If You Ask Me - Betty White [14]
The character was written as “an icky-sweet Betty White type.”
The casting director, Ethel Winant, said, “Why not get Betty White?” But the executives said they couldn’t have me read for the role because Mary and I were best friends, and it might make it awkward for Mary if it didn’t work out.
As an actor, you don’t get every role you try out for, so it wouldn’t have bothered our friendship at all, but they didn’t know that.
Well, I guess they couldn’t find anybody sickeningly sweet enough, so they finally called me one Saturday morning and explained the part of the Happy Homemaker and asked, “Would you do it?”
Of course I said I’d be thrilled!
So I called Mary and said, “Guess who’s doing your show next week?”
She said, “Who?”
I said, “Me.”
She said, “Oh, no, you’re not! I have veto power!”
She was kidding, of course.
As Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
And Sue Ann Nivens really did change my career. That sickly sweet image I’d grown up with expanded to another context. She was the Happy Homemaker who could fix anything, cook anything, clean anything, and sleep with anyone who would stand still. Another character, Phyllis (played by Cloris Leachman), became suspicious that her husband was having an affair with Sue Ann, because he’d come home with his clothes cleaner than they’d been when he left.
People would invariably ask Allen, “How close to Sue Ann is Betty?”
He’d say, “They’re really the same character—except Betty can’t cook.”
Recently I had a similar role switch. I did a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie called The Lost Valentine, which is a very poignant and emotional film.
I have been doing comedy for so long that people were surprised to see me play a dramatic part. I kept getting calls afterward, saying, “Hey, I’ve never seen you do anything like this!”
But it’s good to mix things up as an actor. Or else you can grow too accustomed to a character. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I played alongside Gavin MacLeod (as Murray Slaughter). When she was near, Sue Ann always petted Murray’s bald head.
In a poignant, emotional role—with Jennifer Love Hewitt in The Lost Valentine.
HALLMARK/THE KOBAL COLLECTION
Gavin went on after The Mary Tyler Moore Show to his own hit series, The Love Boat. I did a guest role on his show, and in one scene I’m standing behind Gavin, as Captain Stubing, and it was so hard not to stroke that bald head!
So for me, Sue Ann was a huge career mood change. The Mary Tyler Moore Show aired for seven years altogether. I came on in the fourth season, in what was to have been a one-shot appearance. The most episodes I ever did during one season was twelve of twenty-two—the other seasons, I did only five or six episodes. But people still remember Sue Ann. She was such a mess!
And such fun to play.
Allen’s quip about me and Sue Ann always made people laugh.
PHOTO BY GABI RONA/MPTVIMAGES.COM
Sometimes you lose control.
TV LAND/PHOTOFEST
CAST CHEMISTRY
On Hot in Cleveland, when we’d all been cast and come together for our first table read, we all simply fell in love.
It was that instant rapport. We all knew one another from other shows. Everyone in the cast is a pro. Valerie Bertinelli from her career work, Wendie Malick from Just Shoot Me, Jane Leeves from Frasier, and I from The Golden Girls. We’d all seen one another work, so we were looking forward to getting to know one another better. But you can’t manufacture chemistry—it’s either there or it isn’t. And boy, was it there!
When we’re on the set, we’re holding one another’s hands, or someone will come by and ruffle the back of your hair. And we laugh inordinately.
Back in my second book, Betty White in Person, at one point I was writing about The Golden Girls and the team relationship we had. Well, I reread it recently and laughed out loud. It described the exact same rapport I was just talking about on Hot in Cleveland.
Let me