In some cases, whether it's out of malice or necessity, tv writers decide the best way
to say goodbye to an actor is to straight-up annihilate the character. Here are a few TV
and film characters who were killed off because of an actor's awful behavior.
Between 1987 and 1989, the late Jay Thomas played the recurring role of hockey player
Eddie LeBec on the hit sitcom Cheers. LeBec is a hockey player for the Boston Bruins who
gets involved with the tough, no-nonsense waitress Carla, played by Rhea Perlman, and
eventually, the pair tie the knot.
Sadly, their wedded bliss doesn't last long. The Bruins fire Eddie because of his age,
so he's forced to take a job as a skating penguin in a traveling ice show. In a season
eight episode, we learn the former hockey player was killed in a bizarre Zamboni accident.
According to Cheers writer Ken Levine, the hockey player's demise was the result of the
actor saying the wrong thing while the wrong person was listening. In a 2006 blog post,
Levine explained that at the same time Thomas had a recurring role on Cheers, he was also
a DJ in Los Angeles.
When a caller asked him on the air what it was like working on Cheers, Thomas joked that
it was, quote, "brutal" because he had to kiss Rhea Perlman. According to Levine, Perlman
happened to be listening to the show, and as a result, Thomas was never seen on Cheers
again.
A few years before he was chopping through orcs as Gimli in Peter Jackson's Lord of the
Rings series, John Rhys-Davies played Professor Maximillian Arturo on the science fiction
series Sliders.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I think I've just seen god and I could've sworn he was driving
a Cadillac."
Arturo acts as mentor to Quinn, played by Jerry O'Connell, as they and their friends
use wormholes to travel to parallel universes. In the season three two-parter "The Exodus,"
Arturo sacrifices himself to save Quinn, taking a bullet meant for the younger hero.
Nearly two decades after his departure from Sliders, Rhys-Davies told Digital Spy that
the real reason he took the bullet wasn't to save Quinn but to save himself from bad
writing. He said the writers on Sliders didn't have the vision to realize the full potential
of the series. He also called the scripts, quote, "incomprehensible gibberish."
Rhys-Davies went on to say that he clashed with the writers on a regular basis. The actor
recalled in the interview,
"I would go to [the writers] and complain. But they would say, 'John, why don't you just
say the words as written?' and I'd say, 'I'll tell you what, I will actually say the words
as written when you can actually write intelligent sentences!'"
Rhys-Davies wasn't clear about whether he was fired or quit, but either way, he said
his conflicts with the writers were to blame for his departure.
Beginning in 1988, Roseanne aired for nine seasons, ending in 1997. Then in 2018, Roseanne
enjoyed what was initially an extremely successful revival. With the original cast on board and
hit ratings, the new Roseanne looked set to possibly enjoy many more seasons.
"I have an announcement: I'm having a baby."
"A baby what?"
Then, in July 2018, Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist insult about Valerie Jarrett, a former
adviser to President Barack Obama. Soon afterward, ABC fired Barr and canceled the series. But
while it was the end for Roseanne, it wasn't the end of the character's story.
In October 2018, The Conners premiered, featuring all of Roseanne's cast, minus Barr. The first
episode reveals that the Conner family matriarch has died. At first, a heart attack was blamed
for her death, but later in the premiere, we learn she died of an opioid overdose.
Roseanne and The Conners showrunner Bruce Helford said the choice to kill her character
was made to make her departure permanent. Helford also went on to say that the manner
of her death was meant to be:
"...one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the
American working class."
Barr apparently didn't agree. After the premiere, she wrote a long response to her character's
demise on The Conners, saying the choice was too grim and morbid for a family-oriented
show.
In The Matrix films, one of the more conspicuous absences after the first movie is Tank, played
by Marcus Chong. In spite of being one of the few good guys to survive the original
film, his character is killed off between movies and doesn't appear in either The Matrix
Reloaded or The Matrix Revolutions.
The reason Tank dies is that when he was approached to reprise the role, Chong decided on an absolutely
bizarre negotiating strategy. The writer/director team of the Wachowskis reportedly wanted Chong
to return and offered him $250,000 to do so.
But, depending on which version of Chong you ask, that was either way too much or not nearly
enough. Chong wanted $1 million to reprise the role of Tank, but the Wachowskis refused.
So, Chong had his lawyer deliver a letter in which the actor said he would return for
the sequels either for $500,000 or for free. Chong wrote,
"I will do it for free because I love our project and want to protect the role and the
integrity of the [Wachowskis'] vision."
Instead, the Wachowskis decided the franchise could survive without Tank. Unfortunately
for everyone involved, it wasn't the last the Wachowskis heard from Chong. He was arrested
for threatening the filmmakers, and he later unsuccessfully sued Warner Bros., AOL Time
Warner, and the Wachowski's production company for breach of contract, slander, and fraud.
For eight seasons, Charlie Sheen played jingle writer Charlie Harper on the CBS sitcom Two
and a Half Men. But in the season nine premiere, it's revealed that Harper dies an utterly
ridiculous death when a helicopter drops a grand piano on top of him.
Sheen's character is then replaced by internet tycoon Walden Schmidt, played by Ashton Kutcher.
While the manner of Harper's death likely surprised plenty of viewers, the fact that
he died surprised no one. Long before he was even cast on Two and a Half Men, Sheen had
built himself a disturbing reputation that included drug abuse and domestic violence.
