Random Behind-The-Scenes Stories About '80s Sitcom Stars (18 items)

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  (#1) Katey Sagal

  • 69

  Katey Sagal played Peg Bundy on the sitcom Married... with Children for 11 seasons. During an appearance on The Talk, the actor explained she had been working mainly as a musician prior to being cast, and she was worried that she would be fired from the show and be forced to return to playing gigs. She explained:

  So I sort of had this idea that I'll disguise myself so that nobody will recognize me when I take this [costume] off. So that was one of my motivations... because she was really in drag. I mean, that was her, she was really dolled up. And I didn't really look like that, so I could go about my normal life.

  She added:

  I went into the audition wearing very tight clothes, and I had my hair up. I sort of felt like when I read the script that they [Peg Bundy and her husband] spoke so horribly to each other that they had to have something really hot going on somewhere.
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  (#2) Christina Applegate

  • 51

  Christina Applegate became a television star as a teenager by playing Kelly Bundy on the Fox sitcom Married... with Children.

  As she admitted during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, Applegate was just 15 and more interested in being a dramatic actress when she was originally approached about being in the Married... with Children pilot:

  I did not want to do the show. At that time, I was on a drama series and I thought it [the Married... with Children script] was disgusting. I wouldn't even audition for it. And then they went ahead and shot a pilot with two other kids. And, for whatever reason, the chemistry just didn't work and they came back to me and said, "Would you please come in?" and I was like, "Nooo." And they sent me the pilot. My mom and I did not want to like it, and we turned it on and we were stifling laughing. So I thought I'd go in. But I'd never done comedy before... I know my mom said to him [Ed O'Neil] on day one, "Look, Christina is not very good at comedy. Will you help her?" And I guess it worked out. Eventually, I figured it out.
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  (#3) Michael J. Fox

  • 62

  Michael J. Fox was not the first choice to play the young conservative Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties - Matthew Broderick actually was originally cast in the role. But after Broderick dropped out of the project, series creator Gary David Goldberg was talked into taking another look at one of the other actors who had auditioned for the part - Fox. This time, Goldberg agreed that the actor would be right for the role.

  But Brandon Tartikoff, NBC's head of programming, was not convinced, as he believed Fox was too short to convincingly play the son of Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter Birney. As Fox recalled in his memoir Lucky Man, the NBC executive told Goldberg:

  It always annoyed me as a kid watching Father Knows Best that Bud Anderson was so much shorter than his parents.

  But Tartikoff agreed to let Fox play the role in the pilot. When he saw it, the NBC executive agreed that Fox was very good in the role, but still was hesitant about the casting choice, especially in terms of the marketing for the show. He told Goldberg:

  This [Fox] is not the kind of face you'll ever see on a lunchbox.

  Goldberg retorted:

  Look, all I know is this: I send the kid out with two jokes and he brings me back five laughs.

  In the end, Tartikoff agreed not to have Fox replaced, and the actor went on to win the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series three times for his performance as Alex P. Keaton.
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  (#4) Kim Fields Was So Short That During The First Season Of 'The Facts of Life,' Producers Had Her Wear Roller Skates To Avoid Awkward Camera Angles

  When Kim Fields was cast as Tootie Ramsey on The Facts of Life, she was meant to be playing a 12-year-old character. But as the actor admitted to Page Six, in reality, she was several years younger than her character and too short to convincingly appear as a preteen. So the producers came up with an unusual idea to try and make Fields appear older - they put her on roller skates. Another benefit of putting the actor on the skates was that it allowed the show to avoid the awkward camera angles caused by the difference in Fields's and the other actors' heights. For her part, Fields didn't mind having to skate through her scenes:

  I was very grateful because it gave me an opportunity to have a job, that for all intents and purposes, I may not have had because I was nine years old and I was playing 12. So that’s what it took me to have the job. I was on skates till I grew.

