A leading man threatens to quit over his onscreen girlfriend, accusations of gaslighting on a
Nickelodeon set, and one TV mom whose firing led to decades of resentment. It may have all been
laughs onscreen, but the behind the scenes beef between these sitcom stars is anything but funny.
"Back in Minnesota, we'd settle this kind of a dispute with some good-natured log rolling."
"Sorry Rose, my log is in the shop."
Betty White and Bea Arthur spent years together on the set of "The Golden Girls."
Many might assume the actors were as close friends in real life as their characters were on the show,
but it turns out there was a bit of conflict between the two.
White talked about their differences in a 2011 interview with HLN.
"Bea was not that fond of me. But I loved…" "Yeah, I know, I've heard that!
What is that about?" "I don't know what I ever did."
At a TimesTalks event in 2011,
White expanded on it, saying that her chipper demeanor just rubbed Arthur the wrong way.
"She found me a pain in the neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude — and that made
Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious."
Arthur's son, Matthew Saks,
opened up to Closer Weekly about his late mother's mean streak, saying,
"My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at.
It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about
at work. [...] It would make my mom unhappy that in-between takes Betty
would go and talk to the audience. It wasn't jealousy. It was a focus thing."
Debra Messing and Megan Mullally of "Will & Grace" allegedly didn't get along on set, and whispers
of a feud intensified when they unfollowed one another on Instagram. Their rumored friction
even impacted the production of the show's 2017 reboot. One of the show's creators, Max Mutchnick,
spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how tensions were managed behind the scenes, saying,
"It's just about the work. And so if we stay true to that,
then we just keep you guys out of whatever happened on the set this year
because it would have done nothing but get in the way of the stories that we wanted to tell."
He went on to reference the bickering between cast members, and said,
"It was not an easy year, but the permanent legacy of the show is much more important
to us than any temporary squabble that would take place on the stage."
So what was the issue? Depends on who you ask,
of course. In 2019 a source told Radar Online that Mullally was to blame, saying,
"She alienated everybody with her diva behavior.
Her outrageous demands behind the scenes caused constant delays in production.
She treated everyone like servants. Debra was the only one who stood up to Megan."
But Mullally had a very different take. During an episode of the podcast
she hosts alongside her husband Nick Offerman, she shared that she felt she was being bullied
and had to stand up for herself. Without naming names, she suggested that a lack of support from
her co-stars had empowered her bully and created a hostile workplace environment.
"Unless you have great advocates who can come in and help you,
and really take charge of the situation [...] it's tough
because the very nature of the bully is that once they're challenged, they really go to town."
Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher seem to be inseparable now,
so it is hard to imagine that the former "That '70s Show" co-stars couldn't stand
each other at first. In an interview with Glamour, Kunis opened up about
the rocky moments in her and Kutcher's friendship long before they were married.
"We went through a period where I thought he was crazy.
At the height of his career, I was like, 'Ugh, I don't like you. I don't even know you anymore.'"
In 2014, a source told Radar Online about the ongoing feud between the
two actors while they were filming "That '70s Show," which aired from 1998 to 2006.
"Ashton and Mila were absolutely not friends during much of the making of That '70s Show.
In fact, they couldn't stand working together."
This feud had a happy ending, though. The pair got married in 2015,
and Kunis shared that Kutcher is her BFF these days. She told Glamour,
"It truly is being married to your best friend. That's a cliché; it's cheesy. But it's true."
"What the hell are you talking about?" "Nothing. I'm talking about nothing.
And you won't have to hear my opinion on anything
ever again, okay?" "Oh, don't tease."
Rumors of a conflict between "Gilmore Girls" co-stars Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson
circulated for years before Graham finally put the speculation to rest in an interview
with TV Guide. When asked if she was "best friends" with Patterson, she responded,
"No. It's a very happy set. It's a very functioning, working set,
and I think some of that is helped by us having a little bit of a life outside."
She added that though they weren't close, they also weren't enemies, as people had speculated.
"We're not intimates. [...] We work well together."
As for Patterson's perspective of his relationship with Graham,
he thinks the so-called feud is nothing more than internet gossip.
When asked if the ongoing speculation was accurate, Patterson told TV Guide:
"No, I think it's not accurate. I think it's really inaccurate. And I think people
thrive on rumor and innuendo; that sells papers, gets people to click on websites."
Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande were never as close as their "Sam & Cat" characters,
which fans discovered in the most modern way possible: through fake news on Twitter.
Here's what happened: in 2014,
someone doctored an image to make it look like Ariana Grande had tweeted out,
"@jennettemccurdy [...] sorry can't see your tweets clearly from
up here in the charts slaying."
Unfortunately, McCurdy didn't know it was fake, so in a very real response she wrote,
"Sorry but you clearly could since you responded
directly to a conversation you were not tagged in. #byeforever."
Also in 2014, McCurdy released an episode of her web series "What's Next For Sarah?"
that many fans believe sneakily made fun of Grande, as it featured a ditzy,
vapid character named Gloriana that seemed to be modeled after McCurdy's former co-star.
So what's the story behind it all? McCurdy actually took responsibility for the one-sided
feud in an episode of her "Empty Inside" podcast, revealing that she let jealousy
get the best of her. She explained that she was originally told she would star in her own show,
but she was later paired with Grande, which was the initial cause of the bad blood.
