Live-Action TV / Creator Backlash

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Live-action — General

True Blood: Deborah Ann Woll admitted in a podcast that she was disappointed with how Jessica's story played out in the last season, believing that Jessica should have either traveled the world or become Queen of Louisiana as opposed to marrying Hoyt.
Princess Agents: Zhao Li Ying is reportedly unhappy with the drama's cliff-hanger ending and disappointed it only adapted part of the novel.
George Peppard grew to despise The A-Team because the long shooting schedule often left him stressed and exhausted, as well as the fact that he and Mr. T disliked each other. In the final season, Peppard's longtime friend Robert Vaughn was added to the cast in order to improve his morale, but by that point, the show had begun a massive slide in the ratings. Peppard described his experience as "A roller coaster that was out of control".
Dave Chappelle came to loathe how people started showing up to his stand-up comedy exclusively to demand that he replicate skits from his TV show, specifically the infamous Rick James one. This even led to a nervous breakdown, ensuring that the third season (or any after it) of Chappelle's Show would never get finished. And then there were the people who would yell at him, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" (including one who apparently did so while he was with his family). Took about two minutes for him to feel Dude, Not Funny!. The significant Misaimed Fandom from his sizeably white audience who were there simply for the Uncle Tomfoolery and completely missing how Chappelle was satirizing and mocking such attitudes didn't help matters much, either.
- Chappelle also absolutely hates Buddies, the short-lived Spin-Off of Home Improvement that he starred in as a young man. He even bashed it during an episode of Chappelle's Show, calling it "irrelevant and not funny." (It didn't help that Executive Meddling saw the chemistry vanish when Jim Breuer was replaced.)
BET (Black Entertainment Television) co-founder Sheila Johnson became ashamed with the channel's Network Decay after selling it to Viacom. Although BET is one of the most popular networks in America, Johnson was disappointed that the new management canned its news programs and variety talk shows in favor of music videos, reality shows and other programming that she claimed only promoted negative stereotypes of African Americans.
For many years, Eddie Murphy refused to acknowledge his old Saturday Night Live characters (Gumby as a faded, Jewish comedian, Mr. Robinson^note, Buckwheat, etc), though they are some of his most enduring legacy. It might be because of a 1995 "Weekend Update" sketch in which David Spade, as part of his "Hollywood Minute" segment, made a brutal Take That! at Murphy's (then-lackluster) career, saying "Look, kids, a falling star! Make a wish!", which really upset Murphy. It's also likely due to fans asking Murphy to do those sketches for them when they meet him. Allegedly, he wrote the SNL sketch where Buckwheat is assassinated for this reason. Murphy would not reprise these any SNL roles until he hosted in 2019.
With the exception of "On Thursday We Leave For Home", Rod Serling wasn't happy with any of the episodes from the fourth season of The Twilight Zone (1959) (Serling himself wrote that episode, but he said "I overwrote it. I think the story was good despite what I did to it"). He felt that making the episodes an hour long (whereas the episodes from the previous three seasons had all been a half hour) did nothing but unnecessarily pad them out and make the stories less tight, and only returned to do the fifth and final season with the stipulation that the episode run time was reduced back to a half hour. To this day the hour long episodes are hardly ever shown in syndication, and season four is the only season of the series that is completely unavailable on Netflix.
Sophia Myles did not enjoy her work in Spooks/MI-5, due to her character being underwritten.
Star Trek:
- Gene Roddenberry was notorious of ignoring / de-canonizing parts of the Star Trek universe he did not "approve" of. Roddenberry had a dislike of the second to sixth movies, which he had no creative control over. He especially hated Shatner's ill-fated Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and hence no references to the film were made in any later Trek productions until 2022 when Sybok appeared in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Roddenberry also considered The Animated Series as not part of the official canon. Many years had to pass after his death before the writers dared to reference the animated show in any form. In his last years, Roddenberry notoriously claimed that The Next Generation is the series which represents his actual "vision" of Star Trek, and when canon inconsistencies might occur between TOS and TNG, the latter should always be considered the deciding one.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
  - Most of the original cast had a period of Creator Backlash after the series ended, mostly because their careers were suffering due to being pigeonholed as their characters. Leonard Nimoy in particular wrote a memoir called I Am Not Spock. The cast ultimately seems to have gotten over it, since, for better or worse, it has defined their careers and earned them quite a lot of money. Nimoy wrote another memoir called I Am Spock, and he officially become the original cast member with the longest on-screen association with the franchise, with his role in Star Trek (2009).
