NEED TO KNOW
The Golden Girls made fans fall in love with fictional friends, but in real life the situation was a lot more complicated.
Writers, producers and others who worked on the series gathered at NeueHouse Hollywood on June 18 as part of the monthlong Pride LIVE! Hollywood festival. The panel was in honor of the show’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The series, which ran from 1985 to 1992, starred Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Betty White as Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux and Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo.
During the panel, co-producer Marsha Posner Williams brought up one of the show’s lasting dramas: the alleged bad blood between Arthur, who died in 2009 at 86, and White, who died in 2019 just days before her 100th birthday.
“When that red light was on [and the show was filming], there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together,” Williams shared, per The Hollywood Reporter.
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Williams said that Arthur often called White the c-word. “[She] used to call me at home and say, ‘I just ran into that c at the grocery store. I’m gonna write her a letter,’ and I said, ‘Bea, just get over it for crying out loud. Just get past it.’ ” (Sally Struthers said as much in her own bombshell interview about White earlier this year.)
And the use of the c-word was not a one-time thing. “I remember, my husband and I went over to Bea’s house a couple of times for dinner. Within 30 seconds of walking in the door, the c-word came out,” Williams said. Casting director Joel Thurm also said he heard Arthur call White that as well.
As for why the women didn’t get along, the panelists had different theories. Co-producer Jim Vallely thought it was because White — who had found legions of fans thanks to her role as Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show — received more applause during live tapings, but Williams said Arthur hated publicity and didn’t care about that. She also remembered that Arthur “hated” when White would “break character” in the middle of taping and speak to the in-person audience.
Williams claimed that Arthur was the reason The Golden Girls ended. “The show would have continued after seven years,” she said. “Their contracts were up and … the executives went to the ladies, and Estelle said, ‘Yes, let’s keep going,’ and Rue said, ‘Yes let’s keep going,’ and Betty said, ‘Yes, let’s keep going.’ And Bea said ‘no f—— way,’ and that’s why that show didn’t continue.” White, Getty and McClanahan continued the series in the ill-fated spin-off The Golden Palace.
Back in 2024, TV writer Stan Zimmerman, who worked on the series, wrote in his book The Girls: From Golden to Gilmore, that he didn’t know about the alleged issues between the two actresses. “During our time on set, I never felt tension between the two,” he wrote. “I only heard stories and recently learned, from producer Marsha Posner Williams on a podcast, that Bea thought Betty was two-faced.”
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“Bea liked real people,” he wrote. “I had the sense that Betty was more like Sue Ann Nivens, the character she played on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, than she was like Rose. More conniving than the innocent airhead from St. Olaf.”
Williams told Broadcast Beat in 2022, “Bea Arthur despised Betty White.” Of Arthur, who had previously starred on Maude, she said, “The thing is Bea was exactly who she was. She hated to wear makeup. She hated to wear shoes. She hated to wash her hair. She didn’t like to be touched. She drank a lot of vodka. That’s who she was. But when you’re on a hit show and you want it to keep going, you better make nice and they did.”
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Arthur’s son Matthew Saks reiterated to Closer in 2017 that his mother didn’t like when White spoke to the audience, clarifying, “It wasn’t jealousy. It was a focus thing.”
He continued, “My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about at work.”
At a 2011 event, White also admitted of Arthur, “She was not that fond of me. She found me a pain in the neck sometimes,” per The Village Voice. She credited her “positive attitude.”
