Sitcoms Online - Main Page / Message Boards - Main Page / News Blog / Photo Galleries / DVD Reviews / Buy TV Shows on DVD and Blu-ray

View Today's Active Threads (No Chit Chat/Chit Chat Only) / View New Posts (No Chit Chat/Chit Chat Only) / Mark All Boards Read / Chit Chat Board

Who's the Boss? links and theme songs at Sitcoms Online / Who's the Boss? Photo Gallery


Who's the Boss? - The Complete First Season

Buy Who's the Boss? - The Complete First Season on DVD

Sitcoms Online Message Boards - Forums  

Go Back   Sitcoms Online Message Boards - Forums > 1980s Sitcoms > Who's the Boss?
Register Community View Today's Active Threads (No CC/CC Only) Search Photo Galleries Calendar FAQ

Notices

SitcomsOnline.com News Blog Headlines Facebook X/Twitter Bluesky Threads Instagram YouTube RSS

SitcomsOnline Digest: Hulu Orders Cable Guy Comedy Pilot; Netflix Orders Big Box Store Adult Animated Comedy
Prime Video's Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2; Netflix's Devil May Cry Renewed for Final Season
HBO Max Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Six Feet Under; Netflix Orders Dealies
Additional Fox Summer 2026 Dates; BET's Lot Patrol Premiere Date
Kids Make Me Angry Sneak Peek; Shrinking Adds Karen Gillan for Season 4
Netflix's A Different World Premieres September 24; Ted Danson Joins Elizabeth Banks Apple TV Comedy
Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of June 1, 2026)


New on DVD and Blu-ray

Happy's Place - Season One (Blu-ray) Two and a Half Men - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) Abbott Elementary - The Complete Fourth Season (DVD) I Love Lucy - The Complete Series - 75th Anniversary Edition (DVD) The Office - The Complete Series - Superfan Extended Episodes (Blu-ray)

11/04/25 - Happy's Place - Season One (Blu-ray) (DVD)
11/11/25 - Rick and Morty - Season 8 (Blu-ray) (DVD)
11/11/25 - SpongeBob SquarePants - The Complete Fifteenth Season (DVD)
11/11/25 - Two and a Half Men - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
12/02/25 - Tom and Jerry - The Golden Era Anthology (1940-1958) (Blu-ray) (DVD)
12/16/25 - Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
12/16/25 - Wally Gator - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
01/20/26 - The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Golden Age Collection (Blu-ray)
01/27/26 - The New Fred and Barney Show - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
02/11/26 - Tom and Jerry - The Complete CinemaScope Collection (Blu-ray)
03/24/26 - Looney Tunes Collector's Vault - Volume 2 (Blu-ray)
04/11/26 - Abbott Elementary - The Complete Fourth Season (DVD)
04/21/26 - Famous Studios Champion Collection (Blu-ray) (DVD)
05/19/26 - I Love Lucy - The Complete Series - 75th Anniversary Edition (DVD)
05/19/26 - Looney Tunes Cartoons - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (DVD)
07/14/26 - The Office - The Complete Series - Superfan Extended Episodes (Blu-ray)
07/28/26 - I Love Lucy - The Complete Series - 75th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)

More Recent and Upcoming TV DVD and Blu-ray Releases / TV Shows on DVD, Blu-ray and Prime Video / DVD Reviews Archive


Search Sitcoms Online:



Donate

Please make a donation if you can help with Sitcoms Online's web hosting costs. Thanks for your support!

We receive a small commission on all DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, Books, and any other items ordered through our Amazon.com links as an associate. Thanks for using our links for your online shopping!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 01-10-2026, 05:59 AM   #1
TMC
Member
Forum Idol
 
Join Date: Jan 09, 2001
Posts: 124,545
Default Tony Danza says Alyssa Milano had 'black eye' in 'Who's the Boss?' audition

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/to...e8fd6c42&ei=12

Quote:
Tony Danza says Alyssa Milano had 'black eye' in 'Who's the Boss?' audition

Story by Kat Pettibone

Tony Danza is reflecting on the moment he knew Alyssa Milano was the perfect casting choice for his tomboy daughter, Samantha, on Who's the Boss?

"[Alyssa] was 10 when she got on the show. I found her on a VHS cartridge that somebody sent from New York," Danza, 74, exclusively tells Us Weekly while discussing his latest film, Re-Election. "We were looking for kids, and these precocious kids kept coming in. And I was like, ‘I don't want that. That's not what you want [for this role].' And then there was this little girl, and she had a black eye - which ended up being part of the show - and she came in and knocked us dead."