  - Harlan Ellison wrote a book ranting about how Executive Meddling ruined his original script for the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever".
  - Teri Garr guest-starred as Roberta Lincoln in the episode/Poorly Disguised Pilot "Assignment: Earth". She had a very uncomfortable time during filming (which included sexual harassment), to the point that she refuses to discuss Star Trek in any way and does not attend Star Trek conventions.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  - The only crew member with real regrets about his time on TNG is Wil Wheaton: a large portion of his autobiography Just a Geek focuses on his coming to terms with his (in retrospect) ill-made decision to leave the show due to Fan Backlash and increasingly being sidelined by the show's creators. It probably didn't help that his character was one of the most hated on the show, either. Nowadays, he seems to look back on his time on TNG with real nostalgia, and doesn't seem above some good-natured ribbing of his old character, either. That said, he will still call out others for going too far in their vitriol. He also appears as Wesley in an episode of Star Trek: Picard.
  - Everyone in the cast feels this way about "Code of Honor", an episode so charged with racial stereotypes and outright racism that it's kind of hard to watch. The plot is that there is a planet of aliens who look exactly like humans of African descent and dress in a mix of stereotypes of what Shaka's warriors might wear and leopard-skin hot pants. This would be bad enough. However, the leader of these tribes is a somewhat sexist man who falls for blond-haired Lt. Yar, kidnaps her, and tries to get his "number one wife" killed via a duel with Yar. Their society actually follows tribal-style concepts of status and honor, including a "counting coup". The Enterprise crew can't simply decide to have no part in any of this nonsense because the people of this planet have a vaccine which is vital to the survival of another planet, but are so wrapped up in their contests of honor that they will not release it until the Enterprise crew plays along. So you have African stereotypes kidnapping a pretty white woman to marry her, necessitating the pretty white woman's companions to try to save her while she has to fight an enraged, jealous African female. (The aliens weren't written to be Black in the script; Wil Wheaton has explained that it was the original director's idea, and he was so horribly racist that when they found out, they quickly replaced him.)
  - At the 2013 Edmonton Expo, Garrett Wang (known for playing Ensign Kim on Star Trek: Voyager) claimed that the reason he didn't watch TNG was because of that episode. He had missed the first few episodes because he was just starting college at the time the show premiered, and the first episode he saw was "Code of Honor." He was so offended and appalled by it that he decided not to watch it again. Every time he tried to catch the show in its run, the episode that played was "Code of Honor". He would end up watching the entire show later as Voyager began production.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  - Ira Steven Behr is responsible for many of series' best-loved episodes, but also some of its most-reviled episodes. Of the episode "Meridian" in particular (Brigadoon Recycled IN SPACE!), he later said, "I am a moron."
  - Chase Masterson, who played the busty Dabo girl Leeta, recalled meeting the show's star for the first time and repeatedly being addressed as "Kathy." It wasn't until she finally corrected him that Avery Brooks cited her virtuoso performance as "Kathy" in... an infomercial for a treadmill exercise machine.
    Chase: I got paid for being in it; what were you doing watching it?
- Star Trek: Voyager:
  - Robert Beltran (Chakotay) made disparaging comments about the show for years, even while it was still running. He's often criticized the quality of the writing, the technobabble and the fact that he wasn't given a whole lot to do over the series' 7-season run. He's also expressed sincere disdain for the character during chats with fans. It's believed that Beltran was given an out-of-nowhere relationship with Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan) by the producers in order to shut him up long enough for the show to finish....or perhaps as revenge for Beltran throwing fits over Jeri stealing his screen time. One popular legend floating around the net is that he demanded a huge pay raise in the hopes the producers would fire him, but they just dumped the cash in his lap. In 2022, however, he was at least willing to voice Chakotay in the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.