In February 2011, Sheen hammered the final nails in his character's coffin with vicious
attacks on Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre when Sheen appeared on The Alex Jones
Show and hurled anti-Semitic insults directed at Lorre and posted an open letter rant on
TMZ.
In early March, Warner Bros announced enough was enough, and Sheen was fired from Two and
a Half Men. However, the season nine premiere proved to not quite be the end of Charlie
Harper.
In the two-part series finale, it's revealed Charlie's stalker neighbor, Rose, faked his
death and has been keeping him a prisoner in a pit for the last four years. Harper escapes,
but he's once again killed by a helicopter that drops a grand piano on him.
For nine seasons, the late soul singer and actor Isaac Hayes lent his voice to the character
Chef on Comedy Central's controversial animated show South Park. Chef would often deliver
wisdom to the show's heroes, wisdom that usually involved breaking into a soul song.
But in 2006, Hayes asked to be released from his contract. Hayes cited what he called the
show's, quote, "intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs" as his reason for departing.
Hayes, a Scientologist, didn't directly reference the season nine episode "Trapped in the Closet,"
which criticized Scientology. But many, including South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone,
assumed that episode was what he was talking about.
In an official statement from Comedy Central, Stone pointed out what he saw as Hayes' hypocrisy,
writing,
"Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons, or Jews.
He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show."
However, we should point out that Hayes' son has said that his dad had a stroke in 2006,
and that the Church of Scientology penned this letter in his name. So perhaps the actor
wasn't responsible for the letter.
Regardless, in the season ten premiere, Parker and Stone made sure Hayes knew how they felt
about his departure. After his hiatus, Chef returns to South Park as a member of the "Super
Adventure Club," a blatant stand-in for Scientology.
At the end of the episode, Chef is on a rope bridge as it's struck by lightning. The bridge
breaks, he catches on fire, falls down a cliffside, and winds up impaled on a branch. Then he's
shot and mauled by both a mountain lion and a bear.
Of the things actress Shannen Doherty is known for, working and playing well with others
isn't one of them. She was reportedly the source of plenty of behind-the-scenes chaos
on the set of the teen drama Beverly Hills 90210, including a fistfight with co-star
Jennie Garth.
In 2015, Doherty's 90210 co-star Tori Spelling admitted that she asked her father, 90210
producer Aaron Spelling, to fire Doherty, a request he honored.
Regardless, Aaron Spelling tapped Doherty again for Charmed, a supernatural drama about
witch sisters who use their powers to fight evil. Doherty played the oldest of the three
sisters, Prue, and she was joined by Alyssa Milano as Phoebe and Holly Marie Combs as
Piper.
But while the series lasted eight seasons and won an impressive cult following, Doherty
was only there for the first three. In the season three finale, Prue is murdered by the
demon assassin Shax, played by Michael Bailey Smith.
This time, while Doherty's departure was because of all the wrong kinds of drama, she refused
to get the proverbial axe. For unspecified reasons, Doherty and co-star Milano had stopped
speaking to one another during the course of the series.
When Milano demanded Doherty be fired, the latter reportedly heard about it through the
grapevine. Rather than be fired, Doherty not only quit, she directed "All Hell Breaks Loose",
the season three finale in which Prue meets her end.
By the end of the sitcom Community, almost half of the actors from the original line-up
of Greendale Community College's most well-known study group had moved on. But one of the only
characters who literally didn't survive the series was Chevy Chase's Pierce Hawthorne.
While Pierce had a penchant for faking heart attacks throughout the show in order to get
out of trouble, apparently his final one was the real deal. According to Community creator
Dan Harmon, the main reason for Hawthorne's death was that Chase and his character were
a little bit too much alike.
"Good evening. I'm god, and here's the news."
The last straw fell during the filming of the season four episode, "Advanced Documentary
Filmmaking." During filming, Chase apparently went on an angry rant, which included a racial
slur.
Afterward, NBC and Chase came to the agreement that season four would be Chase's last, though
he made a cameo in the season five premiere as a hologram. His death was announced later
that season.
Harmon has since gone on record that the rant during season four was just the tip of the
iceberg. Not only did Chase have a history of leaving the set before his filming was
completed, but in a 2018 New Yorker interview, Chase's co-star Donald Glover said the older
actor would often make racist cracks at Glover between takes, including suggesting that the
audience only found Glover funny because he was Black.
For the first two seasons of CBS' police procedural Criminal Minds, Mandy Patinkin played expert
criminal profiler Jason Gideon. Early in season three, Patinkin left the show abruptly, and
Joe Mantegna stepped in as the new profiler David Rossi.
So why the change-up? Patinkin had asked to be released from his contract after failing
to show up at a table read. Then further down the road in the show's tenth season, it was
revealed that Gideon had been murdered off-screen by a suspect from one of his earliest cases.
In a 2012 interview with New York magazine, Patinkin opened up about his departure from
Criminal Minds, saying that working on the show was one of the biggest mistakes he'd
ever made. Apparently playing a criminal profiler was having too many damaging side effects
on Patinkin's mental and spiritual well-being. Patinkin went on to say,
"It was very destructive to my soul and my personality."
He also suggested that Criminal Minds and shows like it were detrimental to society.
Patinkin warned,
"Audiences all over the world use this programming as their bedtime story...This isn't what you
need to be dreaming about."
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