Sally Struthers Spent $40K Trying to Leave It All in the Family
Sally Struthers he hides nothing in his time All in the Family.
The actress, who played Gloria Stivic on the 1970s TV series, opened up about her treatment on set and how she tried to leave after the show on the Monday, January 13, episode of “Let’s Talk About It!” podcast with Larry Saperstein again Jacob Bellotti.
It all started with his working relationship with a famous producer Norman Learwho died in 2023 at the age of 101.
“I wasn’t a big fan of his,” Struthers, 77, said.
“In all those years on the show, Norman and his [then] the wife [Frances] we will have dinner parties,” he added. “They will invite other stars of the show – Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton again Rob Reiner – and their partners often … in eight years, I was not invited to his house. It wasn’t fun.”
The relationship got so bad, Struthers said, that he tried to leave the show after its fifth season, taking his contract to a partnership and spending $40,000 in legal fees.
Struthers was not alone All in the Family a cast member who had a difficult relationship with Lear. The show’s creator reportedly butted heads with O’Connor, who played lead character Archie Bunker.
The two had a “very difficult, abusive relationship,” according to Tripp Wetsellthe author of Norman Lear: His Life and Times.
“They had a very difficult relationship, but Norman really respected her,” Whetsell said in an interview with November 2024. It is cracked. “Deep down, they respected and loved each other, but intellectually it was a challenge for them every step of the way.”
Struthers went on to call herself the “fourth banana” in the cast, adding that the show’s writers didn’t know how to write for a “lady”.
“I used to have three lines in every show that were, ‘I’ll help you set the table, Mom,’ ‘Michael, where are you going?’ and ‘Oh, Dad, stop,'” she said. “And the next week I’ll have the same three lines in a different order. And if they really didn’t know what to do with me in the square, they would tell me to go upstairs to take a shower or wash my hair. It worried me a lot.”
Despite his frustration, Struthers admitted that when he returned to the game after trying to get out of his contract, he had a better experience.
“I went back and had three more seasons, but it was a lot of fun for me,” he said. “Because in the end, Mike and Gloria found a child, and they brought us into the house next door [the] Jefferson lived there.”
When All in the Family ended in 1979, Struthers continued, This is Archie Bunker’s placewhich ran for four seasons. He reprized his role in the spinoff Gloriafrom 1982 to 1983. Lear was not involved in any show.
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