually called Tina a cunt and she based an entire episode of 30 Rock on the incident.

Apparently the old Danny Thomas Show was no cake walk. His overbearing middle eastern approach and constant verbal abuse from both Thomas and Sheldon Leonard drove away the actresses who played his wife and his daughter.

Andy Griffith visited the set prior to signing the contract to start work on his show, and told Thomas he'd rather not work in the industry if it meant treating people so poorly.

I think Teri Hatcher and Chevy Chase should play husband and wife in a new sitcom. Shannen Doherty, Thomas Gibson and Mandy Patinkin could be in supporting roles. TV gold, that'd be.

I'd watch that.

Jennifer Aniston is a raging cunt, she openly mocked and abused Jay Mohr on the set of that terrible rom-com they did and she and Courtney(Make A Face)Cox were said to be the nastiest to guest stars among the cast of Friends although David was also supposed to have been a prick as well.

The Zenith 19" Spectracolor was pretty awful. Could never get a good picture on it.

What was the deal at NYPD Blue, so much cast turnover even after Caruso. I recall reading something about the producer or writer being a nightmare but don't recall full story.

[quote] Desperate Housewives was miserable if the gossip is to be believed.

That explains WHET Shawn Pyfrom.

Sesame Street. Everyone on that set is a cunt.

Nickeolodeon’s iCARLY and sequel show SAM & CAT own this thread. Debauched, but the grimy borderline-abusive type. I’ve heard fucked-up rumors and even worse truths about that set of mostly minors.

Jennette McCurdy has before implied that working on the show was drudgery and involved very sickening power-plays as well as nasty behaviour from her showrunner and CP Dan S chne ider. Jennette’s friendship with Miranda Cosgrove is about the only good thing to come out of it all.

There were also more contained personal issues on the set of the precedent show DRAKE & JOSH whenever the two leads would fall out or go on a couple break. THE AMANDA SHOW has heinous stuff swirling around it even 18 years after it aired.

The only Nick show ever run by Dan that has had no reported issue was KENAN & KEL (Kel Mitchell sadly fell into substances & Xtianity but only after wrap).

[Quote] The Vampire Diaries set must have been so toxic for its female lead Nina Dobrev, after her break-up with Ian Somerhalder, that she rather quit the show.

I heard it had something to do with Chris Wood, who she was dating at the time, something about him taking Ian's side and ganging up on her. And now he's engaged to cheater extraordinaire Melissa Benoist.

Also I'm surprised Nina left before Kat did. The treatment of Bonnie wasn't exactly subtle thanks to that racist Julie Plec.

How could you not have known, R83? Adam Savage said they hated each other ALL the time. It was a running gag on the show.

They play it down as "we're just not buddies off screen" but there has always been a tension there. M5 was Jamie's company and when the producers wanted to get rid of the build crew to keep the show going, Adam was all for it and Jamie wasn't happy about it. Jamie had worked with Tore Belleci and Grant Imahara for years on projects, long before Mythbusters, and Adam joined M5 after they did. He was basically Jamie's employee at M5 -- he said so when he explained that he was the employee who won the naming contest for the company, but I've seen others say Adam was a contractor and not even an M5 employee.

When the show was first in production, Jamie thought Adam would make a good presenter along with him because Adam had been an actor, but it seems Adam turned out to be a thirsty-ass bitch who was a lot more into fame than Jamie. Jamie also has alluded to having had a difficult childhood and I think his personality reflects that.

I think the same thing happened on Vampire Diaries that did on Parks and Rec in that major characters left after the sixth season, for no apparent reason. There must be some drama right? Amy Poehler and Rob Lowe HATED each other and that’s when he left. Rashida Jones also left at the same time.

To clarify: Rashida has since reunited with the cast a bunch of times, they’re all friends and hang out. Lowe doesn’t see anybody from Parks.

[Quote] They were stand offish towards guest stars (especially the female ones) because they feared that they were hired to be added to the main cast later and then fuck with their salary negotiations by piting them against each other.

Still a shitty thing to do. Wasn't the show being criticized for being all white and that's why they wanted to add some new cast members?

R125 It was criticized for years and I recall it was criticized because most guest stars were white. IIRC, Aisha Tyler was cast as Ross's love interest in response to the race criticism.

Beverly Hills 90210 was probably never all that happy. Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth hated each other. After Doherty left, Garth was always a bitch to new female cast members that were added after that. The stories were that she was bitchy to Emma Caulfield, Tiffani Amber Thieissen, Vanessa Marcil, and Kathleen Robertson.

R127 i can't wait for the reboot 😉

[quote]I think the same thing happened on Vampire Diaries that did on Parks and Rec in that major characters left after the sixth season, for no apparent reason. There must be some drama right? Amy Poehler and Rob Lowe HATED each other and that’s when he left. Rashida Jones also left at the same time.

[quote]To clarify: Rashida has since reunited with the cast a bunch of times, they’re all friends and hang out. Lowe doesn’t see anybody from Parks.

R124, No. However, they did have a running joke that he left because of Amy Poehler and he even jokingly said she was the reason he and Rashida were leaving on Letterman.

Both he and Rashida even returned for the finale of the show after they both departed.

They got along and have since hung out, outside of cast appearances, quite a few times. Amy even (surprise) came to his Comedy Central roast.

They also both returned for the cast's Paleyfest reunion earlier this year.

He was very difficult to deal with prior to doing the show but it seems like he had dealt with whatever issues he had by the time he started doing Parks and Rec.

His character was only supposed to be on the show for 8 episodes but they loved him, wrote a season around him and he stuck around for 75 more episodes.

Let's not forget Captain Kangaroo. If half the stories I've read about the set on DL are true, working there was a prison sentence.

I think it was on dl a while ago someone said jen aniston was fine by herself but when she was with courteney, she'd become a bitch because courteney was like that.

I want to know more about Jamie Hyneman being a problematic child. He seems weird but brilliant.

Rashida and Amy still seem quite close, but I was surprised she left the show early, though maybe she felt Ann was played out (which is pretty much true) and being the daughter of Quincy Jones didn't have to hang on for the money.

[quote] Chevy Chase doesn't get along with anyone. Seriously, the stories of this man's dickishness are legendary.

Beverly D'Angelo should get a Nobel Peace Prize for making four [italic]Vacation[/italic] movies without trying to kill him.

[quote] I think it was on dl a while ago someone said jen aniston was fine by herself but when she was with courteney, she'd become a bitch because courteney was like that.

Cunteney Cox is a bitch. When she was ruining the last two seasons of [italic]Family Ties[/italic] and insulting Angela Lansbury in the process when they moved it up against [italic]Murder She Wrote[/italic] after she'd been on it, Cunteney called Tina Yothers "an overstuffed Cabbage Patch Kid" and actually dunked Brian Bonsall's head in the dressing room toilet for sticking his tongue out at her during rehearsals. I heard she even made racist remarks about Emmanuel Lewis and refused to be in any episode Gus the fat black cameraman was in. In fact, she was the inspiration for the episode where Gus and his family moved in, their neighbors panicked, and their house was vandalized.

In fact, in regards to [italic]Webster[/italic], she said "I'm not going anywhere near the set of that stupid n----r show. I'm glad ABC cancelled it for a show with nothing but white people."

R133, Rashida sold a show to another network and had just started producing another (I think Angie Tribeca which lasted a few years) so that played into her decision to leave. Rob immediately hit the ground running by starring on The Grinder as well as two other projects that year. The story is that the producers didn't know what to do with Anne and Chris and the actors were okay with them leaving together.

The Australian sitcom 'Hey Dad!'. The lead actor was raping his child co-star and some child guest actors too.

Mr. Hooper tried to grab my breasts while saying "honk honk" and making sick jokes about my "birdseed milkshake".

Courtney Cox always had a mean bitch vibe to me. I like to think she's a less entertaining version of her Gale Weathers character in the Scream movies. I always thought she and David Arquette were a strange match since he always seems to laidback.

R140: Did they ever kill her off in any of the sequels? I gave up after part 2.

I'm fascinated by the production model for My Three Sons and Family Affair. Fred McMurray and Brian Keith would shoot ALL of their scenes FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON in one lump. The kids and supporting players had to fill in the rest over the course of the production year. Can you imagine trying to do that in 2019?

[quote]Can you imagine trying to do that in 2019?

Yes.

R138 That's horrifying.

R141, no they've yet to kill off any of the original trio (Courtney, David, and Neve). They probably should have to up the stakes at some point, but 3 and 4 played it pretty safe. At least 2 has the guts to kill off Jamie Kennedy who was an audience favorite.

The Judy Garland Show. Thread closed.

They should have killed her instead of Drew Barrymore.

I normally never read most of the posts on threads that I post on because I usually get really inspired by the OP's subject, but I decided to read all of this thread and loe and behold what happens, I get the SCREAM movies SPOILED for me, R147! I really hope this doesn't trigger my (diagnosed by my neighbour a male nurse) diverticulitis...

More on the Drake and Josh set please!

R142 what kind of acting bullshit was that? Why was it allowed?

It was so they could make Disney movies on the side.

I can't imagine the set of 7th Heaven being that much fun thanks to creeper Stephen Collins.

Any rumors from the original Melrose Place?

Brothers and Sisters. Sally Field was the only one who managed to remain neutral and professional for the sake of the show. Everyone else hated each other, mostly fueled by Balthazar Getty.

r154, isn't there some report that she went off script a bit and really slapped Balthazar Getty for being such a dick on set instead of pretending to slap him?

Fred MacMurray didn't shoot all his scenes for the entire season at one time, but that's not really true. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about his contract...

[quote]MacMurray's contract stipulated that he work only 65 days per year. His scenes for each season were produced in two blocks of filming. He would report to the Desilu-Gower lot in late May and work 35 days (five days per week, weekends off), then take off for 10 weeks. He would then return to complete his remaining 30 days of shooting and was finished altogether around Thanksgiving. MacMurray's ten-week hiatus in the middle of each season's production schedule freed up the actor to follow other pursuits, while the filming of scenes with the other cast members continued. In short, all episodes were filmed out of sequence. Evidence of this is very apparent in several episodes, where plotlines had MacMurray's character on a business trip (e.g. "Small Adventure") or spending much of his time at the office (e.g. "Soap Box Derby"). This allowed him to seemingly take part in the entire episode with limited or no interaction with the other regulars during filming. This sometimes produced noticeable continuity problems onscreen, especially as the boys grew and changed styles.

So, he did shoot most of his scenes separately, but he worked for seven weeks, five days each week, and then was off for ten weeks and then did another six weeks of five-day weeks. That's a light schedule, but it's not as if he filmed his scenes in a week and that was it for the year.

[quote]Brothers and Sisters. Sally Field was the only one who managed to remain neutral and professional for the sake of the show. Everyone else hated each other, mostly fueled by Balthazar Getty.

I thought Matthew Rhys stayed out of the drama too.

[quote]Any rumors from the original Melrose Place?

It really was as bad a show as it seemed.

How about chuck? Did zachary and yvonne really get along?

Portia de Rossi relapsed into anorexia on the set of Ally McBeal.

R159 someone on another thread said Zach would hit on her constantly. Also a lot of sexism with the writers.

R153 the Melrose cast got along great for the most part, I remember Darren Starr, creator of both 90210 and Melrose Place, taking a swipe at Shannen and the 90210 gang by saying in 1994, "this cast is extremely professional compared to that OTHER show I created".

90210 had issues post Shannen, aside from Jennie Garth being a nasty piece of work, a lot of the long time castmembers and even producers HATED the full on Nighttime soap opera direction Aaron Spelling had the show take to compete with Melrose Place

Luke Perry bashed the show repeatedly his last two years on the original show, going as far as too say to Entertainment Weekly in 1994, "This show used to be about something, important issues, now it's all scandals and Melrose Place "Who's sleeping with who" drama"

162 Charles Rosin in an interview talked about Luke not coming back to the show until after he left because it was too embarrassing. The offers must've really dried up in order for him to go back.

R163 I remember that and Larry Mollin, one if the showrunners during the later seasons, said that "a lot of the cast hated the show by then and hated doing a soap opera week after week but they were all well compensated and money talks"

Star Trek TNG - in the first few seasons Patrick Stewart was appalled at the lack of professionalism on the set by the other actors. He felt they weren’t serious about their craft (Patrick was a stage actor primarily) and he regular admonished the group. Over time he mellowed and they all seem fond of each other. The cast still tease him about the stick he had up him ass. Gates McFadden who played the original ship’s physician was let go as the cast and writers despised her.

[quote]Why would McGowan have been under the impression she only had to do one season? The show was a hit and obviously she had signed a multi year contract.

Because she said so, and she must be believed!

Behind the scenes on Chicago PD was evidently hell and the primary reason reason Sophia Bush asked for and got an early release from her contract. Much of the blame evidently went to Jason Beghe, who was nearly fired. Read between the lines in the Variety article below.

R164 and they should be. I mean, they were doing 32 episodes a season. It's kind of weird to see some actors struggle with doing only half that amount.

R167 Sophia has the worst luck because the creator of One Tree Hill is also a bag of dicks. Probably didn't help that Chad cheated on her with Paris Hilton.

