The Secret Origin of ‘The Golden Girls’

Thank you for being a friend, Doris Roberts and Selma Diamond, because without you, there would be no The Golden Girls.

The Golden Girls celebrates its 40th anniversary on September 14th, and with it, fans can celebrate how this show sprang out of a chance crossover of Remington Steele, Night Court, and Miami Vice. Sorta.

Picture it: Burbank. 1984. NBC decided to film a special to advertise its fall slate of programming, including a hot new show called Miami Vice. A show of sex and drugs and Don Johnson’s pastel suits. And who better way to sell this show full of bikini bods and death-defying detectives than the 58-year-old Roberts and 63-year-old Diamond?

In the skit, the Night Court bailiff gets confused as to the actual program, describing it as “the land of Coppertone and corn beef, mink coats, cha-cha lessons, and The Jackie Gleason show.”

“No, Selma, Hone. No. This show is not called Miami Nice,” interjected Roberts in that warm-but-instructive tone she’d employ on Everybody Loves Raymond. “This is called Miami Vice.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, the executives in the audience laughed at the interaction between the older actresses and began to think about whether there was potential for a series.

Later on, Tony Thomas and Paul Junger Witt (two-thirds of the creative team behind Soap) met with Warren Littlefield, NBC’s senior vice president of comedy development at the time, to pitch a show about a female lawyer.

Witt declined and then asked if Witt’s wife, Susan Harris—the other creative mind behind Soap—would work on expanding the “Miami Nice” idea.

Witt approached his wife with Littlefield’s request. “He got me when he said the words old women,” Harris told EW in 2009. “It was a demographic that had never been addressed.”

Harris wrote the script that called for Dorothy to be played by a “Bea Arthur type.” There was going to be a fifth character named Coco, a gay male housekeeper, but he didn’t make the cut. Harris turned in the script, Littlefield loved it more than a retiree loves cheesecake, and he greenlit the pilot.

Casting quickly put together a star-studded cast that featured the best “Bea Arthur Type”—Bea Arthur herself—along with Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty.

And with that, The Golden Girls premiered on Sept. 14, 1985. It ran for seven seasons, winning several awards and has become one of the most beloved series of all time.

Pretty “nice,” if you ask us.