  Ironically, Fields's height had earlier cost her the opportunity to be cast on the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes since she was thought to be too tall to play the part of Gary Coleman's girlfriend.
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  (#5) Tom Hanks's And Peter Scolari's Tendency To Go Off-Script Could Frustrate The Producers On 'Bosom Buddies'

  In 2021, Tom Hanks is a huge movie star with multiple box-office hits and six Academy Award nominations for best lead actor, winning twice. But in 1980, he was a young actor with just a few film or television roles under his belt when he won the part of Kip Wilson in the new ABC sitcom Bosom Buddies.

  Hanks and co-star Peter Scolari played two young men struggling to make it in the advertising industry who had to cross-dress in order to be able to live in one of the few places they could afford - an all-women hotel. The sitcom was canceled after just two seasons, but Hanks and Scolari became good friends. As Hanks recalled during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Scolari's passing in October 2021, the two actors did a lot of improvising on Bosom Buddies, which could sometimes frustrate the show's staff:

  We had to stay on the set and say every line over and over and over again, so we started... monkeying around with the script and playing around with props and whatnot, and the directors were up in a booth... We’d always hear on the studio talkback, "Hey, guys? ... Are you going to say that?" "We might!" "But it’s not in the script." "Yeah, but... if it works, it works, right?" ... "Can you give us a moment?" "Yeah, sure. Go ahead." And then we’d come up with something else. And then they’d come back again and say, "Wait, wait, wait. We just figured out the one thing you’re gonna do. Are you gonna do that, too?" "We might!"
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  (#6) Dave Coulier

  • 64

  Candace Cameron (now Candace Cameron Bure), who played oldest daughter D.J. on Full House, can credit her co-star Dave Coulier with introducing her to her husband, former NHL player Valeri Bure. As she explained to HuffPost Live, the future couple met during the final season of the television show:

  [Coulier] was playing in a charity hockey game, and so he said, "Hey, there are these two really good Russian hockey players." It was Val and his brother Pavel.

  Coulier invited his co-stars to attend the charity game. Cameron accepted the invitation:

   We sat there and were looking at these two really cute boys - two cute men, I guess - on the ice, and I was like, "I want to meet that one, the blonde one," which was Val. And that was it.

  For his part, the NHL player was a fan of Full House, which he watched to help him learn English. The two went on a date the day after being introduced by Coulier. They have been married since 1996 and have three children. The couple made sure to thank the Full House actor for his role in bringing them together:

  Dave Coulier still has a hockey stick that my husband signed for him that says, "Thanks for Candace."
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  (#7) Vicki Lawrence

  • 74

  Aside from Carol Burnett herself, Vicki Lawrence was the only cast member of The Carol Burnett Show who was part of the variety show for all 11 seasons (1967-1978). It was on this show that Lawrence first played the character of coldhearted Thelma Mae Harper - AKA "Mama" - in a series of comedy sketches entitled "The Family." 

  In an interview for the Television Academy Foundation, Lawrence revealed that the writers who came up with the idea for these sketches had problems with both the casting and the way "Mama" was portrayed:

  They [the writers] hated that she [Burnett] wanted to do it Southern, they said that "this is going to offend the entire southern half of the country," but Carol said, "No, this is where I feel it belongs." They hated that I was Mama and she [Carol] was [Mama's daughter] Eunice. They pretty much hated everything we did with it. They came to the first run-through... and when they saw the sketch, the way we had done it, they were so angry that they threw down their pads and pencils and stormed out of the rehearsal hall... In the production meeting afterwards, "You've ruined it. You can't do this. You can't... You're going to offend the South. You've ruined our beautiful sketch, our beautiful characters." But that's the way it went on the air because that's the way Carol wanted to do it.

  Instead of offending the viewers, "The Family" sketch was so popular that it quickly became a regular part of The Carol Burnett Show - and years later, the basis for the sitcom Mama's Family.
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  (#8) Delta Burke

  • 67

  Delta Burke played superficial, selfish beauty queen-turned-interior designer Suzanne Sugarbaker on Designing Women for five seasons. During her run on the show, her struggles with her weight often made her a target of the tabloids and a punchline in other comedy shows. In 2000, Burke told the Los Angeles Times that it even affected the atmosphere on the set of Designing Women: 

  I remember being on the sound stage with people standing around me trying to decide what they were going to have me wear. They would talk about me like I wasn’t even there. "What are we going to do about those hips?"

