What's the real story behind Aunt Viv being replaced on The Fresh Prince?
Which cast member on Frasier was the biggest prima donna?
Behind all the smiles and life lessons, TV families often have as much drama as real families.
It wasn't all lovely ladies with golden curls on the set of The Brady Bunch, especially
when Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb were shooting together as sisters Marcia and Jan, respectively.
"Well, all I hear all day long at school is how great Marcia is at this, or how wonderful
Marcia did that.
Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"
As McCormick revealed in her 2009 memoir Here's the Story, Plumb resented her for, quote,
"getting too much attention."
And it only became worse as the kids grew up.
Susan Olsen, who played youngest Brady sister Cindy, told Fox News in 2009 that McCormick
and Plumb were eventually no longer on speaking terms, to the point that:
"Whenever we get together for any project there will only be one or the other."
As Olsen further explained,
"[Eve] got tired of Maureen gaining attention for herself by regurgitating the tiresome
and false insinuations that they had a lesbian affair."
Fortunately, like most Brady stories, this one ultimately has a happy ending, as the
onscreen sisters had a chance to settle their squabble in the HGTV miniseries A Very Brady
Renovation, which premiered in 2019.
As Plumb admitted to E!,
"It had been a really long time since we had all been together and it's really cool to
see who people are today and what they're doing.
It's awesome…
It's so nice to reconnect with people that you care about."
Who can forget the public spectacle that was Charlie Sheen's exit from Two and a Half Men?
It should come as no surprise that his fire burned a few bridges along the way.
The exact timeline of his departure from the show is unclear, but it undeniably reached
a head when he called creator Chuck Lorre a "clown" and a "turd" while calling in to
Alex Jones' radio show.
Shortly afterwards, Sheen was fired from the sitcom.
And the punches didn't stop there.
After his firing, Sheen went on to tell E! News that his onscreen brother Jon Cryer was,
quote, "a turncoat, a traitor, [and] a troll."
Cryer apparently hadn't been outspoken enough in favor of Sheen after his firing, and Sheen
also claimed that he hadn't reached out to him, although Cryer claimed otherwise.
But it seems that there are no hard feelings too tough to forgive among TV families, as
Lorre later told Entertainment Tonight that he didn't feel like he and Sheen were ever
in a feud.
"I felt like he was my friend.
I really loved the guy."
Cryer, meanwhile, had more mixed feelings about his time with Sheen.
As he put it in his memoir, So That Happened,
"To some [...] [Sheen] was a rebel, a truth teller willing to poke his masters in the eye.
[...] Of course, Charlie wasn’t those things.
He was simply lashing out at the people who told him the party was over."
The WB series Charmed was anything but, at least not behind the scenes.
If anything, this late 90s/early 2000s drama about three magical sisters was rather cursed.
Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano played two of the sisters, and they grew to have a real-life
beef so big that it led to Doherty's departure from the show.
As Milano recounted to E! News in 2020,
"There were times when I'd come in and say, 'Good morning, Shannen,' and she didn't say
anything to me.
And there were times when she'd come in and say, 'Good morning, Alyssa,' and I wouldn't
say anything to her."
For Doherty, the routine silent treatments weren't worth the paycheck.
As she told Entertainment Tonight in 2001,
"I'm 30 years old, and I don't have time for drama in my life anymore."
With any family infighting, time passes, people grow, there are regrets, and hopefully there
are amends.
As Milano later admitted to Entertainment Tonight in 2021,
"I can take responsibility for a lot of our tension."
Likewise, Doherty is letting bygones be bygones.
As she put it on a 2015 appearance on Sway in the Morning,
"Are there times that were rough?
Yeah, I mean, I think that when you work that closely together, there's always going to
be times that are rough."
"Sometimes you don't always get along with a person 24/7 that you work with."
While Steve Urkel technically had no blood relation to the Winslow family on Family Matters,
he was at their house so often that he deserves an honorary spot at the table.
And the irate responses to him from the Winslows on the show may not have been too far from
what was going on behind the scenes.
On a 2021 episode of TVOne's Uncensored, Urkel actor Jaleel White rehashed some of the early
tension between himself and the older actors on the show.
As he put it,
"I was not welcomed to the cast at all.
They know what it was.
I didn’t think anything of it being cast to be on Family Matters, because it was supposed
to only be a guest spot, one and done."
As the story goes, the other actors bristled when the network shifted much of the show's
focus over to Urkel.
As reported by Entertainment Weekly, there was one particularly notable occasion that
also involved Reginald VelJohnson and Jo Marie Payton, who played the Winslow parents.
White had to put on a dress, and the two older actors pressured him against wearing it.
As White recalled,
"[They] were very sensitive to putting Black men in dresses."
But over time, the familiarity among the cast improved.
According to White,
"[VelJohnson and Payton] do deserve credit at times for having helped foster a more harmonious environment.
[...] And we did become very much a family."
Isn't that the best any family, real or fictitious, can hope for?
On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Aunt Vivian may have had the run of the mansion, but behind
the scenes Will Smith was definitely the top dog.
Viewers may recall the jarring recasting of Aunt Viv, originally played by Janet Hubert
, who was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid in the fourth season.
And it wasn't exactly a smooth transition for the rest of the cast.