  - Jeri Ryan herself was an example who has come around. She initially had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the audition because of the record Trek has of typecasting actors and because of a bad experience catching a rerun of an earlier episode one night. She finally relented and took the part, and she signed on for a three-year deal. She initially planned to split once her first contract was over, thanks in no small part to tensions on set with co-workers (and that damn suit). However, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she wasn't sure what kind of medical bills were about to come her way, so she agreed to stay on for a fourth season, which ended up being Voyager's last. (Her mother made a full recovery.) After the show, she stayed away from conventions, again to put some distance between her and Seven of Nine before type casting set in, and then was kept away because of problems with stalkers. Once this was explained, and precautions were taken in terms of security, she's began appearing more and more.
  - Brannon Braga quite justifiably hates the Voyager episode "Threshold" (as do all the cast and most of the fanbase), acknowledging it to probably be the worst Trek episode he ever wrote and referring to it as a "royal steaming stinker", though he was quick to point out that he'd also written and co-written over 100 Trek episodes (including some of the best of Star Trek: The Next Generation, such as "Birthright", "Frame of Mind", and "All Good Things...") and could be forgiven just one bomb. Despite this, the episode won an Emmy... for makeup.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: Jolene Blalock, Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer all blasted the show in media interviews in the months following the series finale "These Are the Voyages...", which was roundly criticized by reviewers and fans alike.
Richard Dean Anderson: Before he was Jack O'Neill on Stargate SG-1, he was everyone's favorite mullet-sporting hero, MacGyver. Now, while Anderson has always been deeply appreciative of the show (going so far as to appear on the SNL spoof MacGruber and doing a well received Super Bowl ad for Visa as the character) he's been noted as having been greatly stressed out by it since he was the star of the show and thus he never could take a break. It was one of the reasons he stated that SG-1 had to be an ensemble show, so that he wouldn't have to "carry" it by himself.
Power Rangers: Interestingly, most of the alumni of the franchise don't actively treat the series as an Old Shame, and several of them have commented that they'd love to come back for cameo roles every year if asked, and look back fondly at their years on the show. However, as detailed below, there are some genuine cases of this to be had with the cast.
- Amy Jo Johnson, aka Kimberly the Pink Ranger of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, has shown everything from visible discomfort to outright shame with regards to the role that made her famous (and probably typecast her forever). This has affected many of her fellow actors, but most of them were martial artists first and foremost and didn't have as great of a desire to establish a serious acting career as Johnson did. What makes this especially ironic is that Johnson shamelessly shilled Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in 1995, going so far as to suggest it was as good as Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz combined (a comparison for which she was roundly mocked). In retrospect, it's hard not to wonder if she had been paid to give that statement or had somehow been forced into saying it. That said, Johnson has mellowed out on this over time, to the point that she even made a Remake Cameo in the 2017 movie.
- For years, David Yost seemed this way, but in a 2009 interview, he admitted that the main issue was that he had been the victim of some pretty ugly homophobic bullying by the production staff behind the scenes, and clarified that he didn't hate the show itself, his castmates, or the fans, who have been very supportive after the interview.
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: Danny Slavin (aka Leo the Red Ranger) is a very close second. It's believed that he only took the job to pay for law school, and has repeatedly turned down invitations to Power Morphicon. Not helping matters, reportedly the producers screwed Trakeena's actress Amy Miller out of most of her paycheck during the Lost Galaxy/Lightspeed Rescue crossover episode, which led to him storming off the set with Miller in protest. It took a miracle (and the producers calling in personal favors) for him to cameo in the 10th anniversary episode "Forever Red". Slavin, much like Johnson, appears to have softened up on this though. For one thing, he was one among the handful of Ranger alumni who has returned for the 20th anniversary special◊, and he has even been making appearances at conventions (with a Facebook account dedicated to his career and appearance announcements).
- Power Rangers Super Megaforce: Cameron Jebo, the Silver Ranger, took to Twitter to criticize his own season, calling out the poor writing (plot points went nowhere or unexplained) and the under-utilization of his character (there were episodes where he didn't appear until the end or even appear at all).