  By the second season, Burke was suffering from depression and unsuccessfully asked to get out of her contract. Although she started therapy and went on medication to deal with the depression, she started having panic attacks. In 2000, her husband Gerald McRaney told the LA Times:

  The depression had gotten to her so much she could barely function, and it was all wrapped around that image and the legitimate fear that she was going to be fired and that her career was going to be over.

  Things continued to get worse for the actor. By the middle of the fourth season, the actor's weight had ballooned to 200 pounds, and she was suffering from panic attacks. But one day, Designing Women co-star Jean Smart told the LA Times, Burke got a note from another star actress who had dealt with being the target of ridicule because of her weight:

  It was this wonderful personal note from Liz Taylor saying, "I know what you’re going through... Hang in there... I think you’re gorgeous."

  Burke added:

  [Taylor] was just "it" to me. It was like getting a letter from the great goddess. I would let people look at it, but they couldn’t touch it.

  A turning point for Burke came when she asked the producers to incorporate her weight issues into the show's plotlines. Still, issues between the actor and the show's producers led to Burke being fired from the show following the fifth season.
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  (#9) Estelle Getty

  • Dec. at 84 (1923-2008)

  Although she was an experienced stage actress, Estelle Getty had done very little work on television prior to being cast as the 80-year-old Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls. In an interview for the Television Academy Foundation, her fellow cast member Rue McClanahan claimed that this inexperience caused problems for Getty:

  She couldn't remember her lines, you know. She had an awful time remembering lines because she would freeze. She'd panic. And panic, there's nothing worse than, and there's also there's nothing stronger than... you can't buck it. It is gonna get you if you don't have any way to get over it... She would start getting under a dark cloud the day before tape day... You could see a big difference in her on that day. She'd start walking around like Pig Pen under a dark cloud. By tape day, she was unreachable. She was just as uptight as a human being can get. And when you're freezing, when your brain is frozen like that, you can't remember lines... She was so scared, she couldn't remember her name...
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  (#10) Kirstie Alley

  • Dec. at 71 (1951-2022)

  When Shelley Long decided to leave Cheers after the hit show's fifth season, the writers had to come up with a new lead female character to replace Long's character Diane Chambers, the intellectually snobbish bar waitress/love interest of Sam Malone (Ted Danson). The character they came up with was Rebecca Howe, an uptight corporate executive who takes over the management of Malone's bar after he sells it to the corporation Howe works for. Kirstie Alley was chosen to play the role.

  On her first day on set, Alley took a huge risk by showing up dressed as Diane - complete with a blonde wig and eyebrows and wearing a prim and proper dress. As Alley explained to People magazine:

  I wanted to break the ice and get off to a fresh start.

  The stunt worked, and at the end of her first week on the show, George Wendt (Norm) and John Ratzenberger (Cliff) gave the actor a shotgun as a gift. Ratzenberger told Alley:

  If you ever want to leave [the show], you’ll have to shoot your way out.

  Alley remained part of Cheers until the series ended its run in 1993, earning five Emmy nominations (winning once) for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for her portrayal of the upwardly mobile corporate executive Howe.
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  (#11) Bronson Pinchot

  • 64

  Bronson Pinchot is best known for playing Balki Bartokomous, the shepherd from Eastern Europe who moves in with his distant American cousin Larry Appleton (Mark-Linn Baker) on the ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers. 

  Pinchot's trademark on the series was performing his "Dance of Joy" to celebrate any type of good fortune. But behind the scenes, things were not so happy for the actor. As he told Page Six, despite the success and fame that being on Perfect Strangers brought him, he was "very unhappy" and "depressed" while starring on the show, in large part because of a troubled home life:

  I would go home, and my then-girlfriend wouldn’t even look up from the TV. I would go home from people screaming and police barricades, and then I would go home and my girlfriend at the time wouldn’t even look up. I would crash and I would say how is it possible that they had to hold people back, and I just want one person to and I guess I’ll just have to wait for commercial. It was extreme, it was what it was.

