With ‘Married … With Children,’ Katey Sagal Transformed Our Ideas About TV Moms
Katey Sagal has made a career playing some very unique TV moms. The mothers she portrayed on Married … With Children, 8 Simple Rules … for Dating My Teenage Daughter and Sons of Anarchy may not have oozed sweetness, but you’d sure like to have them by your side when the fight breaks out.
Considering that 27 years ago today, Married … aired what Fox promoted as its final episode (though, curiously, it ran an additional episode in June 1997), and that we’re mere days away from Mother’s Day, there’s never been a better time to look back at Segal’s career, her groundbreaking legacy as Peg Bundy, and how the sassy, leopard-print-wearing homemaker opened the door to a new type of TV mother.
She’s from a showbiz family
Sagal ‘s father, Boris directed TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., as well as the Elvis flick Girl Happy and the sci-fi classic The Omega Man. Her mother, Sara, was a singer who died when Katey was in her early twenties; her stepmother, Marge Champion, served as a dance model for a number of classic Disney animated films, including Pinocchio. Her godfather is sitcom producer Norman Lear, and three of her four siblings are also actors — younger sisters Jean and Liz played the Doublemint Twins for a time.
She got her start on TV with Mary Tyler Moore
Sagal came to TV along a different route. A talented musician, she spent the ’70s singing backup for the likes of Bette Midler, Tanya Tucker and Etta James. But eventually, she decided to transition to acting.
In 1985, Sagal scored her first big acting part on the sitcom Mary, starring Mary Tyler Moore. Audiences liked her portrayal of a tough newspaper columnist, but the show was short-lived. Sagal looked for other roles, but the pickings were thin — and a casting director told her she’d never work in television because her kind of rock ‘n’ roll looks had no place in the age of Dallas and Dynasty.
She brought her own wig to the Married … audition
But the new FOX Network was gaming for an edgier audience, and its flagship sitcom Married … With Children needed someone tawdrier than Linda Evans for the role of Peg Bundy, a sex-starved daytime-TV addict whose main amusement was ridiculing her shoe salesman husband Al (Ed O’Neill). Showing up for the audition in a red bouffant wig, Sagal sassed her way straight into the part. Married… With Children would last for 11 seasons before the network announced that it was abruptly ending on May 5, 1997.
Ironically, Sagal’s tough allure proved more enduring than the billowy glamour gals who had almost kept her out of TV. Sagal went on to an impressive acting career that’s still going strong: She has voiced purple-haired space captain Leela on the oft-cancelled-and-revived animated sitcom Futurama, which wrapped its ninth season in 2024, and she played John Ritter‘s wife on 8 Simple Rules … for Dating My Teenage Daughter, which ran for three seasons and continued after Ritter suddenly passed away at the beginning of Season 2.
Life after Children
Prashant Gupta/FX Networks/courtesy Everett Collection
Sagal’s rough maternal edges came to full blossom on FX’s Sons of Anarchy (2008-14), where she portrayed motorcycle gang matriarch Gemma Teller Morrow. Gemma was the fiercest protector of the gang and would stop at nothing to keep it together. Sagal became a fan favorite and would sing several of the songs on the Sons of Anarchy soundtracks.
On Season 9 of Shameless, she played Dr. Ingrid Jones, a mentally unstable therapist who meets Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) while the two are hospitalized. Ingrid becomes pregnant with sextuplets thanks to a potent sperm donation Gallagher obtains from his son. Most recently, on The Conners, Sagal played Dan’s love interest and eventual bride Louise Goldufski, coming to rule the household once handled by Roseanne Barr. (In another strange twist, Roseanne initially turned down the role of Peg Bundy.)
Sagal has kept a toe in the musical waters, as well. In addition to her backup vocal work and the Sons of Anarchy recordings, she has two solo LPs, Well… (1994) and Room (2004).
David Livingston/Getty Images
In her personal life, she is currently married to her fourth husband, actor and Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter. They were introduced by a mutual friend in 2004 and Sagal told People in 2009 “He called me like a couple months later and asked me to coffee, and we went and kind of never left each other after that.”
No one is more surprised than Sagal herself to still be working in Hollywood after all these years. “I’m like, ‘Wow, this is so great that I’m able to continue to be a working actor and still be interested in the roles that I’m getting to play.’” she says. “I feel very grateful about that.”
Remind 
TVs Top Moms
May 2022
Celebrate top TV moms from the ’50 to the ’90s including 8 things you didn’t know about Donna Reed plus weird and wacky TV moms.
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