Lily Tomlin Did a Historic Walkout When a Talk Show Guest Got Sexist - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 02-21-2026, 06:43 AM

https://popculturereferences.com/lil...st-got-sexist/

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Brian looks at the time that Lily Tomlin walked out of a talk show appearance after a guest made a sexist remark.

Today, we look at the time that Lily Tomlin walked out of a talk show appearance after a guest made a sexist remark.

This is a feature called “The Way We Talk,” about notable talk show appearances.

In 1972, Chad Everett was starring on the long-running TV series, Medical Center. He appeared on The Dick Cavett Show as the second guest on the show.

The first guest on the show that day was comedian Lily Tomlin, who was promoting her then-new Edith Ann album, And That’s the Truth.

She recently noted that she was in a bad mood at the time due to what she felt was sexism on her various talk show appearances at the time:

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I had had so many experiences on the talk shows with that kind of sexism that I was sort of purged by the time I got to Dick Cavett. So I’d been on Mike Douglas, David Frost …I’d been on most of the shows.

When I was on Mike Douglas, the chief inspector of Scotland Yard was on. He was just a great big old English guy, very comedic in his physicality. Mike asked him if there were any women inspectors. He said [imitating the inspector], “Oh, no, no, and there never shall be.” And I said, “Could we at least hold the possibility open?”

I was on with Carol Channing and Alice Clayton, the Broadway actress. The actor Robert Shaw came on toward the end, after the inspector. Everybody goes on to promote something, [but Shaw was pretending] as if he wasn’t on to promote the play he was appearing in, as if he was above all of us. So that irked me right away. Carol’s very, very smart, but she acts kind of spacey—that’s kind of her persona. Alice Clayton has a very high-pitched little girl’s voice. Carol and Alice were being kind of chattery, and, at some point, he turned around and very condescendingly patted Carol Channing’s hand or shoulder or something and said, “Now calm down, girls, calm down, girls.”

By this time I was just fed up with everything, and forget that later his wife committed suicide, anyway. After the show was off the air, as he got up to leave, he came to shake each one of our hands, and I said, “I’m not shaking your hand.” He went sort of ballistic, and he said, “What’s wrong with you? Have you got sex problems?”

But, anyway, by the time I got to Cavett, my record was expunged. It was like, “OK, that’s about it. I’m not gonna listen to one more thing like this.”

Everett showed up, and the first thing he did was give Tomlin a gag gig of a brassiere (almost certainly a weird lesbian joke). After talking about how he got the stage name “Chad Everett,” he then talked about his ranch, and all of the animals on the ranch, including his wife, who he referred to as, “the most beautiful animal I own.”

Tomlin said, “You own?” She then said, “I have to leave” and she got up and left.

She recently recalled, “So I just got up and left. It was really spontaneous. And when I got backstage, everybody started grabbing on to me saying, ‘What are you doing? You can’t do that to Chad.'”

Cavett makes a joke about feminist author, Germaine Greer, coming to get Everett.

Then, the FIRST thing Everett did when she got up and left, was to make a lesbian joke about Tomlin! He said that his wife, “is very happy being taken care of by a man. She has no aspirations to be taken care of by a woman.” He then referred to Tomlin, “But that’s her kind of woman.”

Really, dude, a GAY joke was how you thought you were going to get out of this?

Everett was clearly just THROWN by Tomlin actually walking off the show. “Gee that was a disturbing thing to do. I’m sorry she did that. She’s having fun, right?” He then shouts, “Lily! Come on back! The joke’s over!”

Everett quickly tried to recover by saying of his wife, “And she owns ME, too,” and reads a poem he wrote about his romance with his wife. Everett quickly tried to recover by saying of his wife, “And she owns ME, too,” and reads a poem he wrote about his romance with his wife.

It was good that Cavett didn’t really give Tomlin any **** for leaving, but at the same time, he probably could have defended her better, as well.