TV Show Actors who've Criticized/Bashed their Shows

[JamesG.]

There's a thread on film actors with this topic, so I thought to start one for television actors.



Years after he left "Criminal Minds" in 2007, Mandy Patinkin went on to say in various interviews that he never should have done it.

“The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do 'Criminal Minds' in the first place. I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year.

It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.”





After becoming a born-again Christian, "Two and a Half Men's" Angus T. Jones said that he “wasn’t OK” with being “part of something that was making light of topics in our world where there are really problems for a lot of people.”

[Dunemoon]

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation

I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show… This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going ‘Aye, aye, captain’ and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years.

[BluGalaxy]

Originally Posted by Dunemoon

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation

I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show… This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going ‘Aye, aye, captain’ and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years.

That was extremely short sighted of her. All of the main cast grew and made progress throughout the 7 seasons and beyond. Her loss

[JamesG.]

Jennette McCurdy mentioned on her new podcast that she does not want to be associated with Sam Puckett, her character from "iCarly" and "Sam & Cat".

"One of the things that's really important to me in press, if possible, is that 'iCarly' or 'Sam & Cat' are not mentioned. To have been known for so long for something that I did when I was 13 was very shameful for me. I feel myself tighten when I hear them [titles].

The more popular that Sam got, the more I just felt unseen as Jennette and fundamentally, I think that was coming from not being able to see myself. I want to be past this."

https://www.insider.com/jennette-mcc...odcast-2023-10

[JamesG.]

Bradley Cooper felt that he did not get enough screentime on "Alias" and asked J.J. Abrams to write him out.

He told GQ in 2013, "I would only work three days a week. And then for the second season, I got even more sidelined. I was like, 'Ugh.' And then next thing you know, I was like, 'I want to ****ing kill myself.'"

"I then asked J.J. Abrams to write me out and he was like, 'OK.' He probably would've fired me, anyway."

[Moviefan2k4]

Originally Posted by BluGalaxy

That was extremely short sighted of her. All of the main cast grew and made progress throughout the 7 seasons and beyond. Her loss

Yeah, the biggest progress she made on that show was coming back twice, once as an alternate version of Tasha in Season 3, and later the half-Romulan daughter of that version in Season 5.

[JamesOttoSweetHeart]

I remember it being said that Dustin Diamond who gave us Screech from Saved By The Bell didn't have a lot of good to say about that show in the book that he wrote.

God bless you and his family always!!!

Holly

P.S. I still can't believe that he isn't here anymore.

[John1701D]

Another Trek another unhappy actor. Robert Beltran famously disliked Voyager.

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sc...r-regrets.html

[JamesKurtovich]

Originally Posted by John1701D

Another Trek another unhappy actor. Robert Beltran famously disliked Voyager.

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sc...r-regrets.html

Who I was going to post as well. He was the Riker of Voyager and yet they had nothing for him to do.

[Samus Aran]

Originally Posted by JamesKurtovich

Who I was going to post as well. He was the Riker of Voyager and yet they had nothing for him to do.

They also had a Native American consultant to help out with his character who turned out to be a fraud just making stuff up as he went along.

[cbs777]

How could I forget Tina Louise, she has badmouthed Gilligan's Island for years. I know part of it was, her agent told her the show was going to be centered around her.

[WonkaBedknobs83]

Gary Coleman grew to resent his "Arnold" character from Diff'rent Strokes once he got older but the writers still wrote for him the same way they did when the show was new. He even gave up his catchphrase. But when they persuaded him to stay for one more year (the sole ABC season) by finally letting him grow up and giving him more age-appropriate interests, it was too late.

Originally Posted by cbs777

How could I forget Tina Louise, she has badmouthed Gilligan's Island for years. I know part of it was, her agent told her the show was going to be centered around her.

She showed how much she hated the show when she sat at the Dallas table at the CBS 75th Anniversary special even though her character, J.R.'s secretary Julie, lasted five episodes before

[Show spoiler]falling off a building and dying.

[Joey9775]

Originally Posted by JamesKurtovich

Who I was going to post as well. He was the Riker of Voyager and yet they had nothing for him to do.

The show had this great premise of a half Federation/half terrorist group crew setup and did NOTHING with it. I really hate Voyager.

[JamesG.]

Aaron Sorkin told Vanity Fair that he wasn't completely satisfied with "The Newsroom".

"I was never able to get it quite right. I always felt like I had a pebble in my shoe. I felt like I could write a good scene. I could put a couple of good scenes together."

Sorkin compared the situation to a football team that can put together two good quarters of play, but not a full game's worth.

[Jay H.]

Originally Posted by JamesG.

Aaron Sorkin told Vanity Fair that he wasn't completely satisfied with "The Newsroom".

"I was never able to get it quite right. I always felt like I had a pebble in my shoe. I felt like I could write a good scene. I could put a couple of good scenes together."

Sorkin compared the situation to a football team that can put together two good quarters of play, but not a full game's worth.

He's absolutely right. My wife and I watched every episode - mainly for the performances, which were superb - and the show just didn't quite know what it wanted to say or do. It's not bad, but it should have been so much more.

[JamesG.]

George Carlin said that he hated the experience of working on "The George Carlin Show" (1994-95).

He released a statement at the time the show was cancelled on his website, "'The George Carlin Show' premieres on Fox Television. Lasts 27 episodes. Lesson learned: always check mental health of creative partner beforehand.

Loved the actors, loved the crew. Had a great time. Couldn't wait to get the **** out of there. Canceled December, 1995."




In his book Last Words he wrote, "I had a great time. I never laughed so much, so often, so hard as I did with cast members Alex Rocco, Chris Rich, Tony Starke. There was a very strange, very good sense of humor on that stage...

The biggest problem, though, was that Sam Simon was a horrible person to be around. Very, very funny, extremely bright and brilliant, but an unhappy person who treated other people poorly...I was incredibly happy when the show was canceled. I was frustrated that it had taken me away from my true work."

[JamesG.]

Katee Sackhoff, who played Bo-Katan Kryze on "The Mandalorian", recently explained how the role “just broke her” and led to a nearly three-year hiatus from onscreen acting roles.



“I lost all of my confidence after Mandalorian. All of it,” she explained on her podcast The Sackhoff Show.

“I’ve always played two steps removed from myself, in a sense. It always felt grounded in some part of my belly, of who I was. Bo-Katan is nowhere near who I am as a human being. Her life, what she wants — I didn’t understand her. As much as I understood her, I never felt her in my stomach. I never identified with her. I didn’t know how to find her.”



“It broke me. It just broke me,” explained Sackhoff.

“I started doubting everything about myself. I’m not a strong auditioner on tape, and I was having to put myself on tape. I wasn’t booking anything. And for three years, I basically didn’t work, and it just destroyed my confidence.”

https://deadline.com/2025/08/katee-s...an-1236495678/

[lesco]

And of course Marcia Strassman who kept badmouthing WELCOME BACK, KOTTER because it seemed to be "all about the teacher and the sweathogs".

[rikraq]

Originally Posted by lesco

And of course Marcia Strassman who kept badmouthing WELCOME BACK, KOTTER because it seemed to be "all about the teacher and the sweathogs".

Well, it wasn't called "Welcome Back, Mrs. Kotter". What did she expect?

I feel like a lot of actors criticize their shows right after leaving, but then as we have seen 20 years down the road their perspectives change and it's all about reunions and reboots.

[cbs777]

I haven't looked at the movie version of this topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if Katherine Heigl is also apart of that thread as well. She famously bashed the writers on Grey's Anatomy, she seems to be a truly ungrateful person.