Let’s Not Rewrite the History of Suzanne Somers’ Exit from Three’s Company

[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/let...hrees-company/

In a new TV Legends Revealed, let's look at the reality of Suzanne Somers' exit from Three's Company.



TV LEGEND: Suzanne Somers was fired from Three’s Company for trying to negotiate a new contract when her initial deal was up, while she was getting a tenth of what male TV stars were making.

Recently, we lost the great Suzanne Somers, who was a talented comedic actor, most famous for her role as Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company, one of the prototypical TV ditz roles that has left a mark on TV history, as Three’s Company reruns are still popular to this day.

In the wake of her passing, though, there has been some celebrations that look to her exit from Three’s Company and tend to try to buy into some self-mythologizing that Somers herself did over the years about what went down on the show in her exit during the fifth season of the series in 1980-81.

My pal Bill Walko (who knows more about Three’s Company than most folks out there) sent me the following meme about Somers’ exit:



So, let’s break this down to its three component parts – 1. Somers tried to get pay equity with John Ritter when her contract was up 2. Male actors were getting paid 10-12 times as much as Somers at the time and 3. The show fired her for asking for a new contract.

Right off the bat, let’s note that the three lead cast members on Three’s Company (John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and Somers) signed seven-year contracts (perhaps Normal Fell and Audra Lindley also signed seven-year deals, but I really don’t know), so Somers’ contract was not expired when she and her manager/husband, Alan Hamel, decided that Somers wanted to make as much money as John Ritter at the start of the fifth season of the series.

Ritter was the highest-paid cast member on the series, but there is a dispute over HOW much money he was making at the time. In the greatest book about Three’s Company that we have, Chris Mann’s awesome (but sadly out of print), Come and Knock on Our Door: A Hers and Hers and His Guide to “Three’s Company, Ted Bergmann, the producer of the series, said Ritter was making $50,000 per episode at the time, and didn’t get a cut of the show’s profits until the spinoff, Three’s a Crowd.

Somers and Hamel believed Ritter was making $150,000 per episode, plus a cut of the show’s syndication profits. Joyce DeWitt ALSO thought Ritter was getting points. Ritter pointedly refused to talk about his salary publicly, only acknowledging that his contract stated that he get paid the most on the show no matter what (and since he felt Somers KNEW that, he was mystified as to why she would try to get pay equity with him, when his contract said no one else COULD get pay equity with him). Whatever the actual number, it was probably south of $150,000 (although I bet Ritter hit those heights by the end of the show’s run), so when the show countered by giving Somers a raise from $30,000 to $35,000 (which, due to a favored nations clause in DeWitt’s contract, would require her to get a raise to $35,000, as well), it probably was not quite the insult that it seems like in later retellings of the story (Hamel even later noted that a request they made for Somers to get $150,000 an episode wasn’t a serious request). So at WORST it was five times Somers’ salary, but likely much closer than that.

In addition, note that Somers did not try to go in WITH DeWitt, but rather, by herself. DeWitt recalled to Mann that earlier on, “I told her there was no way in hell that we would ever get points in the show unless we stood together, because they only valued John. They would replace either one of us in the blink of an eye. But they couldn’t lose both of us. And I genuinely believed, and still do, that Suzanne’s and my contribution to the success of the show was worthy of having points in the show.” DeWitt raises the main point, which is that the producers felt that the show was based around Ritter and two female roommates, and that Ritter was the central figure of the show, not the female roommates (Bill wanted me to add that there were three pilots for the series made, and Ritter was the only roommate who was in all three, so it was clear from the start that the network saw Ritter as the main focus of the series). The fact that the show continued to be a hit without Somers somewhat supported that belief.

Everything got messy early in Season 5 when Somers and Hamel apparently tried to get cute by having Somers miss episodes at the last minute due to injuries which didn’t seem to prevent Somers from making other appearances (she would later insist that the injuries were all legit). Things got so weird that the show even began having different scripts depending on whether Somers would show up for an episode or not. The cast and crew grew so resentful of the disruption of the show’s filming process that after Somers’ commitment to the show was over, the crew did a mock funeral for Somers’ character.