Danza starred as housekeeper and single dad Tony Micelli on the hit ABC (and later NBC) sitcom, which ran for eight seasons from 1984 to 1992. Milano, 53, was cast as his onscreen daughter. Judith Light portrayed Tony's boss, Angela, while Katherine Helmon played her mother, Mona. Danny Pintauro starred as Angela's young son, Jonathan.

Milano's character was a true tomboy, which is why Who's the Boss? opted to use the actress' black eye to its advantage in the pilot episode, making it the catalyst for the entire series. After Sam receives a shiner from getting in a fight in her NYC neighborhood, Tony whisks her away to suburbia for a better life. "I thought you loved New York," his neighbor says in the show's opening sequence. "I do," he responds, "but I love my daughter more."

In addition to its top-notch cast and Angela and Tony's will-they-or-won't-they relationship - which did turn romantic down the line - Who's the Boss? was lauded for its willingness to push beyond stereotypical gender roles. Having a male character work as the housekeeper while a single mother was portrayed as the successful, well-off businessperson was a daring structure for its time, but Danza tells Us that it was all "by design." It would, after all, be impossible not to center women like Light, Helmon and Milano on set.

Who's the Boss? was also often praised for never using Tony's role on the show as a joke, although it certainly wasn't afraid to highlight its trailblazing storytelling, either.

"There was an [episode] where I break up the date [Angela] is on, and I have the guy up against the wall with a bat, and he says, ‘Angela, who is this?' And she says, ‘Grant, that's my housekeeper,'" Danza recalls of one episode. "He says, ‘Angela, that's the ugliest woman I've ever seen!' It's so good."

Danza remains happy with the work he did on the show, even watching it back now. He recently stumbled on an episode from season 5, the series' first at NBC, and was impressed by everyone's performances - even if he couldn't hear what anyone was actually saying.

"I was switching around [channels] and it was on, so I stayed and I watched," he said, noting that season 5 was an "interesting year" for the cast because "all bets were off" after swapping networks. "But there was something wrong with the audio. So [I watched] with no audio. I do [that] with old movies because I want to watch the work. And I couldn't believe it. I loved it. It was so detailed. I could tell what was going on without listening. I thought it was really good."

Looking back, Danza says he's particularly satisfied with how the show was able to stay universally relatable and watchable for all ages.

"I'm proud of the fact that you could sit down with your family and not worry about the message you were going to get," Danza explains. "I worried about the message every week. I was like, ‘OK, wait a minute. There's kids out there and parents listening to this.' And I mean, we certainly pushed the envelope with Mona's [edgier] comments, but most of those hopefully went over kids' heads."

"I didn't want a woman, a mother, to be sitting there being embarrassed watching the show because she doesn't know if [her kid] should hear this," he adds. "So, I was really careful about that."

It was Danza's latest film, Re-Election, that sparked the career retrospection. The actor portrays Stan, the father of emotionally stunted, middle-aged Jimmy (played by writer-director Adam Saunders), who is desperate to go back to high school to try and win a long-lost race for class president. Jimmy's obsession with the past plays into one of the movie's central themes of unfinished business.

While eight seasons might seem like enough to make a sitcom feel finished, Danza admits that it's the years after the series wrapped that tend to spark a sense of regret. The desire to stay in the sitcom business, he explains, ultimately led him to turn down a role that in hindsight may have been a good choice for his career.

Alyssa Milano's Son Meeting ‘TV Dad' Tony Danza ‘Was Very Special for Me'

"I was hell-bent to be the funniest guy on TV. I wanted to do another sitcom [after Boss] and I got offered this part in a one-hour series, and I said, ‘[No], I'm gonna do a sitcom, that's what I do,'" Danza recalls. "And I look back on it now, and I really think that was maybe a big turning point in what I've been aspiring to, what I want to do, and what I want out of my career. … I think I took a wrong turn there."

Still, Danza says he tries not to look back on his life choices with remorse.

"There's an old saying that if you're at war with the past, you have no future," he tells Us, a lesson Jimmy ultimately learns himself in Re-Election. "And it's absolutely true."

Re-Election is available on demand now.
TMC is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2026, 09:14 PM   #2
DJM77
Member
Forum Veteran
 
DJM77's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 15, 2001
Location: Missouri
Posts: 5,553
Send a message via ICQ to DJM77
Default

Who's The Boss was never on NBC.
__________________
Marge: There are only 49 stars on that flag.
Abe: I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri!
DJM77 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply



Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:30 AM.


Although the administrators and moderators of the Sitcoms Online Message Boards will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of the Sitcoms Online Message Boards, nor vBulletin Solutions Inc. (developers of vBulletin) will be held responsible for the content of any message. The owners of the Sitcoms Online Message Boards reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2026, vBulletin Solutions Inc.