Glee had several feuds Lea Michelle vs Naya Rivera, Naya's drama with Mark Salling after their break up, Chris Colfer hated Darren Criss, and rumors that Lea and Dianna Agron were fuck buddies and then had a falling out. Ryan Murphy had drama with Dianna Agron regarding the writing of the show.

I don't know if I'd say miserable, but the way Colton left Teen Wolf was a mess. As was Arden Cho's. It was also revealed later on that the reason another actress left was because her management didn't want her character to be in an interracial relationship.

The set of that new Dynasty must be a mess based on the cast and how many abrupt departures they've had. I'd love to hear the dirt from Atlanta.

Dear God that is the most self-pitying, self-aggrandising piece of nonsense I've read in a long time, r89. Phose Mcslowan really is the worst.

[Quote] Phose Mcslowan

🤔

R135 While Court's Webster take is a bit over the top, I feel she was spot-on about "Cabbage Patch" Yothers and that dumb Andrew kid.

R149 thirded. Were Drake & Josh fucking?

I second r171! The original Cristal left, followed by Steven being demoted in the middle of the second season, followed by Nicolette Sheridan suddenly leaving at the end of an episode with no announcement until after the fact.

Also, her exit was so rushed they’ve had Elizabeth Gillies, who plays Fallon, playing Alexis in a prosthetic mask.

I always figured that the "ER" set must have gotten tense once Clooney became the obvious star of the show and he clearly was going to leave after Season 5.

Also "Doug" and "Carol" were supposedly a couple in Season 4 and 5 but they hardly had any scenes together and both GC and JM had more love scenes with other people in the first few seasons than they had together so there must have been some kind of problem there.

R165 I wouldn't put Star Trek: TNG on a list of miserable sets. That cast adored each other, and still do to this. Now, there was a lot of tensions in the early years in the writers room but not on set. Gates McFadden was fired because the head writer at the time, Maurice Hurley, couldn't stand her. Although there has been rumors for years that he kept making passes at her and she refused him each time and that's why she was fired. Now it is known that the TNG cast were horrible to Diana Muldaur except for Michael Dorn. They were upset with Gates' firing and also pissed that she was getting paid more than everyone except Stewart. Muldaur also had trouble with her lines resulting her having to use cue cards for some of the medical jargon which pissed Patrick Stewart right off. There are stories of Muldaur walking of the set in tears at times.

Isn’t Julianna Margulies a horrendous cunt to work with in general r178?

Rose Mcslurry r173

Don't think so, R178. JM introduced GC at some awards ceremony a few years ago -- maybe the deMille Award at the Golden Globes?

R179 - In the documentary, The Captains, Stewart acknowledged that he had difficulty adjusting to the difference in British Stage environments vs American TV productions. He thought the cast was goofing off too much and not professional. At one point he had talked to his agent about getting out of his contract. Johnathan Frakes also commented that it was very tense the first year or two but in the end they became all very close to one another. I mixed up Diana Muldaur and Gates McFadden - thanks for correcting. Muldaur was despised by the cast as being aloof and thinking she was too good for a sci-fi tv show.

[quote] Muldaur was despised by the cast as being aloof and thinking she was too good for a sci-fi tv show.

Odd, since she was actually in two different episodes of ToS. Seems like she would know exactly what she's signed up for.

Lea and Naya wouldn't speak to each come by the final season r169, they refused to even do a scene together.

There was lots of other drama but people were at least able to keep it professional for the camera, but they couldnt.

Yes, R183, I saw that documentary.

Stewart was pontificating to the rest of the cast and it was Denise Crosby who responded and called him on it.

R100 and R121 My teenage niece wants to binge watch The Vampire Diaries with me this weekend. I like hanging out with her but I've never seen the show. Will I need copious amounts of alcohol or is it fairly enjoyable?

R187 like many shows, it varies. Im not 100 or 121, but I was a fan of the show for the first few years, then it was a habit. I jumped ship with Dobrev. If she makes you watch season 1 or 2, you should be fine.

R187 alcohol should always be involved when watching a CW show.

[quote]I read somewhere that there was a lot of tension between various Friends cast members.

I don’t believe this at all. All the Friends cast members banded together for salary and contract negotiations to make sure all got fair and equal deals.

And the cast members all agreed not to date each other in order to create drama on the set. And they were constantly remarking in interviews about the importance of the cast’s “special chemistry” to the success of the show.

The show wouldn’t have lasted ten years with all the original cast members if there was tension and unhappiness among them all.

R190- That's actually nice to hear about banding together to get the same deal. I can't think of many other TV shows with an ensemble cast that would agree to that.

The Friends cast seemed to be the real deal. They're all still friendly with each other. If there was a reboot, they'd probably all come back.

[quote] Holly, Alyssa, and Shannon were used to reciting dumb lines, working 16 hours a day, etc, as they've been doing it since birth but to be a fairly self-aware young woman dropped into that atmosphere must've been jarring.

And I thought [italic]I[/italic] had it hard!

As other people have said, the Friends cast were nice to each other but awful to guest stars. Egomaniac cunts.

r193. I don't see it as Rose complaining. I see it as admitting that she struggled and felt overwhelmed by the new experience. Like, who would have thought that it would be this hard? (Not me, that's for sure).

Perhaps I’m misremembering, but didn’t James van der Beek & Joshua Jackson catfighting ruffle a few feathers on DAWSON’S CREEK? Iirc toward the final seasons JVDB didn’t much like Katie Holmes & Michelle Williams were upstaging him and getting more lines and s/ls, either.

And fwiw I didn’t really get why Dawson & Pacey hung around together as friends so long as they didn’t seem compatible or as if they understood each other. Is there a DC episode I missed back then that explains why they are friends and how that works?

R192 they've been asked about a reboot multiple times and they don't want to do one for whatever reason.

R196 I thought it was because they both dated Katie. I remember Paul Walker saying he didn't like JVDB when they filmed Varsity Blues. I think it's safe to say he's a dick.

The Welcome Back, Kottter set seemed to be the model for dysfunctional sets. Gabe Kaplan and Marsha Strassman hated each other, and it eventually got so bad that they stopped talking to one another. The cast was drawn into their feud, with some alugning with Kaplan and some with Strassman, which causes further dissent. Then there were Kaplan's issues with the producers overly salary which led to him abruptly leaving, not to mention Travolta becoming a huge breakout star with SNF, which further alienated the cast.

And Marcia Strassman was good buds with Kate Jackson at the time, I can't imagine it was a good idea that those two were hanging out with one another telling each other that if only they weren't tied down to their hit television series they could really really be doing something great...

Debbie Harry and La Lupe, but for a different reason: their husbands got very ill and the medical expenses depleted both singers’ bankroll.

Reading this entire thread makes me wonder how some actors stay normal. I know it takes only one person to turn an entire group toxic. You see the same in regular workplaces. It must be exponentially worse when the group needs to be artistic and 'give it all' at all times. Add to that a producer (manager of people) who doesn't see managing people as a priority, or worse, cannot handle his own ego. So what's the right approach to not get sucked into the drama and stay sane?

I definitely get the impression Van Der Beek was a douche.

R167 Beghe has a temper and he apologized for being aggressive but it was never sexual.. Sophia is a piece of work who fancied herself the star of the show. And she was shocked frankly when they didn't accommodate her demands which included Jason being fired. She also wanted the men who she said didn't protect her from his aggression to be fired as well which would have been half the male cast.

She like Reese Witherspoon and even people like Hilaria Baldwin go to their agents at CAA and tell them they want to be promoted as lifestyle and political experts. They're all insufferable with their inflated sense of their own importance and knowledge.

Also the campaign against Jason smacked of Scientology fair game tactics and Dick Wolf didn't fall for it. Sophia was easily replaced and it's a happy set.

[quote]Also the campaign against Jason smacked of Scientology fair game tactics and Dick Wolf didn't fall for it. Sophia was easily replaced and it's a happy set.

Sophia = clam?

[quote] I definitely get the impression Van Der Beek was a douche.

His role on [italic]Don't Trust The B---- in Apartment 23[/italic] drops several hints to that effect.

[quote] The Welcome Back, Kottter set seemed to be the model for dysfunctional sets. Gabe Kaplan and Marsha Strassman hated each other, and it eventually got so bad that they stopped talking to one another. The cast was drawn into their feud, with some alugning with Kaplan and some with Strassman, which causes further dissent. Then there were Kaplan's issues with the producers overly salary which led to him abruptly leaving, not to mention Travolta becoming a huge breakout star with SNF, which further alienated the cast.

James Komack, the producer, who also did [italic]Chico and the Man[/italic], was the instigator of a lot of this conflict. He never had a hit again after this.

R204 no Bush is not a clam but one of her advisors is.

[quote]And they were constantly remarking in interviews about the importance of the cast’s “special chemistry” to the success of the show.

Do you know what else had "special chemistry"? The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Quote] His role on Don't Trust The B---- in Apartment 23 drops several hints to that effect.

God i miss that show.

The creator of that show, Nanatchka Khan, now has to deal with Constance Wu on [italic]Fresh off the Boat[/italic]. Unless she's left by now since I've already bailed out on it.

JVDB may have been a douche, but he's great to work with now- he knows his own camp value.

Humility will do that. That could be a fun thread, "From Hot Shit to Humble."

[Quote] So what's the right approach to not get sucked into the drama and stay sane?

Weed?

[Quote] Sophia is a piece of work

I would be too after dealing with that creep, Mark Schwahn on OTH.

[quote]The only Nick show ever run by Dan that has had no reported issue was KENAN & KEL (Kel Mitchell sadly fell into substances & Xtianity but only after wrap).

They trusted Dan Schneider with black boys because he was only interested in white girls.

The problems with Friends being all white and the attempts of the producers to "fix" this did not cause problems with the cast, but with the fans -- there was a huge outcry by the diehard Friends followers when the show wanted to add black people.

That is why the character they finally added was pretty much a white person (at lest in the writers' room) played by a black actress.

I’m no Jennifer Aniston fan R115, but Jay Mohr is a bigger cunt than she is.

Why would the Friends have had black friends, though? Gen X white people didn't, really. Asian, maybe, but not black. It wasn't a thing 25 years ago.

They wouldn't, r217, and the fans knew this.

R216 in what ways and in what projects was Mohr a dick to people? I used to be a fan of his for ‘Action’; was it then?

[quote]What was the deal at NYPD Blue, so much cast turnover even after Caruso. I recall reading something about the producer or writer being a nightmare but don't recall full story.

They all got tired of sniffing Dennis Franz's farts. Jimmy Smits referred to his asshole as "el ojo del diablo."

There was tension on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air set until Janet Hubert was replaced as Aunt Viv by Daphne Maxwell Reid.

According to Will Smith, “I can say straight up that Janet Hubert wanted the show to be The Aunt Viv of Bel Air Show because I know she is going to dog me in the press. She has basically gone from a quarter of a million dollars a year to nothing. She’s mad now but she’s been mad all along. She said once, ‘I’ve been in the business for ten years and this snotty-nosed punk comes along and gets a show.’ No matter what, to her I’m just the Antichrist.”

Jo Marie Payton felt the same way about Urkel becoming the focus of [italic]Family Matters[/italic] and quit right when it moved to CBS.

They look happy to appear together in this picture but it’s a well-known fact that Topo Gigio and Lambchop hated each other.

[quote]in the first few seasons Patrick Stewart was appalled at the lack of professionalism on the set by the other actors

It wasn't seasons, it was just episodes, the first season I believe and maybe some of the second. But the producers were apparently pricks, so for example, when Stewart insisted on not saying an offensive line in the first or second episode of the second season, after they'd already fired McFadden, a producer said "okay, we've written you out of the show" to call his bluff, supposedly, even though he hadn't actually threatened to quit. It sounds like the cast (and crew) became close because of their shared problems with production, and once that all got ironed out during the second season, they were friends by the third.

The point wasn't that they didn't have black close friends. It's that NO ONE in the city appeared to be anything other than white. It's the same problem SATC had.

NYC is a melting pot. You're not surrounded by only white people 24/7.

[quote]NYC is a melting pot. You're not surrounded by only white people 24/7.

Tell that to Woody Allen, too.

Dan Schneider was into girl's feet. You knew you had his favor if your show made girls show off their naked feet in the show.

Sorry, girls' feet.

"Colorblind Casting"? It took seven seasons

Aisha Tyler Looks Back at the "Colorblind Casting" That Got Her on Friends

"For example, for a show set in New York City, it’s hard to believe that there were no black people around. It was season 7 before any black actor had a speaking role, when Gabrielle Union came on for a whopping one-episode arc as a love-interest for both Joey and Ross — and that was it for a while. Two seasons later, Aisha Tyler, then a relative unknown compared to some of the series’ other guest stars, was brought on in a recurring role, and Friends history was made.

Playing Dr. Charlie Wheeler, a paleontology professor who worked alongside (and then dated) Ross, Aisha Tyler was the first black actress to become a series regular, which was as monumental for the show as it was for her — and women of color watching from home, with their own onscreen aspirations. “It was a great experience personally and creatively,” Tyler tells InStyle. “Even though I knew that it was a milestone, I don’t know if I felt like they turned it into something more than what it was, which was just a love interest for Ross.” Her role was there to serve the more central characters, in other words, and she says she was put in it using that controversial, once-buzzy method: “colorblind casting.”

