What To Know
- Chuck Lorre claims he was fired from the sitcom Cybill after conflicts with star Cybill Shepherd.
- Lorre describes Shepherd’s on-set behavior as difficult, including giving him script notes from her trailer.
- While other cast members acknowledged challenges working with Shepherd, she has attributed her reputation to bias against strong women in the industry.
Before co-creating Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre made a name for himself as the sole creator of various 1990s sitcoms, Cybill among them. But in his new memoir, Sitcom, Lorre says he got fired from Cybill after a conflict with the show’s namesake star, Cybill Shepherd, whom he claims underwent a personality shift by that point.
“When season two began, in keeping with her name, Cybill became a different person,” Lorre writes the book, per Entertainment Weekly. “She made her toady manager a [co-executive producer], and angrily demanded complete control of the stories, scripts, casting, cameras, lighting, editing, and probably craft services.”
In the series, Shepherd played Cybill Sheridan, an actor and divorced mother struggling to improve her lot in life. In real life, the struggle was Shepherd’s on-set behavior, Lorre claims.
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“After every table read and rehearsal, 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,” he says.
While filming Season 2, Lorre recalls, 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.”
For Lorre’s time on Cybill, that decision turned out to be fatal. “Later that night, Yom Kippur eve, I got a call from a low-level exec at [production company] Carsey-Werner informing me not to come back. I was fired.”
Other Cybill colleagues have shared stories about Shepherd as well. “Yes, there were issues, but I prefer to take the higher ground and say, look, that show gave me so much,” costar Christine Baranski told The Guardian in 2022. “I was fine working with her. Politically, it did get difficult, but I wish her well.”
And Alicia Witt, another Cybill cast member, said on Reddit (per The Guardian) that her understanding was that Shepherd “kinda said some pretty mean things about pretty much everyone she worked with.”
In a 2000 interview with CBS News, Shepherd said a “real bias against strong women” was behind the reports she was a challenging actor to work with. “It’s the old story. I think it was Bette Davis who said if you’re a woman, and you stand up for yourself, you’re a bitch. If you’re a man, and you stand up for yourself, you’re admired. And I really did stand up for myself, and that got me a bad reputation.”