Inside the wild ‘Married With Children’ set: Gun-waving Sam Kinison once had strippers serve lunch
In 1989, Sam Kinison was a guest star on the fourth season of “Married … with Children.” Years before, he had been offered the role of Al Bundy on the sitcom, and it soon became apparent that the show’s producers were very lucky he’d turned the lead role down.
On his first day on set, Kinison mooned the cast and crew, a move so poorly received that he invited everyone to his birthday dinner at Spago to make amends.
The following day, Kinison was late to the set and apologized by having strippers serve lunch to the cast.
One night, he also waved a gun and threatened to shoot director Gerry Cohen after he went to Kinison’s house at a late hour looking for his girlfriend, who was friendly with the erratic comedian.
“His attention-getting antics on the stage made working with him a challenge and provided some eye-opening examples of what he would have been like to work with on a regular basis,” writes Richard Gurman in his new book, “Married … with Children vs. The World: The Inside Story of the Shock-Com that Launched Fox and Changed TV Comedy Forever” (Permuted Press, out April 23).
Gurman, who served as a writer and producer on the long-running series, shares how creators Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye initially pitched the show as “Imagine if Roseanne Barr married Sam Kinison and they had kids.”
But, the duo didn’t actually want to work with either volatile star, and they were horrified when the show’s production studio unsuccessfully offered them the Al and Peg Bundy roles.
“We never liked working with comedians, because they come in with their character already. What were we going to do, tell Roseanne how to do her ‘domestic goddess’ thing? We were gonna tell Sam Kinison how to do his thing? There’d be fighting all the time,” Moye says in the book.
Casting director Marc Hirschfeld auditioned many actors for Al Bundy, including comedian Michael Richards. Hirschfeld describes his audition as “very odd,” though it was Hirschfeld who would later put that oddness to work by casting Richards as Kramer in “Seinfeld.”
Ed O’Neill’s agents discouraged him from auditioning since, Gurman writes, they thought it was, “a horrible show on a dubious new network,” leading O’Neill to ask, “Then what the f— are you sending me over there for?”
But, O’Neill enjoyed the script, recognizing in Al Bundy an uncle of his, a judge who was always “more or less expecting the worst and being OK with it.”
He began his audition with Al’s now familiar sigh and instantly won the part.
“As far as I was concerned, he didn’t have to say another word,” Moye says in the book. “That was Al Bundy.”
Al’s wife, Peg, was initially described as lazy and sloth-like. But, Katey Sagal, a veteran rock singer who had performed with Bette Midler and Bob Dylan, took the role in another direction, auditioning in a tight dress and high heels.
She demonstrated an immediate chemistry with O’Neill that got her the gig.
“It hadn’t been long since I was in a rock band,” Sagal says in the book, “so I thought, I’m going to disguise this character, so that when I go back to my real job, which is playing music, I won’t be mistaken for this person.”
For the Bundy children, young actors Tina Caspary and Hunter Carson were initially cast as Kelly and Bud Bundy. But after the pilot was filmed, O’Neill and Sagal’s chemistry made the kids seem “too vulnerable,” leading both roles to be re-cast.
David Faustino took over the role of Bud. Christina Applegate initially rejected the chance to audition for Kelly because she found the script “disgusting.”
After watching the pilot, she had a change of heart.
With the cast assembled, the show prepared for launch with the promise of autonomy over its material.
But, Fox broke its vow before the show even aired.
The pilot script had Al saying, “I’m not a doctor, but I think that PMS stands for ‘Pummel Men’s Scrotums,’” and Fox insisted the line be cut.
Barry Diller, then the CEO of the fledgling network, “hated the joke,” writes Gurman. “So either we cut it or change it, or they would shut down the show.”
They killed the line, but it became a bonding experience for the crew, which celebrated a birthday soon after by swinging away at a scrotum-shaped piñata.
The show’s critical reception was mixed, but the more important reaction was that of a Michigan mom named Terry Rakolta.
Rakolta was so offended by a season three episode titled “Her Cups Runeth Over,” and the jokes about vibrators and other sexual topics that she saw as she watched it with her young children, that she launched a letter-writing campaign to the show’s advertisers.
But, Gurman reveals that her campaign was fueled by an odd case of mistaken identity.
When Rakolta called Fox to voice her disapproval, the network was still so small that it had no one to handle complaints. Her call was routed to one of the show’s writers, Marcy Vosburgh.
Vosburgh, having no idea who Rakolta was, responded by telling Rakolta that “if she felt the show was so insulting, she had the freedom to change the channel.”
“This only made Rakolta angrier and confirmed that she had to go further and take personal action,” writes Gurman, who spoke to Rakolta for the book and confirmed that had she realized she was talking to a writer and not a Fox exec, she might have reacted differently.
Rakolta’s campaign included threatening to start boycotts of all the show’s advertisers and numerous major media appearances. Politicians, including Senator Jesse Helms, even got involved, talking up Rakolta’s cause in the U.S. Senate.
In the end, Fox promised to vet the show’s scripts more carefully and moved it to a later time slot.
But, no advertisers left the show, and the increased exposure gave it such a significant ratings boost that some in the press believed Fox orchestrated the entire incident.
Another notable moment in the sitcom’s history was Peg’s pregnancy in season six.
It was written into the storyline because Sagal was pregnant in real life.
The character’s pregnancy was heavily promoted in the press and several episodes of the storyline aired. Then, tragically, Sagal suffered a stillbirth.
Behind the scenes, there was a scramble about how to proceed.
“[We wanted to] address it in the least maudlin way possible,” Moye says in the book, “so we did what ‘Dallas’ did and made the entire season a dream but even more cartoony.”
Sagal’s future pregnancies were kept off the show.
When the creators decided to add a six-year-old child to the cast in season seven, he was so poorly received that they simply dropped the character mid-season, only referring to him by placing his picture under a “Missing” headline on a milk carton.
Behind the scenes, there was a notable young child on set: Meghan Markle.
Her father, Thomas Markle, was the show’s director of photography, and she accompanied him to work daily.
“There were a lot of times my dad would say, ‘Meg, why don’t you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your eleven-year-old eyes,'” the Duchess of Sussex would later tell Esquire.
As the show wore on, Amanda Bearse, who played Bundy neighbor Marcy, became a director as well. Her upgraded status led to screaming fights with O’Neill.
The disputes began as disagreements over directorial decisions, but a conversation meant to clear the air revealed that O’Neill had been hurt when Bearse, who is gay, invited the entire cast to her wedding except for O’Neill and Faustino.
Bearse told O’Neill she was convinced that when he saw “me and Becky come out in matching white tuxedos and walk down the aisle arm in arm,” he would laugh at them.
O’Neill proved her right, as he started chuckling at the image. Years later, he admitted that he had been wrong to react that way, but said that he was truly hurt and angered by the omission.
Fox cancelled the show after season 11, but the impact of “Married … with Children” and its 11 seasons could be felt around the world — and continues to be felt today.
“‘Reruns are still in heavy rotation on many cable stations and streaming services, with an animated ‘Married … With Children’ series, featuring the voices of the original cast, in the works,” Gurman writes. “There is no end in sight.”
