Shock reason why Heather Locklear was blamed for Melrose Place being cancelled

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tv/artic...led-shock.html

By JUSTIN ENRIQUEZ FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Published: 18:09 EST, 5 March 2025 | Updated: 19:19 EST, 5 March 2025

Heather Locklear was blamed for Melrose Place being cancelled.

Executive producer for the 1990s Fox primetime drama Charles Pratt revealed that the now 63-year-old actress' salary at the time was at least partly to blame for the cancellation.

Pratt appeared on re-watch podcast Still The Place co-hosted by Melrose Place stars Courtney Thorne-Smith, Daphne Zuniga and Laura Leighton.

By the series fifth season all three co-hosts of the podcast had departed the series but Locklear was irreplaceable to the network.

Pratt explained: 'I think the feeling was at Fox, as long as Heather's on the show, it doesn't matter who else is on the show.'

He also believed the show had been 'tainted' by actress Hunter Tylo's lawsuit which claimed that Melrose Place producers had fired her before she had filmed any scenes due to her being pregnant.

Pratt continued: 'I know why it was canceled, why we didn't get an eighth season, which we really wanted.

Pratt also explained that over-the-top storylines for the characters had forced them to bring in new ones due to the soap opera nature of the show which lead to a revolving door of castmembers.

He said: 'We ran you through a soap mill. You know, marriages and, you know, deaths and crime.'

Pratt wrote and directed the series finale of Melrose Place in 1999 and said it was 'so sad' but knew what the focus of the conclusion had to be.

He said: 'I made sure the last shot was of Heather.'

Melrose Place aired over seven seasons from July 1992 to May 1999.

It followed the lives of a group of young adults living in an apartment complex at 4616 Melrose Place in West Hollywood, California.

Heather portrayed Amanda Woodward on the show as she was on the first season as a recurring character before being promoted to main cast in the second season and was featured on the show until the very end.

Meanwhile Heather - who's been in and out of rehab '20 times' - appears to be on the straight and narrow following her well-documented battle with substance abuse, mental health issues, and arrests for domestic violence and battery between 2008-2019.

She recently made an acting comeback playing disgraced counselor Jodi Hildebrandt alongside Emilie Ullerup in Lifetime drama, Mormon Mom Gone Wrong: The Ruby Franke Story, which premiered October 26.

The real life Hildebrandt, 56, and 42-year-old YouTuber Franke were known to share a philosophy about strict parenting, which was later revealed to be horrifying abuse on Ruby's malnourished eight-year-old and 12-year-old children.

In 2023, Hildebrandt plead guilty to four counts of felony aggravated child abuse on December 27 and was sentenced to four terms of one to 15 years consecutively at the Utah State Correctional Facility.

Up until her latest film project, Locklear hadn't had an acting gig since portraying author Kristine Carlson in Ellen S. Pressman's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: The Kristine Carlson Story, which aired on Lifetime in 2021.

The former Dynasty star was previously seen celebrating her 63rd birthday in late September and more recently marked her daughter Ava's 27th birthday in October.

Heather welcomed her only child during her 11-year marriage to Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, which ended in 2007.

Ava achieved her Master of Science in marriage and family therapy at USC last year after earning her Bachelor's of Arts in psychology at Loyola Marymount University in 2020.

Ava's engagement to Tyler Farrar, her boyfriend of four years, was announced on social media in February.