R227 oh, just girls. Sure it was.

Any gossip on the Law and Order SVU set?

[quote]Any gossip on the Law and Order SVU set?

Did everyone hate Benjamin Bratt? His character seemed like the type who'd hand out prayer cards.

[quote]There was tension on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air set until Janet Hubert was replaced as Aunt Viv by Daphne Maxwell Reid.

Alfonso Ribeiro went into great detail about this. Basically the cast was all close from the beginning except for her. He admitted she was a great actress and that they all believed that but she was -- and he didn't say it, he made hand signals, crazy.

[quote]Why would the Friends have had black friends, though? Gen X white people didn't, really. Asian, maybe, but not black. It wasn't a thing 25 years ago.

You're right, R217. White people living in NYC didn't have black friends in 1994 or black neighbors -- basically black people didn't exist until at least 2009 and even then that guy was only half!

Aunt Viv/Janet Hubert is now on General Hospital playing an Alzheimer patient being romanced by Wojo from Barney Miller.

I found it interesting that many people forgot about Ross's Asian girlfriend on Friends.

[quote]Did everyone hate Benjamin Bratt? His character seemed like the type who'd hand out prayer cards.

Benjamin Bratt was not on "Law and Order SVU."

Rose does not come off well in her account.

When did Ben Bratt appear on SVU? Are you thinking of Danny Pino, whose character basically replaced Chris Meloni's? I used to think SVU jumped the shark after Meloni left, but watching reruns in syndication the show is fine until the season Mariska Hagarty demanded an executive producer position to renew her contract. When that happened she got rid of Pino and most of the original remaining cast members. The show has been dreck ever since.

Is Y&R the most toxic daytime set of all time?

R239, no.

Madeline Zima hated her experience on The Nanny. Very different to her positive experience having filmed The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

The show couldn't have been much fun either with that bitter old queen Daniel Davis around plus Fran Drescher and her gay husband's marriage finally coming to an end.

Six years later, Zima is back to being "diplomatic and neutral and politically correct."

R3 Krause and Alice Witt dated when they were on Cybill. That might be why they didn't get along later.

R242 She must have heard about the possible The Nanny revival.

Referenced upthread: ALLY MCBEAL.

A legendarily nasty, toxic stew of competitive eating disorders, backstabbing, and insane egos, with David Kelley at the helm. At least for the ladies. Not sure why the men escaped unscathed (excepting RDJ).

I don't think Kelley was alone in pitting all of the actresses against one another for screen time, laugh lines, and attention, but he certainly set the tone. Multiple reports that it was a genuinely unpleasant, chilly work environment, particularly to guest actors. No wonder the humor always felt so forced. (I think a comparison was drawn once to FRASIER, where the cast not only got along but genuinely enjoyed each other's company. AND they were sweet to crew and guest stars.)

R245 so no chance for a reboot then?

That first Madeline Zima interview where she criticises The Nanny seems a little bit strange. She talks about not being in a position to turn anything down and just 'trying to pay her rent', desperate to crowdfund to have her indie released in theatres, and seems to rue that she wasn't able to escape child typecasting and didn't make big $$$$ in syndication money from The Nanny. Then it goes into all her complaints about men... I don't deny that any sitcom is a tough workplace for a child actor so hating her experience is very believable, but I wonder if they caught her on an off day.

Emmy Rossum is a pretentious cunt who has made life on the Shameless set hell for the past few years. The cast, with the exception of Bill Macy, is thrilled she's gone. Cameron Monaghan is rumored to have left because he couldn't take her anymore. As soon as she announced she was leaving, he made a deal to return.

R248 The writing has been shit for a few years too. How much long are they gonna beat that corpse?

r248 What does Emmy Rossom DO that makes everybody hate her?

Have you seen her Instagram r250? She really is a pretentious cunt. I remember she posted an Instagram story of her sobbing when Stephen Hawking died.

No, r251, I have never felt compelled to look at her IG. I gave up on Shameless four or five seasons ago. It stopped making sense that Frank was anything but dead or otherwise written off.

I read in Marcia's last interview before she passed that people got along on set. Actually, Gabe admitted that he didn't have a problem with her and he thought it was the other way around. He discovered later that the producers were keeping them at odds with each other and he apologized to her. She also said that nobody conspicuously had a problem with Travolta's fame because "He was John" Implying that he was a great guy and well liked.

Didn’t Betty and Bea hate each other?

Poor r254, always late to parties.

R247 Yep. Definitely looks like the first interview with Madeline was conducted on a bad day. She was giving zero fucks. Of course nothing she said in that interview is contradicted in the later interview. In the first interview she says Fran was the only one who made any real money from The Nanny and in the second one she calls Fran a great business woman. In the second interview she also says she learned a lot which is true if she and the other kids on the show were reduced to being props. They were there all day but were giving next to nothing to do so what else is there to do but sit around and watch and learn what's going on around you?

I was glad that she spoke very well of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle as that's the first thing I ever saw her in and I love that movie and got a kick out of it when The Nanny made a reference to it in the first season.

Meanwhile I just saw this interview from last year with Charles Shaughnessy in which he reveals that the first season of the show wasn't a hit and it was constantly being put on hiatus then they'd do a few episodes and then go on hiatus again. CBS had no faith in it. It wasn't until the summer when they re-aired the earlier episodes that it got an audience. I'm sure that uncertainty made things difficult for everyone involved.

[quote]The Brady Bunch spin off with Ken Berry and I don't even remember who played the wife or the name fo the show for that matter.

It was a backdoor pilot called [italic]Kelly's Kids[/italic], the wife was played by Brooke Bundy. Sherwood Schwartz was the first to come up with the idea for a mixed-race family show, but since you can only copyright the execution of an idea and not the actual idea itself, he never actually was able to sell one until CBS bought [italic]Together We Stand[/italic] in 1986, after [italic]Diff'rent Strokes[/italic] (which had some of [italic]Brady[/italic]'s old producers, including but not limited to Howard Leeds) ended and [italic]Webster[/italic] (which was actually produced by Paramount and aired on ABC and was more [italic]Brady[/italic]-like in tone) started the second half of its life.

[quote]Why would the Friends have had black friends, though? Gen X white people didn't, really. Asian, maybe, but not black. It wasn't a thing 25 years ago.

Adding a black character to a show was the 90s version of being “woke”.

[quote]As other people have said, the Friends cast were nice to each other but awful to guest stars. Egomaniac cunts.

Brad Pitt (Aniston’s husband) was a guest star. Were they all cunts to him??

Friends was already a carbon copy of a black show (Living Single). The least they could have done was add one black character, or at least a black auxiliary character. Even the waiters, doctors, nurses, cab drivers, bartenders etc. were as white as a toilet seat.

It's the Woody Allen syndrome where not even a librarian or coffee shop worker in his films was played by a black person. Until the first black character with a speaking role (in 1997's Deconstructing Harry), played by Hazelle Goodman, where he had her playing a hooker....

[quote]Hazelle Goodman

I liked her.

The set of [italic]Diff'rent Strokes[/italic] became increasingly difficult as the show aged and as Gary Coleman still continued to have kidney problems that required another operation in 1984. He felt that as a teenager, he was too old to be doing the same stuff he was doing when he was 10, especially once his TV siblings legally became adults. Dixie Carter didn't get along with him and couldn't wait to change the subject when an interviewer asked her about it. Then throw into the mix Dana Plato getting pregnant and keeping the baby — which resulted in Kimberly getting shipped off to Europe since being knocked up and single would have been out of character for her. Coleman wanted out and NBC obliged him, but his parents pressured him to stay in, and he relented. But NBC already had given its old time slot to [italic]The Facts of Life[/italic] which was getting better ratings even with [italic]Dynasty[/italic] as its main competition. ABC, who squandered their chance to get it by meddling with the premise too much, took it over and put it up against the dream season of [italic]Dallas[/italic], and that was the last nail in the show's coffin.

The irony of how much Sam McKinney was hated by viewers is that Danny Cooksey stayed out of trouble and did cartoon voices after it went off the air. He played Montana Max on [italic]Tiny Toon Adventures[/italic] where you're not actually supposed to feel sorry for him.

Has anyone else read perennial TV guest star Fred Stoller's book, "Maybe We'll Have You Back"? He says that "Friends" was his favorite of the dozens of TV sets he's spent time on - at first. His character recurred for one episode each season, so he saw the dramatic transformation of the Friends cast into superstars and how the set went from friendly and open to tense and labyrinthine.

[Quote] so he saw the dramatic transformation of the Friends cast into superstars and how the set went from friendly and open to tense and labyrinthine.

So what started it??

Thanks, r263 -- I love Fred's work and look forward to reading his book!

I don’t think anyone here has mentioned “Bette”, which was a famously miserable experience for anyone involved.

"So what started it??"

Superstardom. It's not that they turned on each other; they went from d-list to a-list so quickly. From actors hanging out together on set to super celebrities with enormous entourages. Over the years, the set became this partitioned space to accommodate the increasingly complex entourages surrounding the cast.

I wonder what happened on the MacGyver set last fall? George Eads had an "altercation" with someone, which led to a "mutual" parting of the ways (in the middle of the season). His former roommate and co-star, Lucas Till, never wished Eads well or even mentioned him on social media again after the announcement of his departure.

I can guarantee you R260 that you are the only person on the planet that thinks Friends was a 'carbon' copy of Living Single...but whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night...

R77

Around season 4 things started to change. Fran decided she knew these characters best. She took charge of the stories and sidelined the writers. Nobody dared to stand up to her. All the other characters were made to look inferior in front of her, it was all about her. Fran went into therapy (as if Fran Fine would do something like that, that was Fran herself). When the credits roll during season 5 and 6 ever wonder why there were so many various 'writers' credited? Those were ex lovers, friends etc. Between Daniel and Fran it was all fakes smiles.

Third Watch?

[quote] IIRC, Aisha Tyler was cast as Ross's love interest in response to the race criticism.

If I remember correctly, it was on David Schwimmer's insistence, and he had to fight the show runners to have an African -American actress cast as his love interest.

The Original Star Trek didn't sound like a fun set.

Grace Lee Whitney alleged she was raped by one of the execs and then fired during the first season.

Shatner routinely had scripts changed so that he got more lines than anyone else and had the best lines transferred to Kirk form other cast members. Supposedly, Shatner wound up with no friends on the set because of this, to include Nimoy.

Nichelle Nichols claimed she was only on the show as the token black and wasn't being given any meaningful lines compared to the rest of the cast. Allegedly, no less than MLK talked her into staying on the show and be proud that she was a role model to black youth.

Roddenberry alienated writers and the show's theme composer by claiming co-writer/composer credits. That was half the royalties due these people. Concerning the show's theme, Roddenberry wrote some lyrics that were never to be used just to claim half of the royalties for the music.

Thanks R263. I did not know this book existed and I’m looking forward to buying it. Character actors give an honest and interesting perspective on sets and the Hollywood life. A few notable bitter exceptions exist of course...

[quote] Grace Lee Whitney alleged she was raped by one of the execs and then fired during the first season.

I read that she got fired because she was an alcoholic messing up the scenes she was in. Not sure what is true, maybe both.

R275

It's both, actually. She acknowledged her substance abuse issues as well as the rape.

R233 where were the non black people on Living Single, which took place in the 90s in NYC and Friends ripped off?

According to the rumours back then the Boardwalk Empire set was horrible to work on.

I wonder if Anthony Edwards ever got pissed off that George Clooney became the face of ER. It looked like the show was originally set up with Edwards as the lead and Mark Greene as the leading character but it was Clooney that ended up with the big Hell Or High Water episode that was shot like a film.

I always thought it was odd that Clooney agreed to return to reunite Doug and Carol and then returned again when ER was near the series finale but he didn't return for Mark Greene's funeral and stated he didn't want to take the spotlight away from the Greene character- but that sounded like a silly excuse because Ross and Greene were best friends so it looked lame to not see him at Mark's funeral. There must have been another reason for it.

ER, talking about a show that is mostly forgotten....

“Empire” was miserable after Jussie Smollett confirmed to the world that he is a nasty lying racist piece of shit.

R269 Well.... you're wrong. The president of NBC wanted to have his own version of 'Living Single'. If you google you can actually find many, many articles comparing the two and discussing how 'Friends' was basically a rip off, down to the structure of the show and several plot lines. Thanks for your 'guarantee' but I am not the only one who thinks this.

R278, not true about Boardwalk Empire although because it was a period piece it took twice as long to do than “normal” shows. The cast was a wonderful group with the glaring exception of Paz de la Huerta who was batshit crazy. Her character got written out in Season 2, thank God. Michael Pitt’s drug problem caused unnecessary delays but he wasn’t a bad guy, just incredibly screwed up. Steve Buscemi is a great guy and set the standard for behavior on set.

Michael Shannon hated being on Boardwalk Empire but I think he said it was more that he felt he wasn't given enough to do, and had to turn down other roles because the shooting schedule was so long and often changed at the last minute (makes sense as it's a period piece with lots of characters), having to commit early on in the year.

Paz was crazy but she was raped by Harvey Weinstein and harrassed by a number of higher-ups in the industry, so I can kind of understand her going off the rails a bit. Like Michael Pitt, not a bad person just very screwed up.