VR Troopers: Sarah Brown, who played Kaitlin Starr, doesn't look back on her time with this show fondly, and for good reason — she'd met her ex-husband, co-creator Shuki Levy, while working on the series and during their relationship, he'd physically abused her, and Brown also stated that Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl were complicit in the abuse. This ultimately resulted in her quitting acting.
In an interview, the widow of Ray Goulding (of Bob & Ray) noted he didn't like to have the early episodes of the duo's 1951-53 TV show brought up in later years because "it was infancy for television" and he was "appalled at how really naive they were about what to wear and how to appear." Different times...
Doctor Who:
- Tom Baker was reportedly keen to distance himself from the show after he left, refusing to appear in the 20th anniversary episode "The Five Doctors", and for a long time refusing to do conventions and public appearances related to the show. This was at least partly due to the length of time he spent on the show and being quite burnt out about it, partly because the role was intensely personal to him and the idea of other actors playing the character disturbed him, and partly because his iconic performance largely overshadowed everything else he did since then. It's worth noting that by 1980, sources show Baker as alcoholic, despondent, and nearly impossible to work with; executive meddling and heavy typecasting had taken a toll, his marriage was on the rocks, and he was not at all enamoured of newer writers like Christopher H. Bidmead or producer John Nathan-Turner. He was nearly 50, and had little career left. He seems a lot more comfortable being associated with the show in recent years, however. In 1993, Baker filmed a small part for the short "episode" "Dimensions in Time". It's said there was far more planned using a different script, but Executive Meddling and a primadonna host got in the way. From 2009, Baker returned as the Doctor for three five-part series of audio dramas for BBC Audio, and in 2011, he finally began to star in the audio dramas for Big Finish Productions. He has shown some regret about not doing "The Five Doctors" and distancing himself from the series at large, but at over 80 years old his health will not allow more involvement with the exception of a brief cameo towards the end of the 50th Anniversary special.
- It took a long time for Peter Davison to become comfortable with his tenure as the Doctor. With most of his career still ahead of him, he had been terrified of being typecast and did everything possible to prevent it, including insulting the show to the press. In recent years, Davison has also mentioned the show's low budget and poor treatment from the BBC were a major source of his resentment towards the franchise. He has since said that he wishes that he could have worked on the show when it had the budget, studio support, and prestige it enjoyed under the leadership of head writers Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat. From the late '90s onwards, he's happily been playing the Doctor in monthly Big Finish Doctor Who episodes, and in 2007, reprised his role on TV in the mini-episode "Time Crash" as part of a charity drive. David Tennant used the short as a massive fan-gasm shout-out to Davison's tenure on the show: "you were MY Doctor." Tennant has repeatedly cited Davison's interpretation of the Doctor as his primary inspiration, and reason for becoming an actor. Davison had always felt that he was too young for the role. In "Time Crash" he felt he was at a more fitting age to play the Doctor, and had a grasp on the character that he was happy with. Ironically, the role of the Doctor being played by a younger man (and the contrast between the character's physical age and his actual age) was one of the primary things that carried over into Tennant and Matt Smith's portrayals, thanks in part to Davison's example.
- The Second Doctor Patrick Troughton quit the show in 1969 to avoid being typecast, and because he wished to return to other shows. He went as far as to urge Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) and Wendy Padbury (Zoe) to depart at the same time. Troughton enjoyed making comebacks in "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors", and finally alongside Colin Baker in "The Two Doctors", and looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself in all of them. Troughton didn't hate the character — he would make himself available at conventions, and any time he and Jon Pertwee were at the same convention, the two would appear at joint panels and jokingly mock-bicker as Two and Three did in "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors". Troughton also counselled Davison to stay on only 3 years, and this aided in his decision to leave the show in 1984.
- Janet Fielding has stated that she was pretty bitter towards the show when she left because she wasn't happy with how she and her fellow companions were treated. This reached its highpoint with a notorious on-stage outburst at Panopticon 1993 when she told a room full of fans that any show that treated its female characters as badly as Doctor Who did deserved to have been cancelled. She's since gotten over it and is much more comfortable with the show now, although her negative remarks about certain stories on DVD commentaries have still caused controversy.
