‘Married… With Children’ Stars Say Unpleasant Set Was Full of ‘Sarcasm and S*** Talking’
The behind-the-scenes vibe on Married…With Children sounds just as dark and snarky as the sitcom’s comedy, according to Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate, commiserating together on Sagal’s Pie podcast.
As a young actress, Applegate was navigating her mother’s cancer battle, and the atmosphere on set wasn’t helping. “I wasn’t into like sarcasm and shit-talking and negativity,” she told Sagal. “I kind of felt like I didn’t belong, really, with everybody.”
Sagal got it. “The vibe on our set was so freaking cynical,” she explained. “We were a sarcastic, cynical bunch. You weren’t safe, really. You know, you turned your back, somebody’s gonna talk shit on you.”
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That was no secret to Applegate. “I could hear being talked shit about in my dressing room, on the monitor in my room,” she said. “Like, I’d come up from rehearsal, and I could hear everybody on set literally talking shit about me and I was like, ‘Wow, I was just there 20 seconds ago.’”
“It was that kind of environment,” agreed Sagal.
The Married… With Children set doesn’t sound like the greatest workplace for women in general. Applegate, Sagal and Amanda Bearse had to complain to producers when a Playboy Playmate hired for a small part insisted on flashing the actors, according to the book Married with Children vs. the World. Those producers put a stop to the lewd behavior, although the Playmate flashed them on her way out as if to say she hadn’t quite learned that lesson.
Throughout all of that, Applegate looked to Sagal for refuge. “I pretty quickly became a safe space for you,” Sagal remembered.
“You just looked in my eyes, and you knew that I was having some bad shit going on,” said Applegate. “I just knew that you understood me and were not going to judge me. I felt very safe with you.”
The two castmates had a similar conversation when Sagal guested on Applegate’s MeSsy podcast. The actress who played Peg Bundy was only four months sober when she got the job, and “what made you so comforting to me is that you had lived a lot of life,” Applegate said. “Now you were on that side of strength, and I needed that so badly in my life. A stable person, and you were that stability to me.”
Applegate was more forthcoming in the original conversation, calling out Ed O’Neill for negativity. “His humor was a little too much for me, where I was just a little bit full of my spiritual journey, up my own ass,” she confessed.
Time has healed those wounds. When Applegate had O’Neill on her podcast last year, O’Neill reminisced that his TV daughter “thought I could be mean.”
That was a goody two-shoes moment, she said, fondly looking back on “years and years of my life spent with this man. He’s an incredible actor. He’s an incredible human being.”
And apparently incredibly good at talking shit when his co-stars left the room.
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