[quote]Michael Shannon hated being on Boardwalk Empire but I think he said it was more that he felt he wasn't given enough to do, and had to turn down other roles because the shooting schedule was so long and often changed at the last minute (makes sense as it's a period piece with lots of characters), having to commit early on in the year.

He also hated how his character turned into a buffoon.

I'm sure Michael Pitt had a drug problem, but I attended a Q&A after his final season and it seems his biggest issue was that he was constantly battling the showrunner over Jimmy's characterization. He felt that after playing the character for so long he felt he knew better than the writers, which obviously does not go over well. It could have all been bullshit to make himself look better but he set it up as if any rumors of him being difficult was because he was fighting for the character. He spoke of one incident where he didn't want to say a line because he felt Jimmy wouldn't say it and the showrunner offered/threatened to have someone dub the line and just make it seem like he was saying it.

[quote]The president of NBC wanted to have his own version of 'Living Single'.

Wasn't it "These Friends of Mine" aka "Ellen"? They were always using each others' storylines and one time Ellen in character said, "we were first! And we had the couch first!"

[quote]George Eads had an "altercation" with someone, which led to a "mutual" parting of the ways (in the middle of the season). His former roommate and co-star, Lucas Till

You should have put roommate in quotation marks, too!

Friends was based on the BBC's Coupling. Some of you are so business-illiterate one can only hope no company relies on you for any degree of knowledge.

Coupling debuted in 2000. Friends debuted in 1994. Dumbass.

R288 Coupling aired 6 years after Friends did.... "business-illiterate"? How embarrassing.

Coupling was the Brit take on Friends that they eventually tried to do a US remake of, but it was a big flop.

It’s quite possible Paz was raped by Weinstein but she had a rep for being batshit crazy for years before the alleged incident.

On Boardwalk she actually left a used tampon sitting on her director’s chair between camera set-ups.

In the running theme of nightmare Star Trek sets, lets mention Voyager.

It was a mess from the get go. Genevieve Bujold was cast as the first Janeway but left after a few days because she was out of her depth. The producers then needed a replacement, quickly as the Pilot was still shooting. Various arguments erupted over the replacements until Mulgrew was hired. It has been said before on here Mulgrew fucked to get her job as Berman was dead against hiring her. After the Pilot finishes filming and the first season is underway filming, the execs demand the Pilot be reshot because of Mulgrew's thin hair and hairstyle used didn't look right on camera. So millions of dollars over budget, behind schedule and with tensions frayed Mulgrew starts fucking director Winrich Kolbe.

Season two begins and immediately Piller & Taylor, two creators of Voyager are at odds. They can't agree on the direction and tone of the series, Piller wants more serialised elements whilst Taylor is fucking around with the finer points of Mulgrew's character such as her holodeck fantasy and trying to get the character of Janeway right. Piller finds himself on the outs as his suggestions are not well received and is ousted at the end of the season. Tensions are escalating between Mulgrew & Beltran and eventually they have a falling out.

Season three begins and ratings are in the gutter. Wang has also been pushing his luck by turning up late, hungover and not knowing his lines regularly. Lien is falling deeper into drugs and her behavior on set is starting to affect production. Halfway through the season it's decided by execs that a new direction is needed and a new character is to be added. The budget won't extend to ten regular characters so someone is getting axed. Beltran hates working on the show, yet despite his bitching and Production needing to dump an actor, signs a contract extension. Wang, who has already been suspended from filming episodes due to his reckless and inappropriate behavior is the one selected. However People magazine select him as one of the 50 most beautiful people and Paramount loves the publicity so his axing is vetoed. Lien is the one selected for departure and Taylor herself delivers her pink slip.

Season four. Mulgrew is furious that Lien is getting axed. Despite Lien's problems both Picardo & Mulgrew are fond and close with Lien and Mulgrew in particular fights to save her. It falls on deaf ears and she's gone. Enter Ryan in a blaze of publicity. Mulgrew is already furious that her friend has been axed, but she takes the hiring of Ryan, a younger blonde bombshell, with massive amounts of publicity in print and screen particularly hard. Mulgrew has never been pleased with how some of the female characters have been forced to emphasis their looks and play into the sexy T&A role, famously even tearing out her padded bra in her costume and throwing it on Berman's desk. Mulgrew also takes it personally that a younger prettier woman has been cast and feels personally upstaged. So with her ego bruised, tensions with Taylor at an all time high she takes her frustrations out on Ryan. She ices Ryan out, doesn't put any effort in her readings off camera when Ryan is getting filmed, tries to stop hair and makeup from working on Ryan and criticises how long Ryan takes to get ready and how long it takes her to shoot a scene. She is also furious with the amount of lines and screen time Ryan has received (she isn't the only one either) and complains about her to producers. They don't care and don't listen. To add to matters, several of the male cast members have gained significant weight to which execs are not happy. The writers have even included jabs at their weight into scripts. McNeill, Beltran & Wang are told to lose weight immediately. Taylor is also forced out by seasons end. She says it's her decision, she wants to spend more time with family, but the decision was made for her.

Season 5 begins and Mulgrew is still making Ryan's life miserable on set by being petty. Making exasperated noises off camera as Ryan films, trying to rattle her delivery and generally being harassing and unpleasant. Mulgrew also takes a jab at Taylor saying how newly promoted Braga gets her character so much better than previous producers. The hostile work environment continues until Ryan starts dating producer Braga and Mulgrew is told to pull her head in. She's also threatened that the end of season cliffhanger has her character in peril and if she continues to be a problem she will be replaced. Mulgrew acquiesces and assumes a somewhat civil working relationship with Ryan. Meanwhile Wang is pissed off he has been denied a directing gig. Dawson, McNeill, Picardo & Russ have all directed. Wang plays the race card, but it's all due to his earlier poor behaviour and Berman has banned him from directing Voyager.

Season 6 begins and Beltran is telling anyone that will listen that he hates working on the show. He hates the scripts, he hates the dialogue and criticises several of the characters. Mulgrew takes offense, fires back and talks about his unprofessionalism. She also says he should be thankful he has a job when other actors aren't so lucky.

So when season 7 finished filming nearly the entire cast was happy to leave and move on.

Where did you hear all that r293/r294?

R293 and R294 if that is not a true story you have a great script writing career ahead of you! Thanks for sharing either way. I have never heard of any strife on Voyager before.

I've heard whispers of what 293/4 said but never in such detail. Bravo

[quote]If I remember correctly, it was on David Schwimmer's insistence, and he had to fight the show runners to have an African -American actress cast as his love interest.

It was the NAACP and a few other organizations that noticed that the show avoided casting black actors in speaking roles. It was 7 seasons before they cast one. They cast Gabrielle Union for a single episode and then two years later Aisha Tyler for an arc. Furthermore, Aisha auditioned with actresses of all races. They weren't necessarily going to make the character black. However, they liked her and figured they'd kill that bird with a stone and it "sadly" made history. Sadly, as in, it shouldn't have taken them that long to do that. She still gets interviewed about it.

[quote]Wasn't it "These Friends of Mine" aka "Ellen"? They were always using each others' storylines and one time Ellen in character said, "we were first! And we had the couch first!"

No, it was "Living Single" he wanted since it was very popular at the time on Fox. Queen Latifah, Kim Fields were the most famous at the time. Kim Coles had been on In Living Color and Erika Alexander had been on The Cosby Show. "These Friends of Mine" and "Friends" were completely different shows. Ellen jokes that they were the same show but they both had completely different dynamics even after the show was retooled.

Friends had two women sharing an apartment (Monica, Rachel), one goofy friend that visited them (Phoebe), two guy friends that lived across the hall one serious and one kind of out there, (Chandler, Joey) and then one friend who seemed rather competent in his field (Ross).

Living Single had three women sharing an apartment, (Khadijah, Synclaire, Regina), one friend that visited (Maxine) and two guys that lived across the hall they were friends with and one was serious and one was kind of out there (Overton and Kyle.)

Monica was the Khadijah, Phoebe was the Synclaire, Rachel was the Regina, Ross was the Maxine, Joey was the Overton and Kyle was the Chandler. Their character types were very much the same. One was in Brooklyn, the other was in Manhattan but at least that cast got along for the most part.

No one at NBC has ever refuted the claims of the producers or cast of Living Single that Friends originated with their idea.

"I've heard whispers of what 293/4 said but never in such detail. Bravo "

Likewise, I've heard many of those stories here and there, but yeah, I've never seen it all put together in chronological order.

It doesn't sound fun.

Ian with planet sized ego caused problems with other guys on the vampire diaries and showrunner was shit too. Norman on twd some of the same

R300 that doesn't surprise me. And his wife doesn't sound much better. It doesn't look like Julie Plec will be going anywhere since she's on her third TVD spin-off.

R298, nobody ever refuted it because it was an absurd claim and not worth responding to. That actors from the much less successful Living Single (or These Friends of Mine) make claims that Friends 'copied' them, doesn't make it true. There was a Miller-Boyett series on a couple years before Friends with Heather Locklear and Alan Ruck that arguably was more similar to Friends (but then there were only four of them and instead of six) but Friends just 'changed a few things' to not make it so obvious. Again, you could also claim that Friends was taken from any number of series, but they just 'changed it around a bit' and since there are only about a handful of different character 'types' in the sitcom universe the argument about similar characters holds no water since that argument could be made about any show with over four main characters as the same 'types' of characters appear over and over again..

That's a pretty lame excuse, R302. But they didn't just copy [italic]Living Single[/italic]. They copied [italic]Full House[/italic] practically beat-for-beat, right down to the dumb guy named Joey.

No white people watched Living Single.

There are more whites who watched [italic]Family Matters[/italic] than blacks who watched [italic]Frasier[/italic].

Are you all forgetting about the original "Friends" that introduced the world to this bright-eyed, winsome lass?

The best 1990s show with the word "friends" in its name had the words "Garfield and" before it.

I feel the VOY stories are a bit exaggerated. Not entirely, just maybe the most outrageous 10% of it. I seriously doubt that Mulgrew would go at THAT length to make Ryan's life this miserable. It's been pretty much established that Mulgrew was not happy with Ryan coming on board - for the reasons as described. But I doubt that she would sabotage filming this way. That behavior sounds very petty, one trait I never heard anyone associate with Mulgrew. She seems to be too professional to do that. Besides, the directors would not allow this type of disruption, not one time. The rest seems legit. Never heard about the problems with Jeri Taylor. I never figured out to what extent she contributed to the show, so this was enlightening.

[quote]And it was more inclusive, 15 years earlier

Jill Whelan went from that to [italic]The Love Boat[/italic] where they tried to dress her up like a middle-aged divorcée while she was getting high off-camera. She's lucky she didn't end up like Dana Plato or Erin Moran.

Voyager really sounded like a nightmare set.

I’d love more in-depth timelines like r293/r294.

The producers of Voyager are/were also homophobic assholes that constantly blocked any attempt to add a gay or bi character especially a male one.

[quote]No white people watched Living Single.

I did.

[quote]No white people watched Living Single

I watched one, once and noticed it was owned by a white actor's production company. After looking into it, I learned that most of those black shows were owned by whites and written by Jews.

I'm white and I would watch the odd episode of Living Single. It was a decent show.

[quote]After looking into it, I learned that most of those black shows were owned by whites and written by Jews.

You have just described the entire record, TV, and theatre industries throughout the entire 20th century and into the 21st.

Lol R16. Sudden truth.

Well if you want to include movies... anyone got the scoop on the last "Pirates of the Caribbean" mess? The one where Johnny Depp was so 24/7 hammered that he barely showed up for work, and needed cue cards everywhere when he did because he couldn't remember his lines?

That must have been memorable.

R318- The only thing I remember about POTC is during the original Pirates film, the writers were pissed that the scenes of Jack and Elizabeth were getting more interest from fans than Will and Elizabeth. Will and Liz were supposed to be the romance of the film and that's how the writers envisioned it, but Orlando Bloom couldn't compete with Depp in the charisma department. The spotlight was supposed to be on Orlando and the writers even tried to promote him in the commentary on the DVD for the second Pirates film by saying his acting was so good in the scene where Will sees Liz kissing Jack and they go on to say how difficult the scene was and how great Orlando played it.

None of that helped much because Orlando's role became totally forgettable.

R319 Orlando is a genuinely terrible actor. They must have really been gritting their teeth on the DVD commentary while saying how good he was.

[quote]After looking into it, I learned that most of those black shows were owned by whites and written by Jews.

A lot of them are owned by the Japanese ever since the Sony deal which included Columbia whom Norman Lear sold out to when Coca-Cola, which was the South's payback for losing the war, owned them.

Great Voyager gossip. You can't blame Kate Mulgrew for being angry when Jeri Ryan came on. Granted, Ryan turned out to be a very good actress and her character really improved the show, but it had to be tough for Mulgrew, as the star of the show, to have to deal with.

I think the people involved in the first Pirates film needed to learn a little from film history. It was clear in the storyline of Curse Of The Black Pearl that the character of Jack was supposed to be the third wheel and it might have worked....if they hadn't cast Johnny Depp as "Jack" and had gotten a better actor to play Will.

But this ended up being all about who got cast - similar to Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves. Costner was cast as the lead, the star.....but it was second string Alan Rickman who stole the picture right out from under him. There were even rumors that in the editing room, Costner cut out a lot of Rickman's scenes because they were overshadowing Costner.