- Surprisingly subverted by Colin Baker, who you would think — given that he was the only actor playing the Doctor to be fired from the role, that his era was for a long time not incredibly popular with fans and that, well, he had to wear That Coat — would have plenty of reason to not want to have anything to do with the show again. Instead, barring some rather understandable regrets, he's always appeared quite enthusiastic about the show, being associated with the show and returning to it in some form on occasion. He too has been doing Big Finish dramas as the Doctor continuously since the late 90s, and he (and the writers) went the extra mile to completely rehabilitate Six's reputation, leading to him being a poster boy for Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. Both Baker and Davison later took part in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a special made for the show's fiftieth anniversary. It's notable for the sheer amount of Adam Westing the actors took part in.
- Christopher Eccleston left after Series One, due to having spats with the executives over "the way things were being run" and, according to him, people being bullied by directors on-set was common. He (politely and after a few cordial meetings with Moffat) declined to return in person for the 50th anniversary - which could have had to do with his commitment to Thor: The Dark World. He eventually returned for some Big Finish audio dramas, which were recorded in 2020 and released the following year.
- Legendary Development Hell story "Shada", written by Douglas Adams, was originally rushed out by him in four days when his previous script got rejected thanks to Executive Meddling. Some of the script was shot, but then shooting was interrupted with a strike, causing it to be cancelled. Adams, for his part, was happy about this, because he thought "Shada" was not up to much - however, since people love Douglas Adams's writing, fan demand became huge. In 1992, he accidentally signed away rights for the BBC to make a direct-to-video version of it with linking narration by Tom Baker, and was so distressed by this that he declared he would give away every penny of the proceeds he made of it to charity as penance. People who have seen the script say that while it wasn't anywhere near as godawful as the notably perfectionistic Adams thought it was (notably, it contains one of the all-time-brilliant Douglas Adams characters, Professor Chronotis, and gives the Fourth Doctor some of the wittiest, most enjoyable dialogue he was ever given), it is not up to the standard of his usual work, having gaping plotholes, minor characters who never get to come into the limelight, a very boring villain and being mostly a lazy, watered-down, low-budget retread of his previous Who script "City of Death". Both the Big Finish version (which was forced to shoehorn the Eighth Doctor into the role as Tom Baker refused to do radio scripts at the time) and the 2012 novelization by Gareth Roberts (written after his death as Douglas Adams would not allow anyone else to novelize it) were both attempts to fix the problems that Adams himself had identified - and Adams later wrote an Ascended Fanfic of the story, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which replaces the Doctor, Chris and Claire with Expies and rescues Professor Chronotis from oblivion.
- Steven Moffat regards "The Beast Below" as his least favorite episode he wrote, calling it a bit of a mess. A lot of the fandom agree with him, this episode being widely considered the worst of Series 5.
- Moffat doesn't have high thoughts on Series 7. "I didn’t enjoy my third year as much. It was a bit miserable... The workload was just insane. I wasn’t coping as well. No-one else’s fault, all mine. The 50th was looming, and I didn't know if we could make it work. It was a tough, tough time. My darkest hour on Who was that." A lot of people feel this was 11's weakest series".
- Moffat also feels the opening episode to Series 9 wasn't original, an opinion shared with much of the fandom.
Mork & Mindy: Robin Williams did not like being called "Mork" or being greeted with "Nanu nanu." Even as far back as Reality, What a Concept... (1979) he had to let the crowd (chanting "Mork! Mork! Mork!") know that he preferred doing stand-up. On his Live 2002 album, something similar happened, and he actually said he'd rather forget Mork. For years he was been unwilling to even say "Nanu nanu" as a reference, and even when it did, it was to complain about Role Association.
Actor and singer Danny Smith is rumored to be annoyed at people who still think of him as Merton Dingle from Big Wolf on Campus. It's unknown whether it's true or if he's over it.
The Electric Company (1971): Morgan Freeman does not want to be remembered for being Easy Reader and has made as much clear when interviewers try to ask him about it. He's mellowing a little bit about it, but still feels that he stayed with The Electric Company (1971) for too long.