In her tellings of the story over the years, Somers also tended to gloss over the fact that she and Hamel had cut a deal with CBS that would begin whenever her contract with Three’s Company ended. As it turned out, that was after Season 5, where the producers ultimately came to an arrangement where Somers would be paid out her previous $30,000 per episode rate, only she would only do a few cameo appearances throughout the season, with her final one done for the show’s 17th episode (out of 22), with Chrissy written out of the show as going to stay with her parents to help her mother who was dealing with an illness, so that her appearances would come in phone calls which she would film separately from the rest of the cast (For Season 6, she was just written out entirely, without an explanation for why Chrissy never returned from her parents’ home).

Now, did sexism play a role in this? Certainly, but mostly, this was just a failed negotiation by Somers and Hamel, who didn’t get DeWitt’s point that the show really felt that Ritter was the star of the show and the others were replaceable, but also were feeling secure with their CBS deal in their back pocket. Should the show have just paid Somers more? I’m not saying they shouldn’t have, but it’s weird seeing a pretty normal (if botched) renegotiation attempt be presented as this big noble fight in retrospect.

The legend is…

STATUS: False

Thanks to Bill Walko for suggesting I write about this. Thanks to Chris Mann for that excellent book.

Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV.

[BestTVever]

It's a mixed bag. She had some valid points. However her tactics made her valid points almost disappear. It was the late 70s/1980 and equal pay for women in corporate America was not even addressed yet. In movies and TV it was even worse. ABC was greatly underpaying Joyce and Suzanne as a top show compared to male counterparts on other networks and even their own show. I dont consider Jack's character to have been the star of the show. John was probably the most talented of the 3 but he was not the star. Suzanne was the most popular but she was not the star either. Yes she was on the cover of more magazines than any network performer but that just made her feel she was the star. When the series started each of the roommates had equal time. There were countless episodes where Janet was the main character and the plot evolved around her. The scripts were pretty much evenly divided. Each played a key role in the show's success. John played the slapstick character who also worked with the naive Chrissy. Janet was the serious and grounded one that often set up the jokes for them both. Like a table with 3 legs, each character revolved around the other one. It was not until Terri moved in that the network started to pivot and make Jack the focus and the female roommates play a supporting role.
However the way that Suzanne went about this was a travesty. Her husband was a greedy and foolish agent and had no experience negotiating and battling network executives. Suzanne was also playing dirty. She would practice all week with the cast and then call in sick for the filming date. Her antics cost the network huge money because their insurance policy for the shoot would not cover Suzanne's "illness" because she refused to be examined by the network's doctor which was in the policy. The network was stuck paying everyone for the week yet had no product to show for it. She would go and perform on stage doing all sorts of dance moves in Las Vegas then return to LA and say she was still sick and injured. Even worse was that ABC discovered her working with a rival network to do a series based on the Chrissy character once Threes Company was over.
Her antics hurt her own cause. After she was fired and then she sued the network, she met the producer of Threes Company in an elevator at the courthouse. She expressed to him she wanted to forget everything and come back to the show. Her equality claim got lost in all the drama.

[thejasoomian]

This article is complete and utter BS , like that quote from Suzanne.

[thejasoomian]

If I'm going to give an award out for negotiating a contract and sticking up for women in the acting paying field , it's going to go to Lindsay Wagner.

[CJMD03]

Bottom line: She came in too strong and wanted too much. Even Ritter didn’t have syndication royalties! Also, she DID hold the show hostage with false claims of back trouble, etc., costing the show thousands and thousands of dollars. Her husband’s antics were the final straw. He was NOT trained in negotiations.

She claims she was told by the producers to not show up for work - that makes no sense because they would have TWO dif scripts during rehearsals - one script with Chrissy and another if she didn’t show. Why make two dif scripts if they told her to stay home?