- 1 day ago
Some TV families looked like the picture of harmony on screen, but behind the cameras, things were anything but cozy. From classic sitcom couples to beloved sister squads and iconic ensemble casts, these real-life feuds, cold shoulders, and long-running tensions prove that not every small-screen family stays close once the cameras stop rolling. Which backstage drama surprised you most?
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Jan, wait a minute! I don't care to discuss it! Come back here!
00:04Welcome to Ms. Mojo.
00:06And today, we're looking at TV families that seemed cozy and tight-knit on screen,
00:11but weren't so friendly behind the scenes.
00:14Something is broken in him that may not ever be able to be repaired.
00:21Fred and Ethel Mertz.
00:23I Love Lucy.
00:24Not everyone is aware of the drama that went on behind the scenes of the beloved sitcom, I Love Lucy.
00:36What are you doing here?
00:38What are you doing here?
00:40Even the bickering Ethel and Fred Mertz were considered a delightful contrast
00:45with the warmth radiating through the Ricardos, no matter Lucy's naive mischief.
00:50The other couple's constant squabbling wasn't far from reality.
00:55Vivian Vance reportedly hated playing wife to the much older William Frawley,
01:00which sparked their long-running feud.
01:02Gee, the train! I haven't been on a train since I was a little girl.
01:06Did they have trains, Anne?
01:12Knowing how she felt, Frawley returned the energy,
01:15and their relationship never recovered.
01:18Things were so bad that Vance even refused to star in a proposed spin-off
01:22centered on the two of them.
01:24I haven't eaten since he left.
01:27Oh, really?
01:29Gee, you sure must miss him.
01:31I do not. He didn't leave me any money, the big fat slob.
01:34Martin and Gina Payne.
01:36Martin.
01:37The relationship between Martin and Gina was truly the heart of this sitcom.
01:43Then I'll kiss your mess and you!
01:45You sure not! You sure not! You sure not!
01:49You sure not my fire!
01:54Their constant arguments and playful back and forth often ended in a hilarious resolution.
02:00But actors Tisha Campbell and Martin Lawrence had a serious issue that couldn't be fixed with a joke.
02:06Well, then I got a better idea. Why don't I just go?
02:11Okay.
02:13You didn't have to agree with me.
02:14During the final season, Campbell actually left the show,
02:18then filed a lawsuit against Lawrence and producers for sexual, verbal, and physical harassment.
02:24Although the case was settled,
02:26it was under the strict rule that Campbell and Lawrence could not interact or appear in the same scenes together.
02:32Baby, I'm home! You here?
02:35Good. Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good.
02:38That's a tough one for an on-screen married couple.
02:41So it's no surprise Martin ended up getting cancelled.
02:45Thankfully, the actors eventually reconciled years later.
02:49The Gallagher sisters.
02:50Shameless.
02:51The Gallagher's were absolute chaos on Shameless.
03:04The dysfunctional family fought and schemed, but still held on to each other.
03:09The cast wasn't nearly as messy in real life, for the most part.
03:13They appeared to be pretty close, but that bond wasn't perfect for everyone.
03:17Can I borrow her for a sec?
03:18Come on.
03:21I think it's time for an intervention.
03:23In a 2022 interview, Emma Kenney revealed that she and her on-screen sister,
03:29played by Emmy Rossum, had a complicated relationship behind the scenes.
03:33Despite the age gap, there was this strange, unspoken sense of competition between them.
03:38Kenney also admitted that after Rossum left, the atmosphere on set felt more positive.
03:44Fiona's leaving. She's upstairs packing her stuff right now.
03:48What?
03:49What?
03:54Perhaps it was her way of saying working with Rossum wasn't easy.
03:58Still, she insists she has love for her, even though they haven't spoken in years.
04:03The Thatcher Family.
04:04Life Goes On.
04:05Groundbreaking for its time, Life Goes On made audiences feel immediately connected with its warm,
04:12family-centered storytelling.
04:13It looked like a perfect functioning family from the outside,
04:17but Patti LuPone's memoir revealed a different reality behind the scenes.