Tina Louise was NEVER Ginger on Gilligan's Island. Don't ask her about it, she won't talk about it anyway. To the extent that she refused to reprise the role even for the Filmation cartoons (in one of them Dawn Wells voiced both Mary Ann and Ginger).
Harlan Ellison took every chance he could to publicly denounce The Starlost. He started out on the series as writer/creator, but later removed his name from the production and used a pseudonym instead because of Executive Meddling.
Kamen Rider:
- For years rumors persisted that Joe Odagiri, the star of Kamen Rider Kuuga, regretted appearing in the show. However, this is less dissatisfaction with the role and more him trying to be seen as a serious actor (as well as not being a fan of Toku in general). While he mainly did Kuuga as a favor to one of the producers, he doesn't regret his time on the show^note; however, he's one of the few Rider leads to never return to the franchise, which seems to stem from the previous points plus the fact that the producer in question was canned after the Kamen Rider Hibiki fiasco.
- Rumors of Creator Backlash tend to pop up any time a Kamen Rider actor fails to return for anniversary events, usually accompanied by invented excuses. For example, rumors claimed that Masaki Suda (Kamen Rider W's Philip) got sick of the role because he had to dress in "girly" clothing; in reality, Suda's career took off like a rocket following that show, and more often than not he was just too busy to come back. When the Kamen Rider Zi-O movie Heisei Generations FOREVER was released, Suda posted online explaining that he really wanted to appear in the movie but was unable to do so because his schedule was booked solid for the next two years.
- Shigeki Hosokawa, star of Kamen Rider Hibiki, made a blog post just after the show ended in which he talked about how badly the second half of the show was screwed by executives, calling the people in charge "fraudulent", and particularly complaining about the fact that they were getting rewrites for the final episode in the middle of filming it. Like Odagiri, he apparently dodges the subject of Hibiki in interviews, and though in that same blog post he said he'd be glad to come back (if someone competent were in charge); that wouldn't happen until a decade later, in the video game Kamen Rider Battride War Genesis.
- Several years after Kamen Rider Fourze ended, actress Fumika Shimizu (who played female lead Yuki Jojima) did an interview talking about how her time on the show was stressful and unpleasant. This conflicts with interviews taken immediately after the show wrapped, which had Shimizu saying that she really enjoyed her time on the show and came to view her co-stars as family^note. Some fans have wondered if Shimizu has gone down the Church of Happyology route, since she joined an infamous Japanese religious cult after the show ended and the cult's leaders took charge of her acting career, even pulling her out of the Live-Action Adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul because it conflicted with their beliefs.
Super Sentai:
- Tamao Satou, the actress of Oh Pink in Chouriki Sentai Ohranger, had shown dislike for the role since the season ended. It took time, but she's apparently had a change of heart since then, taking part in a photo shoot for the theater premiere of one of the recent Sentai VS Movies in-uniform, and most recently performed a cameo role of the character alongside Oh Red actor Masaru Shishido amongst other Sentai alumnists in the 35th anniversary series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.
- Masaru Nagai, who played Tatsuya Asami in Mirai Sentai Timeranger, regrets his involvement in the show and has since said his professional debut was a drama he appeared in long after Timeranger. He once appeared on a variety show with fellow Red Ranger actor Tori Matsuzaka (Takeru Shiba in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger), who reportedly made thinly-veiled comments about actors trying to deny that they starred in tokusatsu. Unlike the above case, he refused to return for Gokaiger, letting Yellow Ranger Shuhei Izumi do it instead. Interestingly enough, Nagai would eventually return to Sentai, portraying Master Black in Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger.
- Tetsuji Tamayama played the Breakout Character of Gao Silver in Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger and has since gone on to a very successful TV/film career. Despite speaking positively about Gaoranger, he's declined to reunite with the cast or discuss the show in interviews - allegedly because his management requests that journalists not ask him about it.
