2 hours ago
1
Not a loving family.
Sally Struthers wanted to quit “All in the Family” — and blames its creator, the late Norman Lear.
The actress, 77, opened up about being on the sitcom from 1971 to 1979 and working with the showrunner, who died in 2023 at age 101.
Struthers said on the Monday episode of the “Let’s Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti” podcast that she finally felt comfortable opening up about him because “he’s gone.”
As she put it: “I wasn’t a huge fan of his.”
“All those years on the show, Norman and his wife would have dinner parties,” recalled Struthers.
The couple would invite the other stars of the show, including Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton and Rob Reiner, and their spouses over. Struther, however, revealed, “I wasn’t, in eight years, invited to his home. It didn’t feel good.”
Struthers also shared a conversation she had with Lear during the series’ first season.
“He was on the sound stage watching us rehearse, and we were on a break,” she told the hosts. “I said, ‘I can’t believe that we’re doing this and we’re about to hit No. 1 on the air.’”
After noting how Lear “saw so many young ladies” for her role of Gloria, including Reiner’s then-wife Penny Marshall, Struthers asked Lear, “’Was I really the funniest one?'” to which he replied, ‘No.’”
Lear admitted that when casting the show, the team thought it made sense to have Gloria be a daddy’s girl because O’Connor’s Archie Bunker “was a lot to swallow for American audiences with his bigotry and his social sluts.”
The way to “soften him up” was to give him a“soft spot in his heart for his daughter.”
“So we hired you because just like Carroll O’Connor, you have blue eyes and a fat face,” Struthers recalled Lear telling her. The comedic star said she didn’t know how to respond so she walked away.
Despite winning two Emmys for the series, Struthers described herself as the “fourth banana” after the other three leads. According to her, the show’s “older, brilliant Jewish faith writers” knew how to write for the other characters, but not for “a young lady.”
“I usually had about three lines per show that said, ‘I’ll help you set the table, Ma,’ ‘Michael, where are you going?’ and ‘Oh, Daddy, stop it.’ And then the next week I’d have the three same lines in a different order. And if they literally didn’t know what to do with me in a scene, they’d have me go upstairs to take a bath or wash my hair,” she stated. “It was very frustrating.”
The “Still Standing” alum ultimately tried to break her contract after five seasons on the show. After hiring a lawyer and spending $40,000 on legal fees during arbitration, she lost.
“I went back and had three more seasons, but they were by far the most fun for me. Because finally, they had Mike and Gloria have a baby, they had us move next door into the house that [the] Jeffersons lived in,” she said.
Struthers appeared in 182 episodes of “All in the Family” and even received her own spinoff “Gloria” that aired for one season in 1982. Decades later, the Hollywood vet became a fan favorite for her role as Babette on “Gilmore Girls.”
Despite the ups and downs on the series, Struthers noted that part of her longevity as an actress is because she was “lucky enough to be on a groundbreaking national television series.”
In early 2024, she reunited with Reiner for a tribute to Lear at the delayed 2023 Emmy Awards.
Struthers recently starred in the hit Netflix show “A Man on the Inside” alongside Ted Danson and continues to do theater.
She said audiences are still “curious” to come see her in person at 77, joking, “Maybe because they love you or like you, but just as much because ‘Wait a minute, is she still alive? Let’s go see what she looks like now.’”
English (US)