In a 2020 interview on WABC's Here & Now, Hubert discussed her departure from Fresh Prince.
She explained that she wasn't fired, but rather that she rejected her contract renewal in
the hopes that the network would return with a better offer.
Instead, they replaced her, though she wasn't surprised.
In her eyes, the production team seemed to have it out for her.
As she put it,
"They told me I had to go into my dressing room in between takes because I wasn't laughing
at Will's jokes."
She even went so far as to claim,
"The cast was offered money to take me down."
Hubert had a chance to confront Smith on a Fresh Prince reunion that aired on HBO Max
in 2020.
She didn't hold back.
"I had been banished.
And they said it was you who banished me."
He then offered an apology.
He reflected further on the experience during a Red Table Talk interview, as he admitted
that he was "shaking" during their conversation.
"That's not who I want to be, and it's not how I want to make people feel."
Hopefully, Smith makes the most of this second chance.
The Jackson brothers on the NBC sitcom were known for their bickering, just like any siblings
who ultimately loved each other.
But behind the scenes, it was a little more violent, as Todd Bridges reportedly slapped
Gary Coleman, although Coleman reportedly cast the first palm.
Bridges, who played older brother Willis, recounted the story of this backstage fight
in his 2010 autobiography Killing Willis.
Bridges felt that Coleman was getting too egotistical as his character Arnold was gaining
popularity among the fans.
According to Bridges, Coleman would always have an obnoxious comeback to everything that
was said around the set.
On one occasion when he couldn't come up with a comeback, he slapped Bridges, who then slapped him back.
Unlike some of the feuds on this list, this one sadly does not have the chance for a reconciliation.
Each of the three young leads— Bridges, Coleman, and Dana Plato — struggled with
their fame after the show's conclusion.
Plato died of an overdose in 1999, while Coleman passed away in 2010 after enduring financial
struggles that led to him declaring bankruptcy.
Bridges, who dealt with his own drug addiction, is now the only surviving member of the original
main cast.
He's doing better, though.
As he put it during a 2016 appearance on The Dr. Oz Show,
"I love life now.
Life is the best thing in the world."
It's hard to forget Roseanne Barr's explosive exit from the revival of her eponymous ABC
sitcom in 2018.
But just in case you forgot, here's a quick refresher: Barr tweeted about former Obama
Administration advisor Valerie Jarrett, in which she linked her to the Muslim Brotherhood
and Planet of the Apes.
She was then subsequently fired by ABC for the remark.
The rest of the cast narrowly avoided a complete cancellation, when Roseanne was rebranded
as the spinoff series The Conners.
In response to Barr's tweet, Sara Gilbert, who plays Roseanne's daughter Darlene, tweeted
in response,
"Roseanne’s recent comments about Valerie Jarrett, and so much more, are abhorrent and
do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show.
I am disappointed in her actions to say the least."
Barr responded in turn, as she claimed that Gilbert, quote, "destroyed the show and my
life with that tweet."
Despite this rocky episode, The Conners has gone on to flourish on ABC.
And ultimately it would seem that just like in real life, some family disputes are irreconcilable.
For the most part, the cast of Frasier appears to have been entirely amicable with each other.
The human cast, that is.
As for family pup Eddie, he was actually portrayed by two different canine actors.
He was originally played by a Jack Russell Terrier named Moose, but he came to share
the role with his son Enzo as he got older.
Often enough, family and business just don't mix, and that was certainly true on the set
of Frasier.
In an interview on the show Animal Magnetism, Enzo's trainer Mathilde DeCagny revealed,
"Moose and Enzo's relationship is so bad that they can't even be in the same room together."
Moose may be more to blame, as DeCagny explained that before he was an actor, his owners gave
him up.
"He had been nothing else but a terror."
The interviewers then connected the bristling relationship between Moose and Enzo to the
equally difficult one between human father-son duo Frasier and Martin Crane.
Sadly, Enzo and Moose have both since passed.
Now that their on-set days are over, hopefully they've reconciled in doggy heaven.
It's easy to over-romanticize an iconic classic sitcom like The Andy Griffith Show.
And certainly, Griffith himself surely wanted audiences to have that feeling.
As he put it in a 1996 Today Show interview,
"It was of a time gone by."
But despite the simple times in front of the camera, there was drama behind the scenes.
For the most part, the set of Mayberry seems to have been as blissful as the show made
it seem.
But one bit of trouble in paradise stemmed from the difficult relationship between Griffith
and his castmate Frances Bavier, who played Aunt Bee.
Ron Howard, who played Andy's son Opie, discussed his memories of making the show during an
interview with the Television Academy.
As he put it,
"I don't think she felt a part of what these boys were up to and their shenanigans."
While the cast has managed to keep relatively tight-lipped about any unpleasant feelings,
Griffith did reveal some details about his relationship with Bavier during an interview
with Ralph Emery on the show On the Record.
As he recalled,
"She wasn't always in real great shape, emotionally."
But toward the end of Bavier's life, Griffith called her and made amends.
As he recounted,
"I hadn't talked to her in a long time.
[...] She said, 'I'm sorry we didn't get along better.'
She said, 'It was my fault.'"
Hopefully, this clearing of the air gave Bavier some degree of peace.
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