Many white people watched Living Single, just like many whites watched the first few seasons of Empire etc.

I hate how some of you think cause you won’t watch a show with a black cast means all white People think like you. Many are not like you.

Just like the poster claiming white people didn’t have black friends in the 90s, bullshit. Many had black friends, especially if they were from NYC!

You transplants move here from your small towns, suburban lands, the Midwest or the South cause you wanna live in NYC! But you refuse to leave your small minded ways behind. Why move to NYC when you only wanna be with white people? It makes zero sense.

One positive I can say about my former boss from Illinois is he may be small minded, but he does try to meet people to keep growing as a human. He was raised around all whites. He moved here to get away from that and meet different folks, and is dating his Dominican boyfriend and hanging out with all types of people and getting to know them. I DO RESPECT THAT about him. He wants to experience different people from different backgrounds and learn.

Some of you refuse and wanna move to diverse areas but still only be around whites. Why?

New York is the most provincial place I've ever seen. Sorry but it's just as segregated as anywhere else, if not more so.

Living Single had white extras, background characters and guest stars. The main cast were black friends but there were white, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic etc. around them. They did it right.

Friends could have a group of white friends but the extras, secondary characters etc. were ALWAYS white minus Julie the Asian, and no one mentions her because it’s way too common to see white men with Asian women (and that has its own history of racism). Friends could have had the core group white but you see a black waitress when they go out to eat. Not the case.

PS whites were very much the minority in NYC during the 70s-late 00s. Why you all act like whites were the only people here in 1994-2004 when there were less is amazing.

NYC in the late 70s-mid 00s was not very segregated. Once Obama came is when you saw a shift again.

R304 you're joking right? I loved Living Single. Maxine always had me cracking up

I hated Friends and never could sit through a full episode just awful

[quote] Friends could have a group of white friends but the extras, secondary characters etc. were ALWAYS white minus Julie the Asian, and no one mentions her because it’s way too common to see white men with Asian women (and that has its own history of racism). Friends could have had the core group white but you see a black waitress when they go out to eat. Not the case.

Exactly. I saw more racial diversity on both [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] and [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic]. One was set on Long Island, the other was about transplanted New Yorkers in Miami.

Mulgrew and Ryan have both acknowledged that there was tension between them (Mulgrew has taken responsibility) but they've long since buried the hatchet.

Two of the Golden Girls were NYC transplants. One from Minnesota and I forgot where in the South Blanche came from.

But all transplants nonetheless.

You have to remember that "Friends" catered to flyover whites. It was a show that was made for them. The NYC depicted in "Friends" was a flyover fantasy version of NYC. It's what basic white girls in Iowa thought living in NYC would be like. Of course the writers knew better, but they were making a fuck-ton of $$$ peddling that fantasy so they just went with it.

R331: That may be true, but they also came into contact with black people more often than anyone on [italic]F(r)iends[/italic]. They even had a black woman, Winifred Hervey Stallworth, writing for it until she left to do [italic]The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air[/italic]. Her first big break was on [italic]Laverne & Shirley[/italic].

My bigger issue with Friends isn’t even the lack of minorities in 90s NYC where whites were the minority, but that 3 of the characters portrayed as WASPs were Jewish.

Courtney Cox and Jen Aniston miscast from the jump. Matt LeBlanc also. They could have cast someone that WAS Italian-American to play that part. Especially one from NYC. NYC Italians had their own way of speaking and attitude for decades.

My problem with it is that they treated it as some kind of [italic]Cheers[/italic]-level classic when it really just takes everything wrong with all the crappy TGIF and TNBC shows and makes it worse. But since none of the leads are children, they don't get called out on it.

I still can’t believe it took the show 7 years to have a black person. I remember when Gabrielle Union did that guest spot and the media was speaking about it. But it was a one episode stint where she had two scenes.

In season 9 (of 10) they finally decided to have open casting where race didn’t matter and they liked Aisha Tyler for the part. It probably also helped her that David Schwimmer insisted this part be a black woman cause he himself found it ridiculous all 6 characters only date white people and aren’t open to anyone else minus himself with Julie. He said his character Ross is someone who very much would be open to dating different types of women that were attractive and smart. He never felt Ross was someone who would have racial preferences, same was said about Joey.

The women and Chandler are different stories, although I could see Phoebe being open to dating a black man.

Exactly. New York is America's melting pot, but you wouldn't know it by watching that show. It's like nothing had changed since the days of [italic]Family Affair[/italic] and [italic]That Girl[/italic].

[quote]I forgot where in the South Blanche came from.

Georgia, honey.

You may have to turn in your gay card.

Living Single had the Max and Kyle relationship, which was a well done depiction of a grown up relationship. Friends managed to do something similar with the Chandler, Monica relationship later on in the shows run.

The whole Ross and Rachael relationship was overrated and was done by season 3. There was really nowhere else to go for those two characters once they got together, so they started throwing in convoluted situations to break them up and get them back together again, the worst being that whole arc with marrying the English woman. And that constant bellowing of "We were on a break!" Ross became one of the most unlikeable lead characters on television.

They could have made it look like It's A Fucking Small World and it still wouldn't have been funny.

Can we get back on topic? Sounds like SOMEBODY was unhappy on set

Golden Girls was about 4 white elder women from different walks of life living together in Miami. And even that had diversity in a realistic way!

I loved when Dorothy’s son was getting married to a black woman. A funny episode! We also find out Blanche has had some black men also that episode lol.

Why do people get so obsessed about Friends? I watched it because my next-door neighbors and I got together for dinner and Must See TV every Thursday for a few years, but I never had this emotional reaction to it. It was just another show to watch before Seinfeld and ER.

The 1970s and 1980s had plenty of integrated casts. You even started to see gay characters slowly start to increase in number.

In the 1990s, you still saw more representation, but it started to feel more fragmented somehow. Technological advances are part of the reason for this.

The entire pop culture got more fragmented in the 90s: TV, radio, music industry, movies, everything... Things started to get created for and marketed to very specific demographics.

Lending credibility to the claim that [italic]F(r)iends[/italic] ripped off [italic]Living Single[/italic] is the fact that they asked Lisa Whelchel and Nancy McKeon to read for it.

Any show produced by a. Jimmy Womack, Sherwood Schwartz or Paul Henning owns this thread.

r346, McKeon was almost cast as Monica. In Warren Littlefield's (who was Pres. of NBC) book "Top of the Rock," it said NBC and Warner Bros. wanted Nancy. But they allowed the creators to make the final call. Marta ("I don't want Dolly Parton on Grace & Frankie because it suddenly becomes Nine to Five") Kauffman chose Courteney Cox. Kauffman said, "Because we were casting an ensemble, there was something appealing about not casting Nancy McKeon."

I think McKeon is a much stronger actress than Cox, who smiled at all her jokes.

McKeon wouldn’t have blended well with that cast.

The only WASP in the Friends group was Chandler. Monica and Ross had a Jewish father, as did Rachel. Phoebe's father also looked Jewish and although the show didn't put up the characters' ethnicities in lights (except for Italian Joey), they never tried to make the Jewish kids into WASPs.

I agree with r349. Nancy McKeon doesn't seem cunty enough to fit in. I can't see her being a Mean Girl, being rude to guest stars, etc.

This thread began with juicy discussion about some of the most memorable television shows... and has downgraded into dull, over-written essays about some of the dullest, dreariest crap.

Have PR hacks moved in?

Not a single post about Friends or Living Single had anything to do with this the topic of this thread.

r353 is monitoring us.

But he's right, r354. He's right.

r353, watching, waiting...

[quote] The Nanny? What supposedly went on there? That cast seemed to love each other, even to this day. The only one who held out of a party Drescher threw last year was Daniel Davis, who was on a tour.

Fran was OK in the first few years, but as time went on I think she acted a lot like Cybill did on her show - counting lines, making sure she got punch lines or funny lines rewritten to spotlight her, etc.

They've almost all made up or smoothed things over, and Shaughnessy seems to enjoy working with her on other projects, but I think Daniel Davis would sooner drink acid than deal with FD again.

[italic]CHiPs[/italic] had some controversy back in the day.

r356

I like that. You got my best side.

Square Pegs. It's nowhere online, but TV Guide did an article after its cancellation titled "Anatomy of a Failure: How Drugs, Ego and Chaos Helped Kill A Promising Series." I would love to read it.

I think one of the magazines had an oral history of Square Pegs that was really good recently, (not TV Guide) but I can't find it online.

This is similar to what I remembered, though.

Yes, sometimes individual actors (or writers/producers/crew) are assholes, or egotistical monsters, or letches with grabby hands. Some are obvious assholes with reputations (Mandy Patinkin, George Eads, Thomas Gibson, Julianna Cuntelies).

But some conflict is to be expected. We have a lot of people paid to be very open emotionally in tight quarters for 9, 10 months of the year. Some shows run 15, 16 hours a day. Hour shows can take 9-10 days to film one episode. That's a lot of stress and strain.

Kate Jackson was such a total bitch on Charlies Angels that they let her go so they could hire SHELLY HACK!

Guy William, June Lockhart(especially) & Mark Goddard to a lesser extent were not too thrilled how Johnathan Harris took over Lost In Space. Guy Williams especially wanted out of the show.

R357 but this interview they seemed to be fine?

Fran interviews "the butler"

On Remington Steele, Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan couldn't stand each other. Zimbalist resented that he was the breakout star of the show which was supposed to her big moment.

Doris Roberts had to play peacemaker. She had also lost her husband around this time and during breaks would sometimes break down in her dressing room and have to pull herself together before coming back out to shoot. In interviews, she said it wasn't a great experience.

Pierce, however, wrote a lovely tribute to Doris after she passed.

It's also interesting how things change, and cast mates who couldn't stand each other bond or reconnect later and people who were close split.

Ie: Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano, Shannen Doherty and Holly Marie Combs

R364

Your post is totally unwarranted, and there's only one response possible.

Regarding Melrose Place: Thomas Calabro (who is a nice guy) says that the cast was professional, and intimates that he, Laura Leighton and Marcia Cross in particular knew how ludicrous their characters were and had fun with them. Apparently the permanent arrival of "special guest star Heather Locklear" went fine, because Heather was pleasant and professional as well.

[quote]I feel the VOY stories are a bit exaggerated. Not entirely, just maybe the most outrageous 10% of it. I seriously doubt that Mulgrew would go at THAT length to make Ryan's life this miserable. It's been pretty much established that Mulgrew was not happy with Ryan coming on board - for the reasons as described. But I doubt that she would sabotage filming this way. That behavior sounds very petty, one trait I never heard anyone associate with Mulgrew. She seems to be too professional to do that. Besides, the directors would not allow this type of disruption, not one time. The rest seems legit. Never heard about the problems with Jeri Taylor. I never figured out to what extent she contributed to the show, so this was enlightening.

Most of what r293/4 said has been confirmed in various panels, discussions, and interviews with varying degrees of careful language, "humor, and outright venom.

Mulgrew has admitted that she was nasty to Ryan though said in the typical self-effacing, "it wasn't really as bad as I"m making it out to be" light manner, but look at me at how gracious I am to admit fault.

What r293/4 doesn't mention is that Wang was going to be fired, but scored People's Most Beautiful People which literally saved him. Of all the people, he's clearly still the most bitter and was openly hostile for many years, only mellowing enough to be civil more recently.

That show really does sound like it was a nightmare to work on.

That Square Pegs article reminded me of SMILF, where star and showrunner is apparently an unprofessional nightmare. Has it gotten renewed for a third season?

[quote]VOY

Visions of Youth?

Versions of Yesterday?

Vulva of Yetta

Sometimes, it is just one person who causes any tension on set -- not the whole cast fighting.

Patricia Heaton got a lot of flack for her behavior on ELR

R372, it’s been cancelled.

In addition to all the bruised egos and nasty attitudes on Voyager, it was a LONG shooting day as well. The hours were grueling, as they usually are for an hour-long sci-fi show. So you had a group of people who really didn't like each other, and they had to be together for many hours every day.

Tom Paris was a beautiful bitch.

With regards to the FRIENDS/LIVING SINGLE/ELLEN thing: Warner Bros distributed Cameron Crowe's _SINGLES_, which was not a theatrical hit, but they felt had TV potential. Crowe rejected the idea, but WB owned the rights so they could do what they wanted. The producers reset the show to NY but kept aspects of the film (including the very white (at the time) Seattle culture.) Its why in the very early episodes they all have shaggier haircuts, Phoebe is more Hippie than Flaky, etc. "Ross" is a more self pitying, jewish verson of the Campbell Scott character. They most certainly drew from other ensemble shows as well to make it all work, but it wasn't just one source.

Re movies... the horrible "Hobbit" trilogy seems to have been a miserable experience for everyone involved in the shooting. The "Lord of the Rings" movies seem to have been a love-fest where everyone on set became the best of friends and the whole country of New Zealand pitched into help... but the "Hobbit" movies sound miserable.