04:22I look so old.
04:23You don't look old.
04:24You look 40.
04:26Oh!
04:26Come on, this is what 40 looks like.
04:29Young and beautiful.
04:31According to her, she and her on-screen husband, Bill Smitrovich,
04:36suffered a lack of chemistry from the start.
04:39The screen test clip says it all.
04:41They look oddly mismatched.
04:43Well, as seasons went by, the tension grew even stronger.
04:47Hey! It's after 10! Give it a rest!
04:53Betty! How embarrassing!
04:56Drew, what's the matter with you? Get inside!
04:59By the show's fourth season, the two had reportedly stopped talking to each other between takes altogether.
05:06They sure looked solid on screen, though there was no love lost between these two off-screen.
05:12Drew and Libby's bond had us completely fooled.
05:15Happy for our old babe.
05:17What's this?
05:18Small Mercedes.
05:20The Ingalls sisters.
05:22Little House on the Prairie.
05:24She wasn't easy to get along with.
05:26That's how Melissa Gilbert describes her on-screen sister, Melissa Sue Anderson.
05:31Ma, my neck hurts.
05:33What?
05:34Mary scrubs so hard, she like to took the skin clean off.
05:37You're big enough to do your own scrubbing, only you won't.
05:40It's not what you'd expect from two actresses playing such lovable, tightly-knit sisters on Little House on the Prairie.
05:47But Gilbert revealed in her memoir that their relationship never felt sisterly when the camera wasn't rolling.
05:53That and Ellie Olsen's the meanest girl I ever did see.
05:58I could never be that mean.
06:00I could meaner, if my and pod let me.
06:05According to her, Anderson kept a chilly demeanor that she could never break through,
06:10while Anderson later admitted she and Gilbert, quote, simply were not friends.
06:15Other cast members also hinted at her coldness, suggesting the tension wasn't all in Gilbert's head.
06:24Look, I did all the cooking and the cleaning and my homework, and I managed to finish.
06:29That's because you're perfect.
06:31Still, it seems she felt it the most, which is a real contrast from their on-screen warmth.
06:37Will Smith and Aunt Vivian, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
06:40Janet Hubert and Will Smith went from family to estranged enemies.
06:44They didn't get along on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
06:48and continued their feud after a contract dispute led to Aunt Viv being recast with Daphne Maxwell-Reed in Season
06:554.
06:56There was a certain foundational element that was broken when Janet left.
07:03The media documented public clashes and harsh words well into the 2000s.
07:08During the show's 30-year reunion special, the real reasons behind the fallout came out.
07:14Hubert admitted she was dealing with some serious personal struggles at home,
07:18which contributed to the tension on set.
07:20I was no longer laughing, smiling, joking,
07:24because there were things that were going on that nobody knew about.
07:28The cast had no idea what was going on.
07:31Smith admitted that he handled the situation poorly,
07:34which hurt Hubert's reputation in Hollywood.
07:37After decades of estrangement, they finally had an honest conversation,
07:41apologized, and settled their differences.
07:44I can see now the level of pain and the level of struggle
07:52that it was for you just to show up every day.
07:56The Harper brothers, two and a half men.
07:58Charlie Sheen's fallout with Chuck Lorre didn't just shake up two and a half men.
08:03It strained his relationship with co-star John Cryer.
08:06I told you so.
08:09Oh, come on, Alan.
08:11If you can't laugh at yourself, at least let me do it.
08:14In the early years, the two had a great working dynamic,
08:17until Sheen's personal problems got in the way.
08:20After Sheen's firing in 2011, their relationship got even more complicated.
08:25Cryer revealed that Sheen called him some pretty harsh names during the feud,
08:29which deepened to the distance between them.
08:32And when my publicist said, oh, wait, oh, wait, it's just come over the wire.
08:36He's called you a traitor, a turncoat, and a troll.
08:40He even admitted he wasn't sure if he wanted to work with Sheen again.
08:43Their off-screen bond never fully recovered.
08:46Still, Cryer appeared on Sheen's recent documentary,
08:50despite not hearing from him personally.
