The iconic Golden Girls theme song begins, “Thank you for being a friend,” but Sally Struthers certainly didn’t consider Betty White a friend. In a new interview, she revealed she had some major problems with the beloved TV star’s behavior.
“I have to say, now that she’s gone, I wanna talk about Betty White for just a moment,” Struthers said on the Let’s Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti podcast. White died in 2021 just before her 100th birthday, and tributes poured in for her from all over the world.
“I know everybody loves her — they loved her so much they signed petitions to get her to guest-host Saturday Night Live — I know all that. I didn’t have such a great experience with her,” Struthers said.
According to Struthers, White was a “very passive-aggressive woman” who body-shamed her on one occasion. Struthers has been body-shamed a lot throughout her career, so it’s not surprising that an incident with White would stick in her mind.
“She asked her housekeeper to bring in a plate of whatever to us while we were all sitting and talking about what was working about the game show and what wasn’t working. A plate was set in the middle and it was cookies, I think,” Struthers revealed on the podcast. “So I reach for a cookie and she said in front of everyone, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, dear. You don’t need a cookie.’ Totally fat-shamed me in front of the rest of the people in the room, and I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s not nice.'”
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Struthers’ story garnered attention because it’s hard to think about Betty White having a mean streak. She was absolutely beloved, and The Golden Girls is held up today as being a very progressive sitcom for its time. However, the show frequently indulged in body-shaming, with Rue McClanahan’s Blanche often being at the receiving end of it. There’s also an episode where Blanche’s daughter Rebecca (Shawn Schepps) comes to stay and is mocked by the main characters for being overweight.
And as for White specifically, there have been past accusations of bad behavior as well. She famously never got along with her co-star Bea Arthur, who played Dorothy on the show – but according to someone who was there, none of the other Golden Girls liked White. In an episode of The Originals podcast, Golden Girls casting director Joel Thurm revealed that both Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan had called White a “c**t” within his earshot.
According to him, White wasn’t kind to Estelle Getty, the fourth member of The Golden Girls gang, when she started to forget her lines (she would eventually be diagnosed with Lewy body dementia). Getty would write the lines on her hand, and White would allegedly “make fun of her in front of the live audience.”
“That may seem like a minor transgression, but it really does get to you,” Thurm said. “I have no idea how Estelle Getty felt, but I know the other two did not like [White] at all.”
It’s a shame knowing that White wasn’t as perfect as her army of fans always indicated. Sally Struthers disliked her, and it seems White’s own co-stars did as well. Still, none of that takes away from her incredible comic talents. Without her, The Golden Girls just wouldn’t be the same.
Published: Jan 16, 2025 10:27 am