There were massive labor disputes that threatened to shut down production and which ended up with new legislation that hurt New Zealanders who worked in the film industry, Ian McKellen ended up crying after weeks of green-screening without any interaction with other actors, there were ongoing fights with the studio that ended in three dreadful films instead of the originally planned two, the cast doesn't seem to have gotten along, and Martin Freeman was a dick, etc. There's more, some of it is addressed here, along with the abysmal qualities of the finished films.

R341 the Arrow set is apparently the worst out of the DCverse. You only need to look at how they treated Katie Cassidy. And then there's rumours about Stephen and EBR bullying Willa.

What happened to Katie Cassidy?

R381 they kept screwing around with the character. It seems the creator (Marc Guggenheim) wasn't a fan of Laurel.

[quote]And Marcia Strassman was good buds with Kate Jackson at the time...

And two bigger DYKES you've never seen in your LIFE!

It would be weird if Daniel Davis hated the Nanny. Because he often got the best lines, the best comedic bits to play, and for a supporting character some pretty juicy storylines.

For an older, less masculine actor who hadn’t ‘broken out’ yet (in his late 50s) it’s basically a dream job and if he saved his money well would have set him up for life. Originally he was only meant to be the typical sassy butler character but he was in every episode, in almost every scene, given special Niles-centric episodes here and there, a will they/won’t they romance arc with CC, all that jazz.

Having said that I do get the sense he’s one of those ‘serious thespian’ types who might have resented working on a fluffy sitcom, he did go on to do a lot more stage work when the show ended. Getting nominated for Tonys, playing King Lear, etc.

[quote]I seriously doubt that Mulgrew would go at THAT length to make Ryan's life this miserable.

Ryan has said the night before filming scenes with Mulgrew, she would be in the john puking her guts up from sick nervousness!

Looking back, Ryan (and Picardo) acted circles around the rest of the cast. Yes, even Mulgrew!

How were the DS9 and ENT sets?

I know Kira and Bashir had a kid, married and then divorced.

I imagine Auberjonois and Shimerman were a dream to work with.

Half the friends cast were jews , lay off them !!

r117 that was David Milch.

His life story is incredible, even by Hollywood standards. Has dementia now, probably from all the substance abuse.

The Luck set was hell, not least because you can't film horses the way he wanted to without killing them (and it did).

1/3rd isn't half, R386. And why should we let people off the hook for not being funny regardless of what they are? As a Jew, would I be disloyal to the tribe to admit Bob Newhart is funnier than Bob Saget?

Madonna has spent decades totally bashing her music. To put things in perspective, she even bashed "Sorry", her second single from confessions in 2005. So it's no wonder her legacy is dead. She practically begged for it. It's really unfortunate.

[quote]Madonna has spent decades totally bashing her music.

If even she thinks her own music sucks, it's her own fault.

Of course her music up until about a decade ago doesn't suck. What an absurd thing to say. Really, grow up. Her marketing sucks. I can't imagine what low life idiot you obsess over.

The set of Friends was always a wonderful place... and then Marlo showed up and showed them what they were doing wrong.

[quote]and then Marlo showed up and showed them what they were doing wrong.

And then they doubled down on it.

Martin Lawrence and Tisha Campell did not get along during the later seasons of MARTIN.

Janet Hubert was difficult, but Will Smith was a huge diva on the set of Fresh Prince. He had guest actors and actresses fired if they were funnier than him.

Didn't Tisha sue Lawrence and the producers, and they settled with her?!

Re: The Nanny: When Dorothy Lyman took over as director for Season 2, she copied the Mama's Family schedule (4 days v. the normal 5). So, if it was a miserable set, at least everyone was miserable only 4 days out of the week.

[Quote] but Will Smith was a huge diva on the set of Fresh Prince. He had guest actors and actresses fired if they were funnier than him.

So who were the funnier actors??

That article on Square Pegs is amusing because both Tracy Nelson and the guy who played Vinnie refute it. For some reason, I came away with the impression Jami Gertz was a party animal.

Yeah, I believe it was either Tracy or Jami who said they were mostly geeky virgins on that set, and that Devo's stories of teen temptresses were bullshit.

[quote]Not a single post about Friends or Living Single had anything to do with this the topic of this thread.

Friends was mentioned in Reply 9, with that poster claiming that there was a lot of tension among the cast. All the subsequent posts about Friends have been disputing that.

R394 Janet Hubert is still bitching about it 25 years later. I have no doubt Will Smith probably has an ego, but holy shit lady, let it go.

[quote]Didn't Tisha sue Lawrence and the producers, and they settled with her?!

Martin wasn't as unstable at the start of the show as he was by the end but he was obsessed with Tisha. Her getting married to Duane Martin allegedly exacerbated his harassment. Once Tisha learned that he was abusing his wife as off the set (the wife Patricia sued him and filed a restraining order after he attacked her physically and threatened her with a gun) she quit the show and sued him because she thought it was going to get even worse.

Her lawsuit claimed she:

[quote]"was subjected to repeated and escalating sexual harassment, sexual battery, verbal abuse and related threats to her physical safety by Lawrence. The hostile working conditions on the show became unduly aggravated due to Lawrence's increased volatility, erratic and violent conduct and his apparent obsession with Campbell, in which he focused his lust, anger, and violent tendencies on her. His emotional instability, coupled with what Campbell is informed and believes are Lawrence's personal feelings for her and reports that he has been known to carry a firearm, have made her fear for her personal safety."

She came back for the finale but she wouldn't be on set with him. Fox settled because there was quite a lot of evidence of his bad behavior on and off set.

During and after the series Lawrence had other issues. Remember him getting arrested then going into psych treatment for walking around in LA traffic while waving a gun around? He also at one point was found unconscious in the streets and was in a coma for three days. There was a laundry list of bad behavior from that man during that time period.

However, they've long since made up now that's he has cleaned up and is on his meds & off drugs.

I could scroll back up and look, but did anyone mention old-school 90210? We often hear about Shannen vs. Jennie (and Tori), but I wonder if the guys had any beef.

Most men don’t beef with each other. It’s usually a woman and woman or woman and man.

Man vs man is not as common.

NCIS has long been a miserable set.

It seems like all of the CBS procedurals have not been fun places. Criminal Minds has been a shitshow too.

Grey's Anatomy was mentioned upthread - and I do think it had issues early on, but whatever else one can say about Shonda Rhimes, I think she learned from those events and has done better with her other shows. Scandal was apparently a happy set, and Rhimes herself talked about having a "no asshole" rule on her shows.

When Patrick Dempsey made noise about leaving and was being negative on set, apparently alienating the few people on set who still liked him, she killed his ass off. Bitch, boom, BAM.

Good for Shonda. It's nice when TPTB learn a lesson. Speaking of the CBS procedurals, anyone got dirt on Hawaii Five-0?

R404, you reminded me that she did get rid of Columbus Short from Scandal after the spousal abuse claims came up.

However, he openly admitted his fault saying that he had a drug and alcohol problem and Shonda knew, implied that she tried to get him some help and then had enough when the abuse claims came up.

He's also never been bitter about it, even right after he was fired. He has always been positive about the experience and the cast.

Seems like he moved to Atlanta to get himself together and now is trying to make a go at it again.

I think the initial BS with Grey's happened because ABC had a lot heavier hand in the show, at least initially. So she wasn't able to step in and handle things with Isaiah, Katie Hags, et al the way she wanted to.

Did all the problems on the Voyager set lead to the complete shit episode for the show's finale. Terrible. What a letdown.

As for Remington Steele, I seem to remember that Brosnan's wife played some role in the conflict between Zimbalist and Brosnan.

I hated to see James Read, who played Murphy Michaels, disappear after the first season on RS. Doris Roberts was everywhere on TV at that time and hardly a good substitute for Read and Janet DeMay who played Bernice.

Got that right, r403!

R408- You read my mind. I think James Read left Remington because he clearly wasn't going to be doing very much except get jealous at Remington going after Laura. But he and the actress that played Bernice were better foils than Doris Roberts.

If Remington and Laura were supposed to be an updated version of Nick and Nora, then they needed the right counterpart.

Instead they ended up with Dame May Whitty.

R390 huh? Wrong thread haters

Let's get back on topic

Commas are important.

R391 Madonna's new album is supposedly VERY VERY GOOD, I have a number of friends who were at her listening party last week

Madonna is the most critically accalimed female artist ever , contrary to the delusional haters on here

I also wouldn't say her legacy is dead, since her VEVO started her back catalogue has more Youtube views every month than any post 1990 female artist and she has the second most Spotify users for any pre 1990 Female artist. If her legacy is "dead" than what about Barbra, Cher, Dolly etc. Look at their YT , catalogue sales and Spotify numbers compared to Madonna's

They're HORRIBLE numbers

I meant PRE 1990 Female artist for YouTube and Spotify

R366, I have a friend who interacted with Pierce Brosnan often (personal shopper in exclusive store in NYC) and she says he's truly the nicest, most genuine person you could meet.

Anymore about Rhea Perlman and Shelley Long? I knew she had probs with the rest of the cast but thought maybe Rhea would have been a pal

More than a few accounts have implied Shelley needed her hand held, was a perfectionist, tended to over-rehearse, etc. That can be a real hassle and I can see someone like Rhea getting frustrated to the point of anger.

The Cheers oral history is very telling on all those relationships.

[quote]Friends was mentioned in Reply 9, with that poster claiming that there was a lot of tension among the cast. All the subsequent posts about Friends have been disputing that.

Then why did Kathleen Turner subtly shade them when asked about it?

Take that Madonna shit back to the Janet thread.

From that Cheers piece:

Glen Charles (writer/producer): Shelley liked to discuss things. It was never a tantrum. But it did take a lot of talking, and I think the biggest problem was with the rest of the cast, because we'd have a reading at the table, and immediately she'd want to talk about it. The normal procedure was for Jimmy to take the cast down and start blocking it, so we could see it on its feet. So that indulgence on our part, I think, created a schism between Shelley and the rest of the cast.

Rhea Perlman: It's not really something I can talk about, to tell you the truth. I can't go there. I don't think it's worth it, at this point in life.

Long was LOATHED by the cast and crew. A friend of mine did a guest star on it early into Kirstie Alley’s run on it and he heard sone real horror stories and everybody there kept saying how great Alley was to work with.

Doesn’t Perlman have bipolar? Like about ten years or so there was the rumor she and Danny were breaking up because she was off her meds and just too difficult for him to deal with even though he was devoted to her.

I can't imagine Rhea is a fuckin' walk in the park, either. I've always taken any of the shit I've heard about her issues on Cheers with a big grain of salt.

Reportedly, Woody Harrelson was nice to Shelley Long (Diane Chambers).

Ken Levine on Shelley. Mirrors what others have said. She was exacting but never a cunt about it.

Long has had a horrendous rep on her film sets, too. Why the fuck do you think her career went south so quickly?

Madonna had a show? A set?

I wonder if tension increases or decreases when a show goes from acclaimed to barely noticed. Like, I can't imagine the Night Court or Wings sets were hotbeds of drama, but during its last few years, it must have been like a company picnic.

I wonder what the set of WKRP in Cincinnati was like and if Gary whatsisname would pull out his massive dick for the others to ooooo and aaaaah over.

I remember WKRP being a pretty close knit bunch. I think Gary Sandy was originally supposed to be "the star" because he was one of the most well known at the beginning, but it became such an ensemble.

Wasn't it rumored that Gary Sandy did a porn video in the '70s?

Gordon Jump tried the same thing, R430 ...

RE: Grey's Anatomy

Isolated incidents do not make for a "miserable" set.

[quote]r199 And Marcia Strassman was good buds with Kate Jackson at the time, I can't imagine it was a good idea that those two were hanging out with one another telling each other that if only they weren't tied down to their hit television series they could really really be doing something great...

They must have had some severely lezzie scissor sessions together.

I can see the cast's frustration with long. They're doing a sitcom, not Chekhov. Finish the reading and get on with things.

[quote]r276 She acknowledged her substance abuse issues as well as the rape.

[quote]Doesn’t Perlman have bipolar? Like about ten years or so there was the rumor she and Danny were breaking up because she was off her meds and just too difficult for him to deal with even though he was devoted to her.

I remember those rumors and another rumor that Rhea went through a period of agoraphobia and was refusing the leave the house and that supposedly worsened her relationship with Danny.

I wanted Gary Sandy to hammer my throat.

Most of these have been listed but I didn't recall 30 Rock being one of them.

SNL is pretty poisonous, though, so no surprise.

How true are those rumors about Shameless? And Emmy being impossible? Didn't William Macy fight for her to get paid as much as he does a few years ago? And why would Cameron agree to come back after he left to film a good-bye scene with her?

Isn't there an entire DL thread about the chaos that was the Family Ties set?

I don't know what Shameless is like, but Emmy carried the lion's share of that show. And the writing expired like bad milk a few years ago. Someone put it out of its misery please.

Shameless is banking on Noel Fisher's return bringing in hoards of viewers and possibly more seadons. "Gallavich" has a huge fanbase. Emmy is a bougie bitch and general know it all who has made the set toxic the past few years.

It wouldn't surprise me if she's a bitch, but I wonder if the cast is thrilled with the weak ass scripts.

@TMZ

'Game of Thrones' Star Kit Harington Reportedly Checked into Rehab

[quote]Isn't there an entire DL thread about the chaos that was the Family Ties set?