  While his girlfriend ignored him, other women did not. He admitted to Page Six that he did not accept any of the offers from the groupies, and was especially turned off from the ones he described as having a "zany look" in their eyes:

  I didn’t like it and I didn’t fancy it. It was very clear to me, there was a slight dilation in the eyes that meant you’re on my screen and so I must have you.

  The actor described that time in his life as "very sad and very lonely" but admitted he had been afraid of trying to get help because he didn't want to "stir the pot." It was only after Perfect Strangers ended its run that he decided to try therapy:

  ...I went to a psychotherapist, and the guy said, "I cannot believe you even lasted this long. I’m shocked that you actually survived this long."
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  (#12) Emmanuel Lewis

  • 52

  NFL star Alex Karras turned to acting after his football career ended. He met Susan Clark when he portrayed her husband in the TV biopic Babe, and the two actors married soon after. In 1983, they decided to create a TV series based on their relationship, called Another Ballgame, and the pilot about a former NFL player who marries a socialite was picked up by ABC.

  In 1982, meanwhile, Emmanuel Lewis rose to fame, primarily through a series of commercials for Burger King. Although he was 11 years old, his small size made him appear younger. ABC quickly signed him to a production deal, but because this happened after the 1983 pilot season had ended, the network was left with two primary options - wait until the following season to give him his own show, or put him into one of their new shows.

  They chose the latter option and approached Karras and Clark about adding the child actor to Another Ballgame and changing the plotline to become one about a newlywed couple who adopts a young boy. The couple agreed to the idea, but problems soon popped up, as Karras and Clark - who were among the producers of the show - thought the show would be about both themselves and Lewis (and called Then Came You), while the other producers and ABC executives wanted to center the show around Lewis. Karras and Clark were upset when ABC informed them that the show would be called Webster and focus mainly on the child star. 

  This caused significant tension on set during the first season of the show, as an unhappy Lewis felt that all the fighting was all his fault. As the series progressed, the production company came to an agreement with Karras and Clark that made the show more balanced rather than having the storylines being so heavily slanted towards Lewis's character, which improved the relationship between Lewis and his adult co-stars and eliminated most of the arguments between the couple and the other producers. Webster ended up running for six seasons before being canceled.
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  (#13) Ted Danson

  • 75

  Ted Danson was cast as Sam Malone, the alcoholic former baseball player turned bar owner in Cheers. But as he explained during a 2016 tribute to James Burrows, the show's co-creator and director, the actor had little in common with the character he played:

  I didn't know baseball, I didn't know jock, I hadn't gotten too arrogant yet, I didn't know any of that stuff. So he [Burrows] told me that I needed to, that perhaps if I reached down and rearranged myself periodically it'd get me into that jock feel. And I used to. I used to get some of the best close-ups because I'd do this at the most inappropriate times.

  The director's instructions must have worked, as not only did the series become a huge hit, but Danson received 11 Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series for his portrayal of Sam Malone, winning twice.
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  (#14) Craig T. Nelson

  • 79

  Craig T. Nelson played Hayden Fox on the ABC sitcom Coach for nine seasons. In 1992, he won the Emmy Award for best lead actor in a comedy series for his performance as the college (later NFL) football coach.

  But in an interview with the Cleveland sports radio channel 92.3 The Fan, Nelson said he was turned down for the role when he first auditioned for it:

  ...Then they called me back and said, "We want to see you again." So I went in. See, I didn't have a reputation as a comedian then. Although I'd grown up as a writer doing the Tim Conway Show... and I'd done stand-up. So, I did have a background in it, but I hadn't been doing it [as an actor] ... Anyway, I didn't get the part, and then I got it. And then we started doing it, and it was a lot of work in the beginning because there was not really a center to that character in the beginning.
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  (#15) Lisa Whelchel

  • 60

  The Facts of Life was centered around four schoolgirls who attend a fictional all-girls boarding school in Peekskill, NY. In Season 2, the writers wanted Blair, the snobbish rich girl played by Lisa Whelchel, to be the first of the four to lose her virginity. But the actor, who became a Christian at age 10, did not feel comfortable with the plotline. In 2020, Whelchel explained to Yahoo! Entertainment that when refusing to do the episode, she told the producers:

  My faith has always been a big part of my life. I don’t think I can do that. That’s not something I can be a part of. I know young girls are watching this show, and that’s not the kind of decision that can really be covered in 17 minutes and a couple of commercials.

