TV Show Actors who've Criticized/Bashed their Shows

[WonkaBedknobs83]

Originally Posted by JamesG.

He did a recent interview where he said that he felt it wasn't funny enough for him.

https://tvline.com/news/chevy-chase-...ew-1235049330/

But Cops and Robbersons was?

[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.

[WonkaBedknobs83]

Judith Light needs to atone for both the long-running shows she was on that weren't Dallas reboots, and even on that show, I wasn't too enamored of her, either. It seemed the character she played there only existed to gauge interest in a spinoff that never happened, and if it had, I wouldn't have watched it.

[JamesG.]

Bette Midler called her 2000 sitcom "Bette" a "big mistake" and said she was relieved when the experience was over.

https://ew.com/bette-midler-sitcom-b...n-exit-8644737

[WonkaBedknobs83]

That wasn't even the biggest mistake she made in the year 2000. Drowning Mona, anyone? Not to mention that awful Stepford Wives remake later in the decade that was supposed to make us forget about this show. It didn't. The show was not a mistake. The failure to put Bette together with Robert Hays and Lindsay Lohan at the same time in the same place was. Putting the excellent supporting cast on the back burner too early for guest stars was something that should have been done sparingly and over time the show didn't get, but at least it wasn't totally out of place for someone actually in the industry to actually be working with other professionals. And the less said about Hocus Pocus 2, the Bette-r. For this, Helen Reddy gave up movies? She should have had her and Tanya Tucker on the show to sing "Delta Dawn" together. Build a whole episode around trying to coordinate everybody's schedules. Too late now. She also punted on the opportunity to write a book about it relatively soon after it because Simon and Schuster, which was also owned by Viacom, would have neutered it in editing. I would have devoured that book like Shelley Winters on a Passover brisket.

And I really liked the gay character on the show, played by James Dreyfus, who is also gay and is actually standing up for homosexuality in real life. Nothing about him made me want to cringe like so many other gay characters on TV then or since then. So no, Bette, you are wrong based on that alone. And what a way to insult the multi-talented Joanna Gleason, especially when her other sitcom coulda-shoulda-woulda, NBC's Hello, Larry, has twice as many episodes! At least King of the Hill welcomed her back as a guest star. And at least Gary Janetti could eventually get his old job on Family Guy, where the original voice of Meg later made a movie with Lindsay Lohan, back. But if this is Bette's attitude, they might have just as well pulled a Valerie Harper on her, kept everyone else, replaced her with nobody, called the show Roy & Oscar, and had Robert Hays and James Dreyfus as a gay couple. Even Julie Hagerty, now enjoying a late-career comeback, would be jealous after Princesses failed even quicker! And it would have made up for Angie, which also deserved to be a success for the Maureen McGovern theme song alone, crashing and burning so quickly (concurrently the aforementioned show Joanna Gleason did with McLean Stevenson).

This is why I don't watch live-action TV anymore unless it's reruns. I'm tired of getting emotionally invested in a show only to see it canceled and for the people who made it to throw it under the bus years after the fact. I've watched maybe 3 or 4 live-action American sitcoms this century, and one was a remake of a British show, the other petered out after two seasons, one is not going to age well because the male lead is facing some serious charges for taking a life, and another was loosely based on a true story. Very loosely. Giving this show another three or four seasons would have given it enough time to figure out how to get the best out of everybody involved, but CBS didn't want that. They wanted instant success. Some of the biggest hits in TV history were not successful right out of the gate. They forgot that. The upstart networks who took their audiences away didn't.

And hearing it from EW (the acronym says it all) when they were head cheerleader for NBC's terrible Living Single ripoff while running a smear campaign against Forrest Gump makes them one to talk. Some of us who came of age in the 90s have enough bones to pick with them to form an entire human skeleton.

[JamesG.]

While not necessarily bashing the show itself, Jessica Alba has said that she did not like her sex symbol status from her Fox show "Dark Angel".

She told Marie Claire in 2012, "Dark Angel premiered when I was 19 and right away, everyone formed a strong opinion about me because of the way I was marketed. I was supposed to be sexy, this tough action girl. That’s what people expected...I felt like I was being objectified, and it made me uncomfortable."

[Benjis Dad]

I may have this entirely wrong, an old geezer's memory being what it is... but I seem to dimly recall that there was considerable unhappiness on the set of the original Lost in Space, due to Jonathan Harris' deliciously malevolent "Dr. Smith" quickly becoming a favorite with the show's viewers (and thus, increasingly, the focus of more and more episodes as time went on).

Evidently -- and again, this is, I stress, entirely from what might be faulty memories of second- and third-hand recountings -- Guy Williams and June Lockhart felt that, as the two adult leads (at least nominally), the show should have centered more on them; while Mark Goddard and Marta Kristen felt, by the end of the third and final season, as though they were scarcely more than ambulatory scenery.

Just tossing it out there, is all. Please don't hesitate to correct me, if it's all hooey.

[JamesG.]

Jennie Garth revealed at '90s Con Florida that she regrets doing The CW's "90210"

“I wish I hadn’t done it. No offense to them. The producer was a friend of a friend, and I remember he came over in my living room, sat me down, [billed it as] this chance of a lifetime. He asked me to do it, and I didn’t know how to say no then. But the people were very nice and all the best to them.”

https://deadline.com/2024/09/jennie-...et-1236088178/

[JamesG.]

Not that she hated it, but Melissa Joan Hart has made it known through various interviews that she favors "Melissa & Joey" and "Clarissa Explains it All" over "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch".

She said in 2017 that "Melissa & Joey" was her favorite role because it was the most fun for her to play. "Clarissa" is dear to her because it was her first leading role and she was also involved in a reboot that never got off the ground.

She said in 2024 that she didn't really "relate" to Sabrina. She said that she probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if she didn't get to dress up in costumes or experience situations like being a part of Cirque du Soleil.



Caroline Rhea said that she hated the elaborate wardrobes.

She said back in 2013 that Sabrina was dressed like an accountant going to high school and that she looked like she's going to a coronation for a very senior royal member. "It's breakfast! Why is my hair this high?"

[Samus Aran]

Because of how successful Three's Company was, Norman Fell did not want to be spun off because if The Ropers tanked he would be out of a job. It was put into his contract that the Ropers would return to Three's Company as regulars if the spinoff was canceled within a year, but it was canceled one month after that part of the contract had lapsed.

What must've been the most frustrating for him is that The Ropers actually was a big hit, but then ABC moved it to Saturday and it immediately died. He believes ABC had already decided to cancel the show much sooner, but waited until after the contractual deadline so they wouldn't have to bring them back.

[JamesG.]

Anjelica Huston has revealed she did not have a good time filming "Smash".

"I wasn't very happy when I was on that show," Huston told PEOPLE. "I was living in New York and I wasn't very happy living in New York for the obvious reasons. It was a cold winter."

Huston also said that she "didn't feel very prized in that role," adding, "I was a bit depressed by it. It was hard, really. I didn't really have a good time making it."

https://ew.com/anjelica-huston-wasnt...eries-11713751

[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/