Fox was flying on speed and coke, Birney was manic, Bateman was openly homophobic and Yothers was eating everything she could get her hands on.

r448 Who did Bateman have to be openly homophobic towards? How did it come up at work?

[quote]r447 'Game of Thrones' Star Kit Harington Reportedly Checked into Rehab

I guess it sank in his best job's already behind him?

Justine used to read the obits of AIDS patients and laugh to herself.

One day, Baxter-Birney asked what was so funny and Bateman responded, "AIDS...it is it's own cure."

Tina Yothers was washing down a Twinkie with a vanilla shake.

That bitch Courtney Cox fit right in.

Indeed she did. She used to give handjobs to "Skippy" between takes.

If Cameron found Emmy so unbearable, why would he return for her final show just in a scene with her?

I recall some story that Justine Bateman constantly Michael J. Fox a "fag" all the time.

R447 Harington’s had a problem for ages. It’s not just alcohol. He was partial to the old marching powder too. The showrunners on GoT were aware of how bad things were, and still dragged him out with them to get drunk during filming. If they hadn’t been such assholes, they could have insisted he went into rehab a couple of years ago with HBO’s backing.

GoT was a raging dumpster fire BTS. I remember reading that Weiss and Benioff hired a private room in a club in Spain so the cast could get off their tits on coke without being photographed. You wanna know why the scripts sucked balls in later seasons? They couldn’t even show up to public appearances like Comic Cons sober after about S4. They were also big fans of hanging around the porn stars they hired for brothel scenes, rather than doing their actual fucking jobs as producers on-set. Extras were treated like shit, and the cast were routinely mocked behind their backs if they pushed back against their creative decisions. In some cases their characters were straight up killed off.

Go on R456

Yes, R456, DO make yourself at home! Can I get you anything?

[quote]If Cameron found Emmy so unbearable, why would he return for her final show just in a scene with her?

Get a grip, Emmy!

It was one scene he filmed with you not an entire season. Stop trying to make yourself look better. Give it a rest.

Do the new CHARMED sisters hate each other as much as the old ones?

R460 not yet.

The thing about Shelley Long that pissed everybody on Cheers off is that she approached every single line as if she were doing Shakespeare or a serious, Oscar-bait film. Everybody was like "it's a 30-minute sitcom, you stupid bitch, just say the damn line!"

Shame that she couldn’t have played Carol Brady alongside Robert Reed and not Gary Cole.

Jennie Garth told The New York Times that the 90210 set was "very stressful" and competitive and castmembers complained about everything like screen time, salary per episode, storylines they didn't like etc

She said it was "worse than high school at times"

Such a simple girl, that Jennie.

Jennie sounds like a dimwit.

I also heard--but can't say it's true--that after so many takes, Long would insist on her hair and makeup being redone. Not touched up, but t all makeup cleaned off and reapplied and her hair washed and restyled. This would take so long that the other cast members and the crew even came to resent the amount of time she would chew up every filming day.

I wonder whether Shelley ever regretted her diva antics.

Considering the ship's sailed on her being a film or TV star, I'm going to guess that's a yes.

What was the set of Wings like? I assume professional if not close but I wonder. The actor who played Roy essentially left the business after Wings ended (he only has one credit post-Wings.) The Fay character seemed to disappear in the final season though the actress was still credited. I worried at the time that she might be ill but she's still acting. The guy who replaced Thomas Haden Church was fired and they never mentioned what happened to his character. Weren't there rumors that Crystal Bernard felt threatened when Farrah Forke was added to the cast and lobbied to get her fired?

Was Wings a Cheers spinoff or just set in the same universe?

^^Just the same universe. There were crossovers where Cheers and Frasier characters appeared on Wings (though never vice versa.)

I bet the set of Mr. Belvedere was pretty miserable the day Christopher Hewett sat on his own balls.

[quote]The actor who played Roy essentially left the business after Wings ended (he only has one credit post-Wings.)

David Schramm took a break for a few years then started doing some theater again. He once said that he acted for 48 years straight and it was time for one but he's still around, they just unfortunately don't list those theater credits on imdb. He pops up in things in the North East. I'm not sure if he still lives in NY but he will sometimes appear in stuff in DC as well.

[quote]The Fay character seemed to disappear in the final season though the actress was still credited. I worried at the time that she might be ill but she's still acting.

The best part about Rebecca Schull is that she's one of those rare actors that didn't really start acting until they were in their 40s and somehow she managed to land a TV series. According to her the cast got along great and the set was a pretty fun atmosphere.

[quote]The guy who replaced Thomas Haden Church was fired and they never mentioned what happened to his character.

Wings was one of those shows that didn't necessarily get universally great reviews. They brought Budd Bronskie (sp?) on in S7 but at the same time it wasn't like the series lasted long after that. It made more sense not to replace Lowell after THC did such a great job with the role partially because it was conceived with him in mind.

[quote]Weren't there rumors that Crystal Bernard felt threatened when Farrah Forke was added to the cast and lobbied to get her fired?

Farrah booked another television show that got canceled after a season. They just never brought her back (and they replaced her with Amy Yasbeck anyway.) There were rumors about other stuff going on with her but that's the only thing we actually do know happened years later.

The gossip from Concordia County was the set of "Well I Never In All My Life" was a nightmare of mind games, egos and drug-fueled sexual shenanigans.

[quote] I recall some story that Justine Bateman constantly Michael J. Fox a "fag" all the time.

She must have known about him and Bruce Willis.

[quote]r475 The gossip from Concordia County was the set of "Well I Never In All My Life" was a nightmare of mind games, egos and drug-fueled sexual shenanigans.

There was a lot of pressure on that set, due to the valuable, cutting edge electronics being used as props.

The cast was exhausted from the intensive rehearsal boot camp they had to go through to work them.

So, tempers flared. Understandably.

Matthew Fox fought constantly with the creators of Party of Five. I can't remember if he ever had drama with cast mates.

R404 speaking on CBS, any memories from scoops on stalwart show CSI Las Vegas?

William Petersen is pretty unforgettable with movie star charm "stuck" on a tv show. Seemed aloof/standoffish irl though.

I noticed that Paul Rudd was not at Jen ' it's my birthday and every famous I ever met is invited MY birthday party".

Thank you for all that, r474! Did you work on the show or know people who did? If you know Rebecca Schull personally please tell her I adored her on Wings! One of my favorite sitcom characters ever.

It's surprising Schramm didn't try to land another series or more guest work after Wings ended but I know not everyone in Hollywood is driven in the same way.

Was Thomas Haden Church leaving the show unexpected? They didn't give him a farewell episode at the end of his last season (season 6) and instead brought him back for a final episode early in season 7. The replacement character was similar enough that I could imagine they hired someone just to fill the role for scripts that were already written. Fake Lowell only appeared in 8 episodes and then disappeared with no further mention of the character. I guess they felt the didn't need the mechanic character any longer but the chemistry seemed off that final season with no Lowell and Fay missing a lot of the time.

What were the "rumors about other stuff going on with" Farrah Forke? Drugs? I never really took to her character so didn't mind when she left but I didn't care much for Amy Yasbeck either.

r481 the other rumours I've read here on the late, great DL gossip threads were that she was closeted, very dykey, and overly aggressive with other women, even harassment level. This is Crystal Bernard

Benioff from GOT is married to amanda peet with 3 kids. Why would she stick around if he is such an asshole?

[quote]What were the "rumors about other stuff going on with" Farrah Forke? Drugs? I never really took to her character so didn't mind when she left but I didn't care much for Amy Yasbeck either.

Farrah Forke made the national news because she sued everyone in creation when her breast implants began to leak and she started having health problems.

She had to have them removed while she was guesting on Wings in Season 4 and claimed she had no clue they were dangerous when she got them in 1989. For reference in 1988 the FDA finally approved them and started regulating them so it was very early.

It was one of the first big lawsuits of its kind and the media put her through the ringer since she was going against the big boys.

However, she exited to star in the TV series Dweebs on rival network CBS so that was her reason for leaving but people weren't as savvy about how television worked back then so it seemed "mysterious." She just wanted her own show she was the star of.

[Quote] Matthew Fox fought constantly with the creators of Party of Five. I can't remember if he ever had drama with cast mates.

Over what? We're his storylines that bad?

[Quote] William Petersen is pretty unforgettable with movie star charm "stuck" on a tv show. Seemed aloof/standoffish irl though.

Maybe it's because I've seen Fear one time too many, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy you'd want to piss off.

Is it true that Valerie Cherish on The Comeback is based on Shelley Long? If so, I think I'd probably like her. I always found Valerie a bit ridiculous, but sweet underneath it all.

What a dumb question R483

I thought she was based on Debra Messing r486.

I've always wondered if Lisa wasn't calling Matt LeBlanc for info. on what was happening on the Joey set, too.

I believe Valerie Cherish was a composite of several actresses.

Does anyone have dish from the superhero shows? Heck, even Lois & Clark!

The creators have always maintained that Val is based on actresses in general, but there’s more than a little Shelley Long in Kudrow’s characterization. Her co-creator also worked on a one season sitcom in the 90’s starring Long that ended when she had a nervous breakdown. Take that for what it’s worth.

Also, Courteney Cox. “I need to know that I’m being heard” is listed as a famous quote of hers on IMDb. Also the incident where Val is mocked in the writer’s room seems to have its roots in Friends. They used to keep a skeleton in their writer’s room they called “Courteney” which they would pretend to rape.

Any casual watcher of The Comeback can see how much Valerie is based on Shelly Long. (What that would make you think Long would be a fun person to hang out with is beyond me. The Comeback is fiction.)

What is fascinating is how much of the history of Friends is woven in. The writers' sexual mockery of Valerie harkens to the "vagina full of dry twigs" lawsuit. The cast of Room and Board trying to act as a unit, recalls the cast of Friends' united front.

James Burrows, of course, directed many episodes of Friends. I always loved his work on The Comeback. He's like the DeMille to Valerie's Norma.

There was a sexual harassment suit against the writers' room and it got thrown out of court by a male judge.

Considering what we know now about Les Moonves, who greenlit it at Warner Bros. TV before leaving for CBS to kill [italic]Murder She Wrote[/italic] by putting them head to head — who was the latter's only real competition on Sunday, [italic]The Simpsons[/italic]? — it probably should not have been. That's also why David Schwimmer is a fucking hypocrite for only doing those anti-sexual harassment PSAs now especially when his CV includes [italic]Apt Pupil[/italic].

Did Friends and Murder She Wrote really have the same audience ?

"Did Friends and Murder She Wrote really have the same audience ?"

Why, yes, they did indeed. There was actually talk of a new program, "Murder, Smelly Cat Wrote".

They both tied for 8th place in different time slots. CBS had just been bought out by Westinghouse. Les had just taken over a network that was hurting because of about a decade of mismanagement under Larry Tisch, who for a time seemingly almost turned it into 1/3 [italic]Brady Bunch[/italic] and [italic]Green Acres[/italic] reunions when very few new shows caught on. They were also still suffering from bad publicity over the way the Leno/Letterman thing played out, and also over Connie Chung's short-lived stint as co-anchor of the evening news.

MSW was entering its 12th season, and Moonves wanted to find some excuse to get the show off. Putting it up against a younger-skewering new show that he had a hand in making happen was one way to do it.

[Quote] Does anyone have dish from the superhero shows? Heck, even Lois & Clark!

Based on what I've read over the years, Teri Hatcher sounds almost bipolar. You never know what you're going to get. Though it's a shame they didn't put Dean and Teri together again when they were both on Supergirl.

Christ, did Courtney really say "I need to know that I'm being heard?" She sounds insufferable.

No comment.

Wasn’t Bronson Pinchot a nightmare on the set of Perfect Strangers?

For all the Courteney Cox talk, she seems to be the one most often pictured catching up with other Friends.

I heard things were tense on the set of Nickelodeon's Pinwheel, thus the swift recasting of Coco the Clown, or, as she was called by the director, Coco the Cunt.

Don't these dumbasses realize how lucky they are to be on a hit tv show that will pay them residuals for years

R505 Residuals decrease over time for actors.

You don’t even wanna know what goes on behind the scenes. I’ll just say Scratchy is a cunt and leave it at that.

What was the deal with Courtney Cox and the Friends writers?

For the google challenged...

Chrissy Metz's shit dont stink on the set of This is Us. She and Nandy dont speak.

A slight tangent, but as we look at Moonves and how he railroaded some very good shows off the air, let's remember Linda Bloodworth Thomasen's scorching take on his downfall.

The actors on the NBC series Ed thought their shit didn’t stink and were super obnoxious with the exception of Josh Randall who played Mike. The absolute worst of them was that fat pig redhead Leslie Boone.

[quote] younger-skewering

Oh, dear.

Re article at R511 - ... the older actress Moonves told "I can't let you leave like this" before he "shoved his tongue down her throat". Is that Angela Lansbury??? Really??? If not, who?

Sharon Gless

R25, he wasn't given the boot. He's the executive producer. But Harmon insisted that he stay off the set and got his way.

[quote]Chrissy Metz's shit dont stink

Gurl Please!

[quote]They used to keep a skeleton in their writer’s room they called “Courteney” which they would pretend to rape.

Source please. I want it to be true.

R514 Most people seem to think it's Sharon Gless, though I think there were a few other candidates as well. All of them roughly 30ish women who had been part of a cop drama at CBS.

