6 Classic Sitcom Costar Feuds That Had No One Laughing
What To Know
- Classic sitcoms such as I Love Lucy, The Golden Girls, and Growing Pains were plagued by intense off-screen feuds between costars, sometimes involving harsh insults and professional sabotage.
- Conflicts ranged from personal animosity and name-calling, as seen between William Frawley and Vivian Vance or Bea Arthur and Betty White, to actors allegedly influencing firings, like Kirk Cameron and Julie McCullough.
- While some disputes, such as Ed O’Neill vs. Amanda Bearse and Will Smith vs. Janet Hubert, became public and disruptive, a few were later resolved or reflected upon with regret by those involved.
For as long as actors have shared a stage, personalities have clashed — and that rule extends to the soundstages of classic TV shows. From name-calling to contentious firings to legal proceedings, these sitcom costar feuds were too brutal to be masked by any laugh track. Here’s a chronology of on-set friction.
William Frawley vs. Vivian Vance, I Love Lucy
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The actors behind I Love Lucy‘s neighboring couple, Fred and Ethel Mertz, apparently weren’t so chummy in real life. In fact, Frawley referred to Vance with some shocking language, according to Tim Considine, who costarred with Frawley in My Three Sons.
Considine told Page Six in 2022 that when a visitor to the My Three Sons set asked Frawley what he thought of Vance, Frawley replied, “That miserable c***.”
Frawley was known for using controversial language off-set — in the same Page Six article, I Love Lucy historian Audrey Kupferberg claimed that Frawley, who was said to be a heavy drinker, once delivered a profanity-filled keynote speech at a Quaker Oats convention in 1960.
Bea Arthur vs. Betty White, The Golden Girls
Chris Haston / ©Touchstone Television/courtesy Everett Collection
The same insult also came up during a panel at the Pride LIVE! Hollywood Fest in June, when The Golden Girls co-producer Marsha Posner Williams confirmed the rumored bad blood between Arthur and White.
“When that red light was on [and the show was filming], there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together,” Williams said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “[Arthur] used to call me at home and say, ‘I just ran into that c*** at the grocery store. I’m gonna write her a letter,’ and I said, ‘Bea, just get over it, for crying out loud. Just get past it.’”
Kirk Cameron vs. Julie McCullough, Growing Pains
(c)Warner Bros. Courtesy: Everett Collection.
McCullough starred as Julie Costello, the girlfriend Cameron’s Mike Seaver decides he wants to marry, in the fourth season of Growing Pains. But Julie was quickly written out of Season 5, and McCullough has accused Cameron of angling for McCullough to be fired, perhaps because she had posed for Playboy. (Cameron denied the rumors in his autobiography, Still Growing.)
“[Cameron] didn’t want me on that show, and he was not going to re-sign contracts for the last two seasons of the show if they kept me,” McCullough said on The Patrick LabyorSheaux in 2024. “So, he was so adamant about not having me on the show, not marrying my character, and the whole deal. My character was really popular, and we were popular as a TV couple.”
Ed O’Neill vs. Amanda Bearse, Married… With Children
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O’Neill, who played Al Bundy on the 1990s sitcom Married… With Children, opened up in a 2013 Television Academy interview about his onset discord with Bearse, who played neighbor Marcy Rhoades on the show.
“We argued about certain things,” he said. “[One] time we got in a big fight over something, something stupid, in the makeup room, and she said something about ‘You’re a bully,’ or something, and I said, ‘You’re miserable.’ You know, it was just bad. In front of everybody, by the way.”
The actor added that he taunted Bearse by saying he could go to the bosses and get her fired. “Now, this was a mean thing to say,” he admitted. “I never was going to push that button, but it was true. I could go to them and say, ‘Look, I can’t work with her. I go or she goes. Who goes?’ She goes. So that was kind of bad.”
Will Smith vs. Janet Hubert, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
(c)NBC Studios/courtesy Everett Collection
When Hubert exited Fresh Prince after Season 3, Smith told the press that she “wanted the show to be The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show.”
But Hubert and the Fresh Prince himself reunited for a 2020 HBO Max special honoring the 30th anniversary of the show. And the following year, Hubert told People she had a “very good relationship” with Smith.
“We text each other back and forth all the time,” she added. “I meant it with all my heart when I hugged him, because I saw that little boy, that little 21-year-old boy. Had we had an opportunity to talk back then, I think this would have never happened.”
Martin Lawrence vs. Tisha Campbell, Martin
Aaron Rapoport /TM &a Copyright © 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection
Martin ended in 1997 amid offscreen drama between Lawrence, who starred as Martin Payne on the show, and Campbell, who played girlfriend Gina Waters. Campbell had accused Lawrence of “repeated and escalating sexual harassment, sexual battery, verbal abuse and related threats” in a lawsuit, before the two sides settled out of court with the proviso that Campbell would only work on the sitcom if Lawrence weren’t present, according to People.
As with Smith and Hubert, Lawrence and Campbell warmed up to one another before their own show’s 30th anniversary celebration, this one a 2022 special on BET+. “We worked really hard to reconnect, to forgive,” Campbell said on CBS Mornings at the time.