08:52The truth is that they had a great run as brothers,
08:55but public drama and bad decisions ruined it all.
08:58He can be, he's capable of being a great guy.
09:00He can be that. He just has to make that decision.
09:03The Seaver siblings. Growing Pains.
09:06Carol, that wasn't very nice. What did Mike do?
09:08Nothing. Nothing is right.
09:11He's just slimed like every other male that's ever walked the face of the earth.
09:14The Seavers looked like the perfect TV family on Growing Pains.
09:18Kirk Cameron and Tracy Gold played siblings so well,
09:22you'd expect them to be close in real life.
09:24In reality, their relationship was more distant than dramatic.
09:28There wasn't an explosive personal feud, just a slow drift.
09:32As Cameron embraced a stricter faith later in the show's run,
09:35he pulled away not just from Gold, but from the rest of the cast.
09:39I remember him having trouble with a couple of the scripts or a couple of plot lines.
09:43And I remembered saying to him,
09:45if Growing Pains is too blue for you, then you really can't be in network television.
09:50While Gold never attacked him personally,
09:53she openly disagreed with his public views on gay marriage.
09:56Neither invited the other to their wedding,
09:58which shows how much their relationship had deteriorated.
10:02I think those are the times where all of us grow in character,
10:06and we learn to be forgiving, and we learn to come back and say, I'm sorry.
10:09The former TV siblings who grew up together grew apart
10:12and took completely different paths.
10:15The Brady sisters, the Brady Bunch.
10:17Even though the Brady Bunch delivered one of TV's most wholesome families,
10:21backstage wasn't all that perfect.
10:24In fact, the Brady sisters, Eve Plum and Maureen McCormick,
10:27have a long-running feud.
10:30Hey, wait a minute.
10:31I stopped by to walk home with you.
10:33I think I can do that all by myself.
10:36Oh, gee.
10:38Tension likely began after McCormick claimed in her memoir
10:42that the two once shared a kiss,
10:44something Plum is said to be furious about.
10:47Some sources say the two never got along right from the start.
10:50Doesn't it remind you of Jan's envy of Marsha on screen?
10:54Well, all I hear all day long at school is how great Marsha is at this,
10:58or how wonderful Marsha did that.
11:00Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.
11:01In fact, things got so bad between them
11:04that a televised Brady Bunch reunion was cancelled.
11:08McCormick and Plum didn't even want to be on the same set.
11:11Eventually, the two were willing to work together on the 2019 reality show,
11:15A Very Brady Renovation.
11:17Can you imagine this place as it was back then?
11:21Because that's what you guys are doing here.
11:23I can and I'm so hopeful, but it's all going to come back together.
11:27Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel
11:30and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
11:33You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
11:37If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
11:42The Hallowell sisters, charmed.
11:45Alyssa Milano didn't just have issues with one Hallowell sister.
11:49She had conflict with two.
11:51That's surprising considering how magically close the sisters were on charmed.
11:55But of course, appearances on screen can be deceiving.
11:59Phoebe, whatever happened, you can't blame yourself.
12:02It wasn't really you.
12:04But that's the thing.
12:06It was me.
12:07Or at least a part of me that I can relate to.
12:10While they were slaying demons on screen, tension was slowly building backstage.
12:15There was some sort of competition between Shannon Doherty and Milano,
12:19which allegedly contributed to Doherty being let go in 2001.
12:23I mean, are there times that were rough?
12:24Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, when you work that closely together,
12:27there's always going to be times that are rough.
12:29Holly Marie Combs, who was closest to Doherty,
12:32got pulled into the rift after seeing Milano played a role in Doherty's exit.
12:36Over the years, accusations and conflicting stories
12:39have kept the drama alive.
12:41However, Milano and Doherty reconciled during the latter's fight with cancer.
12:46It's not just you, you know?
12:48I mean, we all have a little bad in us.
12:52It's just that when you turn bad, things tend to catch on fire.
12:55Which of these TV family feuds surprised you the most?
12:58Let us know in the comments.
13:00Let us know in the comments.
Comments