[Quote] They used to keep a skeleton in their writer’s room they called “Courteney” which they would pretend to rape.

Wtf 😧

Courtney was scary thin around season 5 and 6. I love big stars that give the writers shit and expect the best of them lol writers tend to get lazy as fuck.

r521 they're not lazy, they're bitter. The FU work ethic sets in after the bitterness reaches a certain point.

The Sopranos was a difficult set. Because of Gandolfini's untimely demise, stories haven't really come out. Chase is a psycho.

Untimely demise preventing gossip and the facts coming out? Since when?

Almost immediately after Jimmy Saville's death the truth about his creepy pedo ways came out and shocked the UK. What kind of gossip would make people want to hold on the gossipping out of respect of the dead?

Sopranos dish, please!

R518, it should be in the Smoking Gun link posted upthread.

What about Weeds? Didn’t MLP and Jenji Kohan fight miserably?

I am mystified how that toxic writers group come up with so much bland shit for the Friends show. Was that their way of coping with working for Friends?

Mr. Ed took a dump in Connie Hines' dressing room once after some bad words were exchanged.

[quote]I thought she was based on Debra Messing [R486].

The hell?

I heard MLP was a nightmare on Weeds.

There were rumors about the Downton set. I think Dan Stevens was a cunt to everyone. And Maggie was a challenge.

[quote]younger-skewering

I like skewering someone younger than me now and then.

[quote]And Maggie was a challenge.

They don't call me the Dowager Cuntess for nothing, toots.

The Sopranos set was wonderful. Chase wasn’t on set much. Everybody adored Jimmy. Every Friday night he paid for a sushi truck no matter where they happened to be filming.

Sushi from a truck?

Gandolfini was a troubled guy, and late in the series he disappeared a couple of times, throwing the set into chaos and holding up filming. The sushi trucks and cash (I think I remembered reading he helped the crew get a raise) were his way of saying 'sorry.' He was apparently a sweet, gentle man, but had serious substance abuse issues and playing Tony Soprano really fucked with his head.

r534- The Above the Line people will pay for various food trucks to thank the crew- coffee, ice cream, pizza, hot dogs, tacos, Indian, and yes, sushi.

A movie was shooting some scenes at a San Francisco landmark building as I walked by. There were dozens of big trucks and equipment being moved in and out of the building, and yes, there was a food truck among them.

I laughed out loud when I saw a sign on the food truck saying "NO BACKGROUND". It was for cast and crew only, the extras weren't allowed any food truck sandwiches!

Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner hated each other on the set of Wonder Woman.

r535 he also had a temper, and allegedly a lot of the writers/actors, while they genuinely liked him were frustrated by the end because they felt hamstrung. They realized he was troubled, but that didn't help them, and they didn't feel they could say anything.

Chase was a martinet who would fire writers without notice, and allegedly you never knew where you stood with him. Some people got away with arguing with him to advocate for a certain character direction or plot-line, but others seemingly didn't.

R537, that’s a different kind of food truck, that’s general catering. And it’s not common procedure to exclude background. Actually they’re not able to exclude union background at all. With specialty trucks it’s usually made clear to background that they can line up for it after the crew has had theirs.

Now I'm thinking I should be in the food truck business, if you can get hired on by movie companies for days or weeks or months.

[quote]Chase was a martinet

He may have been a taskmaster, but to call him a puppet is not fair.

How on earth was he a “puppet”? The Sopranos was his creation. He was nobody’s puppet.

mar·ti·net [ˌmärtnˈet]. NOUN: strict disciplinarian, especially in the armed forces.

Bless your heart, r543.

(And possibly r544.)

[quote] Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner hated each other on the set of Wonder Woman.

Now you know why Carol Burnett put up with Tim Conway constantly trying to break Harvey Korman up during takes for most of the rest of her show.

[quote]The Above the Line people will pay for various food trucks to thank the crew- coffee, ice cream, pizza, hot dogs, tacos, Indian, and yes, sushi.

But when Chrissy Metz does it, it's just for her own lunch.

Any specific stories about MLP on the set of Weeds? I’m very curious. I love her as an actress but I find it very telling that she hasn’t done much work on-screen since then.

Difficult Debbie Confirmed - MLP

Posted: Aug 22, 2005 8:35 PM

Here is the original Blind Item from up above...

"Just found out that one of my FAVORITE new shows is having a serious issue with one of its actresses ... its LEAD actress, actually. We'll call her DIFFICULT DEBBIE. It's uncertain whether this show will make it, but if it does, I'm told by a higher-up who knows that she insisted on the entire writing team being FIRED ... or else she's not coming back. (And the writing is soooo good.)

This wouldn't be shocking to those of you who didn't like her on another series, but frankly, I've always been a fan. Am stunned.

Off to snivel ... "

And here is part of the transcript from today's chat...

"From iheartjjpryor: How good is Weeds? Please tell me young dealer Josh will be making more appearances!

He will definitely be back! I looove that show. Though, you savvy Blind Riddlers might already know a thing or two about what's really happening there. Shhhh... "

Pretty obvious it is in fact Mary Louise Parker as many people guessed. I think if we are patient enough, most of the BI's eventually are revealed.

Re: Blind Riddle - Difficult Debbie

I said back on the 22nd that the answer is Mary Louise Parker and that this is not a guess. I am intimately familiar with the situation, but the good news is it seems to be cooling off. The reviews are emphasizing the writing as well as MLP's performance and she may come to her senses.

[quote]r514 Re article at [R511] - ... the older actress Moonves told "I can't let you leave like this" before he "shoved his tongue down her throat". Is that Angela Lansbury??? Really???

[quote]r529 I heard MLP was a nightmare on Weeds.

She's a long term insecure anorexic - -

And she had a man leave her right after she shit out his baby, which couldn't have helped.

[quote]Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner hated each other on the set of Wonder Woman.

OK, since his name has been brought up, let's talk about Like Waggoner. How did he wind up with the Star Waggons business where he rents the location trailers. Is he just a frontman for that thing, or did he really build that business himself, and if he did, how does he maintain a near monopoly on it?

If he thought of it and put it together all on his own, he's clearly one of the smartest actors to ever set foot in Hollywood.

[quote]Is that Angela Lansbury??? Really???

It may very well have been.

Lyle Waggoner founded the Star Waggons business himself in the late 70s. It surely made him a fortune.

CNBC story on Star Waggons

R553, apparently Lyle was quite the handyman. In one of her memoirs, Carol Burnett related a story about how Lyle asked if he could have a leftover set from a skit on the show (the set was going to be tossed). Then she visited his house and he showed off some beautiful furniture he made from the leftover wood.

[quote] But when Chrissy Metz does it, it's just for her own lunch.

Actually when Chrissy Metz is involved, the cast and crew pay the food truck to go away, so they can get their work done.

George Montgomery was also known for his wood....

^ George Montgomery back when he was starring in TV's Cimarron City and was married to Dinah Shore. Along with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, they vied for America's dream couple. Montgomery nearly always had a shirtless scene on the series and I treasured the few times when I could be alone in the den to watch and JO. I hadn't even hit puberty but i knew what I liked!

I remember a stunning dining room table that he made for her. She showed it on her afternoon show.

He sure was an ass-kisser supreme!

I remember seeing an exhibition of George Montgomery's woodworking at the museum in Palm Springs a long time ago.

Star Waggons is Lyle's baby, 100%.

He has said in interviews that the Waggons have made him 10x more than he ever did with acting.

CHiPs. Erik Estrada was a raging asshole (still is) and Larry Wilcox held a grudge because he was hired to be the star. They hated each other and still do. You'd never know it though, it they had amazing chemistry on screen.

Any Oz set gossip?

I heard in another thread that D+D are partially responsible for Kit Harington's drinking problem.

I had no idea Lyle owned Star Waggons. That’s fascinating and thanks for the article.

George Montgomery used to do commercials for furniture polish (Pledge?) introducing himself in his wood working persona. The Carol Burnett Show did a hilarious parody of it, with Lyle Waggoner ("Hi, I'm George Guntmummery.")

Lyle sold a trailer to good ole Teri Snatchers.

Any AHS set gossip?

Yes, I'd like some AHS set gossip. Emma Robert's has to have tangled with SOMEONE.

There was a whole thread dedicated to the AHS set. But it hasn't been active for ages.

r537. Production usually provides a different food truck for BG if that's the case. They'll have their own craft services (snacks) tables too, albeit and very degraded version of the crew's. I dayplayed (as crew) on The Orville at the Disney Concert hall and production had paid for 5 food trucks as a thank you to the crew, which was incredibly generous. They also allowed the BG to take from the trucks too, which is unheard of.

The Wendy Williams Show

Any Hannibal set gossip?

R574 did anything interesting happen on set?

Danielle Panabaker was apparently friends with Andrew Kreisberg and was rumored to be aware of his behavior on the set of "The Flash." I think her feud with Candice Patton stems from jealousy - as Andrew promised her the bigger role.

R578 I heard Danielle was more than friends with AK. And I can't blame Candice for feeling the way she does. The Supergirl set seems much happier now that he's gone.

R571, R572

R573 is right. This is the link, but it has been a while.

More about Chrissy Metz’s shit. I won’t believe it doesn’t stink until I see proof! Waiting patiently.

r577, I was there only for 2 days doing background players, so wasn't in the main trailer or by the principals doing shooting.

+doing should be during*

[Quote] R573 is right. This is the link, but it has been a while.

Sadly that person was right about Colton's wedding 😕

r378, That makes a lot of sense. I always thought Friends did not seem like a NY sitcom. I thought this since childhood, and it wasn't just its lack of diversity. NONE of the character seem like new yorkers. Not one has a new york accent or charisma about them. Its hard to explain but anyone from NY knows what I'm saying. They seem like white people from Seattle or something.

R585- you are spot on. I’m a proud New Yorker and totally agree. Seattle would’ve been the perfect setting. Nothing about the characters felt New York. Not even with Joey as a goombah.

R565 I thought it was Larry Wilcox who was the big dick on CHiPs, not Erik Estrada. I think Larry got pissy when Erik became the break-out star. I'm not sure what Erik was like on that set but I met him in person and he was as nice as could be. Of course, I met him years after CHiPs. Egos sometimes get tamed through time.

I know that the Blossom set was very close due much in part to Bill Bixby, who directed the show. It tore everyone up when he suddenly collapsed on set and later died in 1993.

New thread for when its needed!

The Today Show circa Bryant Gumbel?

[quote]GoT was a raging dumpster fire BTS. I remember reading that Weiss and Benioff hired a private room in a club in Spain so the cast could get off their tits on coke without being photographed. You wanna know why the scripts sucked balls in later seasons? They couldn’t even show up to public appearances like Comic Cons sober after about S4. They were also big fans of hanging around the porn stars they hired for brothel scenes, rather than doing their actual fucking jobs as producers on-set

Seeing as the gossip on GoT cast thread filled up and the making of thread has been besieged by the crazy fangurls, I'll bite, R456. Where did you read the story about the coke room? I always heard it was Pedro who made a cavalier comment about the showrunners too busy texting the porn stars on set to pay attention to the Jamie/Cersei scene. Would love to hear stories of bts of s8. The amount of coke that the cast (and crew) must have consumed during the filming of the battle of winterfell episode will probably become the stuff of legend.

Bump

The set for the 80s show ALF was apparently a nightmare. It especially drove Max Wright insane.

I watched that Hollywood Roundtable Emmy ladies edition recently, and Alex Borstein was on it. She was interesting and had a good point of view, but seemed VERY frosty and negative (she jokingly referred to herself as an "aloof cunt" and the other actresses seemed shocked she used the word lol). She also said she never wanted to play a mother on screen because she feels like children shouldn't be on set and she feels bad for them. I'm wondering if she butted heads with anyone on the sets of Family Guy / Getting On / Marvelous Mrs Maisel. You can tell she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

[Quote] She also said she never wanted to play a mother on screen because she feels like children shouldn't be on set and she feels bad for them.

Sounds like she's seen some shit.

[Quote] I'm wondering if she butted heads with anyone on the sets of Family Guy / Getting On / Marvelous Mrs Maisel. You can tell she doesn't suffer fools gladly.

I doubt she has on Family Guy.

[quote]'m wondering if she butted heads with anyone on the sets of Family Guy / Getting On / Marvelous Mrs Maisel.

I don't think "Family Guy" has a "set."

Two 'insider' stories.

Had a friend who worked on Sons Of Anarchy and Katy Segal was hated by...everyone. She was a car wash cunt on the set, threw her weight around and was universally hated, especially by makeup and hair

I interviewed Tracy Scoggins years ago, (who is fantastic and so camp), and she said off air Hatcher was an absolute horror to her on the Lois and Clark set, like obsessively awful

r594, I've always wished someone would write a book about Mad TV with interviews from the cast and production. I never heard anything about Borstein being difficult on the show but I'd be interested to learn any behind-the-scenes stories. I think that show was a case of the cast/writers/producers vs the cheap network.

R598 Yesss I miss Mad TV. A shame Debra Wilson's career never went anywhere after it, she was a real talent.

[Quote] and she said off air Hatcher was an absolute horror to her on the Lois and Clark set, like obsessively awful

Join the club!