  In the end, it wasn't until Season 9 that Natalie (Mindy Cohn) became the first of the four girls to lose her virginity. Whelchel admitted, "I asked to be written out of that episode" - making it the only episode that season that she was not in. She told Yahoo! Entertainment that if she had to do it all over again, she wouldn't have asked to be written out; instead, she would have tried to have her character bring some balance to the topic in a "responsible" way.
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  (#16) Mary-Kate Olsen

  • 37

  Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were just 9 months old when they became television stars by jointly playing the role of Michelle Tanner on Full House. Although most people probably assume they're identical twins because of their appearance, the Olsens have repeatedly clarified that they're actually fraternal twins - they just happen to look very similar. Ashley used to have a freckle over her upper lip, but that disappeared by the time she was a teenager. They're also about an inch apart in height, by their own calculation.

  If you're watching a Full House episode and you're wondering which twin you're seeing, there is one subtle way you can sometimes tell them apart: Mary-Kate is left-handed, while Ashley is right-handed.

  Now in their mid-30s, the sisters are currently focused on their fashion lines. They began their foray into fashion in 1999 when they partnered with Walmart to create a girls' fashion line. They co-founded their fashion brand the Row in 2008, followed by their Elizabeth & James line the following year. 

  Neither Mary-Kate nor Ashley has worked as an actor in more than a decade, although their younger sister Elizabeth has had her own breakthrough in the industry with appearances in films like Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene and the television series WandaVision.
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  (#17) Harry Anderson

  • Dec. at 65 (1952-2018)

  After appearing on a few episodes of Cheers as the charming con artist "Harry the Hat," Harry Anderson received the offer to play Judge Harry T. Stone on the NBC sitcom Night Court. Anderson ended up getting four writing and two directing credits on the show. He told the podcast Just My Show that his least favorite episode of the sitcom was one he both wrote and directed:

  It sounded so good on paper. Harry and [court clerk] Mac (Charles Robinson) were going to go into business creating "Mac snacks." [Mac's] wife made these little rice snacks, and we decided we were going to go into business and market them. And then Harry got out of control and decided that Mac had to be the logo of the company and had to wear tights and a cape. And we ended up poisoning people with the snacks. And it sounded like a romp when I wrote it, and boy, by the end of that week, Charlie [Robinson] was gonna wrap that cape around my neck... I don't think the cast really ever forgave me for putting them through all that. Plus, I think I directed it, and I'm just the world's slowest director... I think they would have given their salaries back if they hadn't had to do it.
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  (#18) Ellen Foley

  • 72

  Ellen Foley portrayed public defender Billie Young - the potential love interest of Judge Harry Stone (Harry Anderson) in the second season of Night Court. However, she only lasted one season - she reportedly was let go due to a lack of chemistry between herself and Anderson. Although Foley told New York magazine in 2008 that no one from the show ever explained to her what had gone wrong:

  I was fired, man! Got bumped for Markie Post! Beats me, I don’t know why.

  One account suggests that the show producers had always wanted Post to play the role of the public defender/love interest, but she hadn't been available, as she was under contract to the ABC show The Fall Guy. When that contract expired, Post replaced Foley on Night Court, although she played a different character.

  A talented singer, prior to being cast on Night Court, Foley had done some acting in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows and found success in the music industry - she is the female singer on Meat Loaf's 1977 single "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." She turned down an offer to tour with Meat Loaf and was replaced in the music video by Karla DeVito, who lip-syncs to Foley's vocals. In 1979, she explained her reason for not going on tour with Meat Loaf:

  I had the chance to do my own record, and that took time with demos and all. I knew if I toured in a position behind somebody else, it would take me awhile to get up front, so I just decided to take the direct route.

  When her music career faltered, she turned her focus back to acting, eventually being cast in Night Court, which probably remains her best-known acting role.

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