Working on television can be a great experience, but some actors end up with serious misgivings
about particular shows on which they appeared. From teen stars to legendary
comedians, there are a whole lot of actors who seriously regret playing in certain TV shows.
When Mischa Barton took on a lead role on the teen soap The O.C.
she was already a star in-the-making. The show chronicled the lifestyles of the rich
and famous in Southern California's Orange County.
As Marissa Cooper, the rich, beautiful, and troubled girl next door, Barton strikes up a
relationship with brooding outsider Ryan Atwood, played by Ben McKenzie, becomes friends with
Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts, played by Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson, and deals with school,
drinking problems, and plenty of ups and downs with her dramatic and difficult parents.
Barton left the show during its third season after her character was killed in a car crash. She
later admitted that if she could do it all over again, she probably wouldn't have taken the role.
Though McKenzie, Brody, and Bilson were firmly in their twenties during their time on the The O.C.,
Barton was just 17 when she started, and in retrospect, she said:
"People say be grateful for what you have,
but it certainly was not the kind of thing I was expecting it to be."
Mandy Patinkin has been one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood for decades,
but before his long-running role on Showtime's Homeland alongside Claire Danes,
he had a few botched stints on television,
appearing on both Chicago Hope and Criminal Minds for just two seasons before leaving both shows.
As far as Chicago Hope was concerned, Patinkin simply wanted to be able to spend more time with
his family and couldn't handle the schedule, but Criminal Minds was a different matter.
Patinkin signed on to play Jason Gideon, a criminal profiler with a dark past,
but he ended up exiting the series just two episodes into the third season
due to "creative differences," which is a polite way of saying he hated the material.
Patinkin told New York Magazine that he was shocked by the show's gory,
disturbing content, saying:
"I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape
all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to
my soul and my personality. After that, I didn't think I would get to work in television again."
Patinkin even went so far as to call the show his "biggest
public mistake," mincing no words about his biggest career regret.
During the height of Game of Thrones,
which ended its run as one of the most lauded and watched series of all time,
most actors probably would've given anything for the chance to kill or be killed in Westeros.
In fact, plenty of performers wound up with stints on the show, which was famous for
brutally murdering its characters in unexpected ways. However, it seems as if at least one actor
who spent five seasons in the Seven Kingdoms would rather have not visited the realm at all.
Stephen Dillane played Stannis Baratheon, brother of the late King Robert and seemingly
rightful heir to the throne. However, after trying to fight every obstacle in his path,
he falls in battle at the hands of Brienne of Tarth, played by Gwendoline Christie,
after going so far as to burn his own young daughter at the stake as a war sacrifice.
Ultimately, it turns out Dillane might have been just as tortured as the character he played.
He had trouble understanding the storylines,
relying on co-star Liam Cunningham, who played Davos Seaworth to explain them.
Even after his time on Thrones, Dillane claimed he would turn on the show
only to turn it back off again because he was unable to follow it,
proving this notoriously complex series was even mysterious to some of the actors involved.
When NBC's new sitcom Community premiered in 2009, the cast was a promising bunch,
from future Atlanta star Donald Glover to The Hangover's Ken Jeong to Alison Brie,
who would go on to appear in Mad Men and GLOW.
Plus, there was a former Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase, who was best known for his series of
National Lampoon films. Chase infamously parted ways with SNL on negative terms,
so it may have been a calculated risk to give him a role in something as small as Community.
And in the end, it might not have been the right call.
Chase stuck it out on Community for four seasons despite several high-profile tiffs with the show's
creator, Dan Harmon. But he never missed the opportunity to criticize the show in public,
telling The Huffington Post that signing onto the series was a "big mistake,"
and that as a sitcom, the entire project was the, quote, "lowest form of television."
It's no wonder Chevy quit in the middle of the fourth season by walking off the set.
Before adult animated series like BoJack Horseman, Archer, and Big Mouth started to push the envelope
on dirty, boundary-breaking animation, there was South Park, the original controversial cartoon.
No topic was untouchable for creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who brought the insane,
raunchy Colorado town of South Park to life with absurd voice acting, heightened situations,
and topical references. However, one longtime performer on the show eventually hit his limit,
quitting suddenly over a joke that he thought went way too far.
A 2005 episode of South Park that relentlessly skewered Scientology
apparently angered Isaac Hayes, a public Scientologist who played Chef on the show.
"I'm not the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. And Scientology is just a big fat global scam."