"Seinfeld" fans may remember that Heidi Swedberg's time on the show as George's fiancée
Susan came to an end when she was abruptly killed off of the show. It turned out Swedberg's run
on "Seinfeld" was cut short because Jason Alexander found her difficult to work with.
But it actually wasn't the star's personality that Alexander had a problem with.
Instead, he simply didn't think they worked well together on screen.
In an interview with Howard Stern, he said that he and other actors on
the show found her difficult to work with because she had different comedic timing.
"Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was,
and mine were always misfiring. And she would do something, and I would go, 'Okay, I see what
she's going to do — I'm going to adjust to her.' And then I'd adjust, and then it would change."
Alexander later issued an apology for his remarks on Twitter. He offered additional
context as it seems he realized he came off a bit harsh in the interview with Howard Stern.
"[Swedberg] is a kind, lovely person who undoubtedly worked really hard to create Susan
and that character was clearly what Larry and Jerry wanted her to be for George.
I just felt I was on uncertain ground in how to play off that character
and I was always concerned that it wasn't working."
"Hannah Montana" stars Miley Cyrus and Emily Osment brought one of the most iconic Disney
Channel friendships to life through their characters, Miley and Lilly. On the show,
the inseparable friends prove that opposites attract, but Osment and Cyrus never had a
deep connection off-camera. Cyrus admitted in her 2009 autobiography,
"Miles To Go," that she was never exactly close to her co-star, saying,
"Emily and I tried to be friends, we really did, but it always ended in
a fight. Our characters got along so well, why couldn't we act the same in real life?"
In 2013, though, the two seemed to patch things over on Twitter, and in 2020,
Osment appeared as a guest on Cyrus' Instagram Live show,
"Bright Minded: Live with Miley," where they reminisced about old times.
"I look like I'm choking you. Look, I'm like going for the throat here."
"This was also a, this was also a premonition."
Rumors of a feud between Charlie Sheen and his "Anger Management" co-star, Selma Blair,
began when Deadline reported that Sheen allegedly fired Blair via an explicit text message.
According to the website, Sheen reportedly became fed up with Blair when she questioned
his work ethic. Allegedly, though, she wasn't alone, as numerous cast and crew members
reportedly didn't appreciate Sheen's unprofessionalism. According to Deadline,
the actor supposedly often showed up late and even "threatened to quit" if Blair wasn't fired.
Sheen claimed in a 2013 interview on "The Tonight Show"
that Blair was written out of the show simply as a creative decision.
"One of our primary characters, Selma Blair, who played Kate,
was written out because [the show] was not about our relationship."
But in 2017, Sheen didn't mince words when sharing his thoughts about Blair
during an appearance on "Watch What Happens Live." While playing "Plead
the Fifth," he was asked to rank some of his female costars, and he had nothing
good to say about either Blair or his former "Two and a Half Men" co-star Jenny McCarthy.
"I would like to kind of mash those two up together and just,
do that, just kick them to the curb. You know, um, they deserve each other."
Jamie Lynn Spears is arguably most well known for being Britney Spears' little sister. But she also
had her own moment in the spotlight as one of the stars of "Zoey 101." In her controversial book,
"Things I Should Have Said," Spears revealed that she was not a fan of her co-star Alexa Nikolas.
She wrote that Nikolas called her, quote, "mean or bitchy," and spread rumors that she smelled bad.
Nikolas was quick to defend herself against these claims. She took to Instagram to share a lengthy
statement about her relationship with Jamie. Nikolas put Spears on blast, writing in part,
"Typical move for a bully to play the victim card/gaslight others while straight up lying."
Nikolas then expanded on the thought, making it very clear where she stood. She wrote,
"She knows everything she is saying is a total lie
and I would have called her out on that. It's sad to see someone not
change after all these years. Nothing that she said in her book about me actually happened."
Nikolas, who previously spoke out about being bullied after she was not
invited to the "Zoey 101" cast reunion in 2020, added,
"I wish I could go back in time and tell my 12-year-old self that
you are extremely lucky not to have a friend like her. You are way better off
without her. You don't need toxic people in your life and you deserve better."
The tension between Janet Hubert and Will Smith of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"
went on long after Smith got her fired from the show. In fact, the feud lasted decades,
as Hubert often publicly spoke out about being replaced by actor Daphne Reid on the show.
In an interview with Omg! Insider, Hubert said that Smith was sure nobody would care.
"He said, 'We're just gonna replace her and act like nothing happened.' Well honey,
that is not what happened, is it? The world has let me know that my place on that show was very,
very, very loved."
Hubert also shared that other cast members, including Alfonso Ribeiro,
who played her on-screen son, failed to stick up for her and instead sided with Smith.
"I felt demonized and beaten up and crucified for so many years.
No one came forward to my defense. No one."
After many years, Hubert and Smith made amends during 2020's "The Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air Reunion" on HBO Max. Both former co-stars acknowledged their wrongdoings during
their heart-to-heart conversation, finally putting the feud to rest.
"I'm so happy we were able to make that reconciliation and
I hope other people can take something from it."
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