Drama. Drama. Drama.
There are many dramas on TV. But what about the petty drama behind the scenes?
Well. We all have known these shows from one time or another. The shows that felt like home. A good place. A little bit like eating a big bowl of comfort food.
But for as good as those TV shows were, there was a lot going on behind the camera lens. A whole lot of petty.
Take Star Trek. Apparently, Captain Kirk (William Shatner) once shut down production for half a day because he didn’t like that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) had his own photographer. George Takei remembered it well. He said black suits were shuffling between dressing rooms. They sent the crew off for “an early lunch.” And half a day of filming Star Trek was lost to ego orbit. Billy wanted a private photographer, just like Lenny had.
Then there was the sunny world of The Golden Girls. I loved that show. As loving as they were on screen, it was a different story behind the cameras. Apparently, Bea Arthur wasn’t exactly saying “thank you for being a friend” to Betty White. Betty admitted that Bea couldn’t stand her upbeat personality. Bea complained that Betty was too happy, too bubbly, and a little too much sunshine before coffee.
Over on Moonlighting. That was a punchy show. But here is the thing. Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd’s tension got so bad that their trailers had to be measured to make sure neither had to walk farther to the set. Because that, obviously, would have been unacceptable. Oh, the egos.
What about I Love Lucy? It wasn’t Lucy with the problem. It was the neighbors. On screen, Fred and Ethel Mertz were the perfect bickering couple. Off-screen, though, William Frawley and Vivian Vance could barely stand each other. It started when Vance joked she was too young and pretty to be married to “that old man.” Frawley heard about it. He fired back with barbs of his own, sneaking insults about Ethel into the show’s dialogue. Writers said the feud simmered for years.
All of this is quite the thing. Maybe the more perfect the show looked on the outside, the messier it probably was backstage. How do they say? Art imitates life?
People are people. Even in Hollywood. Even in our own little plays. Humans are still humans. We are all wonderfully flawed. At times, we might be a little bit on the petty side. But in the end, we try to tell a good story with a happy ending.
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“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” — Ernest Hemingway
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“Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.” — Andrew Murray
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“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” — George Bernard Shaw
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“We’re all a little fragile, a little ridiculous, and a little divine.” — Me
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