Bea Arthur Thought Betty White Was Fake, Says ‘Golden Girls’ Guest Star (Exclusive)

For seven seasons, Betty White and Bea Arthur played best friends Rose Nylund and Dorothy Zbornak, respectively, on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls.

Despite their bond, the characters had their differences. Dorothy often bristled at Rose’s naiveté and her long, pointless stories about her St. Olaf, Minn., hometown. And Rose could give as good as she got. In one episode, after Dorothy made a nasty crack before leaving the room, Rose said, “I never liked her.”

Arthur might have said the same thing about White. Although they worked together from 1985 to 1992, Arthur, unlike most of America, was never very fond of White, who even acknowledged it herself in interviews.

A number of theories have been raised over the years to explain their prickly relationship, ranging from Arthur allegedly being jealous that White won her Emmy for The Golden Girls before Arthur won hers (all four leads eventually took home statuettes for their work on the series) to the more simple reality that sometimes people just don’t like each other (a lesson Rose had to learn in one memorable episode where she tried, unsuccessfully, to get a coworker to like her).

Lyn Greene, who played a younger version of Arthur’s Dorothy in four flashback episodes over the course of the series, has an interesting theory why Arthur and White didn’t mix — and it involves Sue Ann Nivens, the phony, man-hungry character White previously played on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

In fact, during an interview with PEOPLE, Greene comes right out and asks, “Are you going to ask me about Bea and Betty?”

Well, since she asked, what was their deal?

“I think Bea prides herself — prided herself — on her lack of artifice, on the fact that she was a straight shooter,” Green, 71, who transitioned to writing shortly after her guest-star run on The Golden Girls, explains. “And she didn’t suffer fools, and you couldn’t bulls— her.”

“I think that [with] Betty, who was the nicest to me, and continued to be after the show was over, sunshine, what you saw seemed to be what you would get,” she says. “And I think that there were times Bea saw more of Sue Ann Nivens than of Rose Nylund, in that I’m not sure she thought that Betty was always sincere.”

“I think there was a sense that she might have been… Somebody being overly agreeable can sometimes contrast and make you look like you’re an ogre. One was perky, happy, ‘Anything you say,’ ‘What can we do?’ You know? And I don’t think it was easy for Bea, who was so serious, really,” she adds.

Another former costar of White’s would likely agree with Arthur. On the Jan. 13 episode of Let’s Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti, All in the Family alum Sally Struthers, who once worked with White on a pilot for a game show, offered a less-than-glowing review of White, who she said “fat shamed” her and whom she called “a very passive-aggressive woman.”

Struthers recalled one particular incident that happened at White’s house when they were working on the game show. According the Struthers, it started with White asking her housekeeper to bring them something to eat.

“Then the plate was set in the middle, and it was cookies, I think,” Struthers, 78, said. “So I reached for a cookie, and she said in front of everyone, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, dear. You don’t need a cookie.’ ”

“Totally fat-shamed me in front of the rest of the people in the room,” Struthers added. “And I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s not nice.’ ”

Interestingly, on the same podcast, Struthers raved about Arthur, whom she worked with on All in the Family. She called Arthur “a force of nature” who was “filthier than a drunken sailor” (in a good way). They’d often run into each other at the grocery store, where, Struthers said. “She would trash everyone we ever knew. I loved how filthy she was.”

Greene speaks glowingly of both White and Arthur. While chatting with PEOPLE, she recalls the day she realized she had the respect of Arthur, who she says was one of her idols.

“I caught Bea looking at a playback of my scene and smiling,” she recalls. “She was watching the playback in her dressing room, and I was passing it, and I could see she was pleased at the portrayal.”

“I’ve got to tell you, that was everything,” she adds. “I think I felt seen by her, and I knew she knew how much I worshiped her.”

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Arthur died in 2009 at age 86, and White died in 2021, just weeks shy of her 100th birthday. Sept. 14 will mark the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls’ 1985 debut.

This fall ABC News will air a one-hour special marking the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls. All seven seasons are available to stream on Hulu.