What Happened to Christopher Mayer After He Replaced Tom Wopat on ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’?

If you grew up in the ’70s or early ’80s, you know that, at least for a little while, Friday nights belonged to The Dukes of Hazzard. That program was comfort television at its absolute finest. It had the car jumps, Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach), the voiceovers by Waylon Jennings, and perhaps most importantly, Daisy Duke. (Yes, she is definitely worth mentioning twice.) Anyway, the most important element of the show, which starred John Schneider and Tom Wopat as cousins Bo and Luke Duke, was that these were simple stories where the good guys always triumphed.

However, when fans of the show tuned in for the start of Season 5 in 1982, they felt totally confused. Why? Because Bo and Luke were gone, and in their place were a couple of fellers who looked like them and dressed like them but were definitely not them.

You see, the problem started when Wopat and Schneider figured out just how much money The Dukes of Hazzard was making on merchandise featuring their likenesses and they decided they weren’t getting their fair share. Much to their chagrin, the makers of the show, decided to play hardball. They bet that the car was the star of the show and that the actors could be replaced. So, they hired Christopher Mayer to play Vance Duke. He was the Luke replacement, while Byron Cherry, who played cousin Coy, was the Bo stand-in.

Warner Bros./Courtesy: Everett Collection

If you think about it, both of these guys were really thrown into an impossible spot. They had to step into the boots of beloved characters on a top-rated TV show and act like nothing had changed. If you go back and watch those 19 episodes now, you can see that Mayer and Cherry were actually decent enough actors. They both had the look that the network wanted, and they tried their very best with the scripts they were given.

The problem was that the audience felt cheated. Everyone wanted the original Duke boys back. And because of that, the ratings dropped, and the network soon realized its mistake. So, they settled the contract dispute, brought Wopat and Schneider back, and quietly wrote Coy and Vance out of the show.

For a lot of actors, being part of a public relations mess like that could have ended their careers. But Mayer was a working actor, and he didn’t let the whole Dukes of Hazzard thing stop him. Not one bit, showing that he didn’t have any hard feelings after he left the show. He actually kept voicing Vance for a brief period of time on the Saturday morning cartoon version of the show.

Everett Collection

Despite being cast aside, Mayer remained positive about his time on the show. Years later he told BRBTV News, “In hindsight, it’s become something that’s very sweet and a cultural icon. Even though we were in a replacement role. It gave me an opportunity to bring my first daughter into the world in something other than a cold apartment.”

Where Mayer really found his footing was in daytime television. In the late ’80s, he landed a solid job on the soap opera Santa Barbara. He played T.J. Daniels for nearly 180 episodes. That is almost 10 times the number of episodes that he clocked in for CBS while filling Tom Wopat’s shoes.

Mayer definitely had a sense of humor about his past. Case in point, he showed up in an episode of Baywatch playing a lifeguard named Vance, which was clearly a joke about his time in Hazzard County.

Warner Bros. Television / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Sadly, Mayer passed away all too soon, dying in his sleep on July 23, 2011, at his home in Sherman Oaks, California. He was just 57 years old. The coroner’s report stated that his death was due to natural causes specifically attributed to hypertrophic heart disease, which is a chronic condition where the walls of the heart muscle become abnormally thick and stiff. Over many, many years, if left untreated, it can lead to death.

When Entertainment Weekly caught up with Mayer’s Dukes of Hazzard costar Byron Cherry, he shared this: ” When my son died in a car wreck, he was the first person I called because I knew he could pull me out of it. He was very positive, upbeat, lifting, and a genuine person.”

Looking back, fans might have been just a little too hard on the replacement Dukes. It certainly wasn’t Mayer’s fault that the network tried to pull a fast one on the fans. He took the job, he did the work, and he handled the anger and frustration with just about as much grace and dignity as anyone could expect. He was a talented guy who deserves to be remembered for more than just one strange and very awkward year in Hazzard County.

Happy 70th Birthday to Byron Cherry Who Starred on 'Dukes of Hazzard'

Find out his career before he got cast as cousin Coy Duke.

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