At first, Hayes didn't seem too upset, saying it was all in good fun.
But his attitude changed, because in early 2006, Hayes issued a statement
saying the show had finally gone too far, citing, quote, "religious intolerance."
Hayes was released from his contract. But after his passing in 2008, his son, Isaac Hayes III,
said his father actually suffered a stroke before that statement was issued,
and someone involved with the Church of Scientology quit on his behalf,
providing a much more tragic twist to this story than anyone could have anticipated.
The Brady Bunch trafficked in feel-good humor and easy, goofy jokes. An ensemble cast by nature,
everyone is familiar with the story of a man named Brady, his wife Carol, and their sons and
daughters, all adjusting to life in a much bigger family. It was sweet and sappy, but according to
the guy who played Mike Brady, the show could've been a lot more clever in its execution.
Robert Reed was a classically-trained actor who even attended London's famous Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art. The man spent most of his early career as a Shakespearean actor,
so it's not surprising that he was unhappy with The Brady Bunch's material.
Reed frequently clashed with the show's producer,
Sherwood Schwartz, a veteran of the much sillier Gilligan's Island, and he would
give Schwartz unsolicited notes before flat-out refusing to appear in the show's final episode.
As the story goes, Schwartz wanted to give Reed the ax if the show continued.
Alas, it didn't. The Brady Bunch was canceled after five seasons.
Child stars often work to shed their squeaky-clean images as they move towards adulthood, but few
performers have worked harder at this than Miley Cyrus. After making her name on Disney Channel's
Hannah Montana, where she played a teen girl who's secretly a pop star, Cyrus pivoted hard in the
post-Hannah years, making a name for herself as a controversial and unpredictable artist.
Despite her often ridiculous antics, Cyrus' undeniable talent has kept her
in the cultural lexicon, and she has said the role definitely caused some mental challenges,
but perhaps that made her who she is today.
Though Miley Cyrus says she doesn't completely regret the show, her father, Billy Ray Cyrus,
who appeared on the show as Miley's father, has a totally different take.
In 2011, the "Achy Breaky Heart" singer told GQ that the show "destroyed his family," and
that he wished the series had never happened, saying, quote, "I'd take it back in a second."
And that makes sense considering that he'd just split up with his
wife and wasn't speaking to Miley at the time.
In recent years, however, it appears that father and daughter have patched things up.
"I just don't want you to die alone, Dad."
The Jonas Brothers — made up of Kevin, Joe, and Nick — became superstars thanks
in part to the Disney Channel and original movies like Camp Rock.
But the brothers have some serious regrets about their Disney Channel series.
Starting in the spring of 2009, the three starred in their own show,
Jonas — renamed Jonas L.A. in its second and final
season — presenting a fictionalized version of their lives as a boy band.
When Jonas L.A. didn't continue past its second season,
it was clearly a huge relief for all three Jonases. In 2013, Joe told Vulture:
"[...] It just ended up being some weird slapstick humor that only a 10-year-old would laugh at.
We went along with it at the time, because we thought Disney was our only real shot,
and we were terrified that it could all be taken away from us at any moment."
Apparently, all three brothers agreed. In 2019, in their Amazon documentary Chasing Happiness,
they again admitted they regretted Jonas L.A., with Nick saying the show was, quote,
"just a bad move" and Kevin revealing that the series definitely wasn't, quote, "on brand."
"The show was not good."
"It didn't feel like it was us anymore."
The Jonas Brothers have survived and thrived in the years since,
but clearly, they don't spend much time rewatching episodes of Jonas L.A.
Lost remains one of the biggest television hits,
but one of its stars had a less than positive experience.
Evangeline Lilly, who starred as Kate Austen for the show's entire run,
revealed in a July 2018 episode of The Lost Boys podcast that not only was she
unhappy with Kate's character arc, but that she was often miserable on set.
Here's Lilly on The Lost Boys talking about her character:
"At the beginning, she was kind of cool. And then as the show went on,
I felt like she became more and more predictable and obnoxious."
To make matters worse, Lilly even detailed some instances of sexual harassment and
coercion on set when it came to scenes that required various states of undress.
She said:
"In season 3, I'd had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene
partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter. I was mortified and I was trembling,
and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out."
However, when confronted with a similar situation in season 4, she bravely spoke up:
"I then said, 'That's it. No more. You can write whatever you want — [but] I
won't do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.'"
And she didn't.
Lilly is an MCU superhero now, but for one dark moment, Lost left her feeling powerless.
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