Key Points
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TV producer and writer Chuck Lorre wrote about his time on the ’90s sitcom Cybill in his new book.
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He recalled leaving the set, even though he was told not to, during an argument.
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Trouble began, he alleged, in the second season after Cybill Shepherd “became a different person.”
Chuck Lorre recounts in his new book that working on the sitcom Cybill wasn’t always a laugh.
Lorre created the series that centered around actress Cybill Shepherd, who was known for TV’s Moonlightingand movies such as The Last Picture Show and Taxi Driver.
Cybilldebuted in 1995, six years after her hit with Bruce Willis ended. The story of a struggling, middle-aged actress that costarred Christine Baranski, Alicia Witt, and Alan Rosenberg was a hit.
“When season two began, in keeping with her name, Cybill became a different person,” Lorre, the showrunner, wrote in his new book, Sitcom: A Memoir. “She made her toady manager a co- exec, and angrily demanded complete control of the stories, scripts, casting, cameras, lighting, editing, and probably craft services.”
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As he remembered, the scrutiny didn’t stop there.
“After every table read and rehearsal,” Lorre wrote, “I would be ordered to her trailer, where I had to sit on a footstool while she gave me script notes, enthroned in one of those giant leather vibrating Sharper Image lounge chairs.”
While the Emmy-winning series continued to air new episodes until 1998, Lorre didn’t last as its leader.
He wrote that, just before his firing in the second season, he “was told the Queen of Mirth was unhappy with act two of the script in production. I probably had a few drinks to fortify my courage, then informed all concerned that there was nothing wrong with act two, and that I was going home. I was warned not to. But I did.”
There were consequences — and they came swiftly.
“Later that night, Yom Kippur eve, I got a call from a low- level exec at Carsey- Werner informing me not to come back. I was fired. (The Arabs always attack on a Jewish holiday),” Lorre wrote. “Someone would clear out my office and send everything to my home.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to a rep for Shepherd.
As for Lorre, his career in television was far from over.
He went on to create big hits, such as Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, and Mom.
Shepherd has alleged that her sitcom was ultimately canceled after she refused the sexual advances of CBS executive Les Moonves, who was forced out of the network in 2018 following multiple sexual misconduct allegations, which he denied.
“It would have run another five years,” she said in December 2018 on SiriusXM’s The Michelle Collins Show. “We had the best writers in the world, and directors and actors — everybody was brilliant.”
Lorre writes about his adventures in Hollywood in Sitcom: A Memoir, available in bookstores now.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
