Well, I told you what I think of Betty, which is that she’s so smart. With Bea, I just remember how vulnerable she was. She had this gruff exterior. But the truth is, if you told her a sad story, she could be reduced to tears, quickly. She had a lot of emotions inside. And her persona was one of someone strong and gruff. But that’s not who the woman inside was. And with Rue: She was just an actress, through and through. She tore into each script and just worked at it and took it very seriously. Jamie and I wrote the episode where she sings on the piano, “I Want to Be Loved by You.” I had the privilege of working with her to go over the movements on the piano and to find the funniest way to perform the song. And before the cameras rolled, she had that thing down. I mean, boy, she took it seriously. And that’s what I’ll always remember about her: how seriously she considered her craft. And Estelle was just like everyone’s grandmother. She was just the sweetest lady. She wasn’t full of herself, didn’t take herself seriously. And she loved all the gay writers like myself. She had a huge contingent of gay friends back in New York, and I would introduce her to my friends, and she would just be so lovely to them. The truth is, and I mean this most sincerely, they were the four most different women you’d ever want to meet, but I loved each and everyone of them. They were so wonderful to me and my writing partner.”
— Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry shares his lasting impressions of the ladies from the greatest sitcom of all time, The Golden Girls, with New York Magazine.
yaoming
“Estelle was just like everyone’s grandmother”?
That’s strange since Estelle Getty was actually younger than Betty White and her “daughter”, Bea Arthur.
According to Wikipedia:
“In the pilot episode, the women had a gay cook named Coco (Charles Levin), who was subsequently eliminated.”
So much for “being a friend”.
EdWoody
@yaoming: “In the pilot episode, the women had a gay cook named Coco (Charles Levin), who was subsequently eliminated.”
So much for “being a friend”.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Are you really going to hold the non-recurrence of a one-note character against one of many writers on the show who got the writing job years later? coco wasn’t kept on because Sophia was considered funnier and it was considered kind of redundant to have a cleaner/cook/housekeeper in a house with four women (as sexist as that sounds).
The fact is Golden Girls was one of the most gay-friendly shows ever on TV and decades ahead of its time on social issues.
Stache1
I loved the Golden Girls. Still do as a matter of fact. It’s funny i’ll watch the GG’s and still laugh but watch comparable shows that were around it at the time like Who’s the boss, facts of life etc and there was just no comparison. The humor and adult content was just way ahead of it’s time.