Most of the adults of Full House did not like the show and hated its sickly sweet nature, with Bob Saget and John Stamos being the most vocal (Dave Coulier appears to be the only adult male lead who has expressed no regret over his role). Unusual for this trope, the entire cast got along extremely well and remain close friends to this day. Saget in particular created a whole second career about of bashing the show (and America's Funniest Home Videos) while performing aggressively scatological stand-up comedy to mind the shock value. All that said, the entire cast (with the exceptions of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen - Mary-Kate, in particular, does not like to be reminded of the show) came back for the Netflix-produced Sequel Series Fuller House.
John Moschitta Jr. dislikes being known for his fast-talking Micro Machines commercials, and has called Micro Machines "some of the lamest toys" in interviews.
It was rumored around the fandom of Lexx that Michael McManus loathed playing Kai, since the character was an actor's worst nightmare, someone who, as mandated by plot, always looks exactly the same and can't even show a facial expression. He stuck it out for the show's entire run, though. Eva Habermann, however, was an aversion; she left the show because it took so long for news of whether or not season two was coming that she would've had to have given up other work to stay. She was under no obligation to come back for the first two episodes, and did it just to give them time to work The Nth Doctor into the plot instead of forcing the writers to just drop it on the audience out of nowhere.
"Weird Al" Yankovic hates most of The Weird Al Show because of all of the Executive Meddling behind it, with the execs trying to make it more of a Educational Show^note while Al wanted more of a Pee-wee's Playhouse-like show.
John Cleese has strong opinions about many topics, including his previous work as a comedian.
- Although he doesn't outright hate it like most examples of this trope, John Cleese has stated he always had a mixed reaction to Fawlty Towers' most famous episode "The Germans" because of all the Memetic Mutation surrounding the episode and the loss of its original meaning.
- Cleese even expressed irritation about most of the sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus, feeling they were repeating themselves very quickly early on. He also felt that the TV format didn't allow them to perfect the sketches as well as he wanted. This was also the reason why he left the series and moved on to do other things. He especially dislikes one of his most well-known and popular Python sketches, the Ministry of Silly Walks, because it's so banal.
- Cleese also dislikes the Fish Slapping Dance because he considers it "an exercise in the bloody obvious". This has led to (luckily good-humoured) tension with Michael Palin who absolutely adores it.
Patrick McGoohan seemed to bounce back and forth in his opinion on his creation The Prisoner (1967), embracing it at times (witness his participation in "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" on The Simpsons) and refusing to talk about it at others. He reportedly declined an invitation to appear in the 2009 remake, though this was likely due to poor health (he died before it was broadcast). He did allow himself to be quoted as saying he was pleased with the remastered DVD (and later Blu-Ray) version of the original series.
Robert Reed absolutely hated The Brady Bunch (but not the Brady Bunch - he loved the kids), feuding with creator Sherwood Schwartz throughout the run, trying to get out of his contract and flat-out refusing to appear in the final episode because the script was so bad (had the show been renewed for a sixth season, Schwartz would have seen to it that the family would be without Mike Brady). However, he returned for the later TV movies and series (and the TV movie adaptation of Barry Williams's memoir Growing Up Brady is dedicated to Reed's memory).
Parks and Recreation:
- While Paul Schneider (Mark Brendanawicz) doesn't appear to bear any animosity towards the show itself or hold anything against the creative team or his costars, it is pretty clear he doesn't have many fond memories of his time on it either. It's hard to blame him considering how he was always the odd man out in the cast and found himself and his character being increasingly left behind when the series found more of its own identity away from its parent show in its second season (which ended with Mark being Put on a Bus, which then turned into a Long Bus Trip for the rest of the show's run), but Schneider has been pretty honest about how his experience on the show left him with a pretty sour outlook on mainstream acting as a whole (he now selects roles in low-key independent projects and has taken up activism work on the side). The writers did keep the door open for a return and planned to have Mark reappear every once in a while, but Schneider expressed an explicit lack of interest in ever reappearing again, which may explain why Mark seemed to be completely forgotten about in the later seasons.
- The creators and stars in general seem to feel this way towards the first season. Aside from agreeing with the fans' consensus that the humor was weaker and the characterizations were spotty at best, they also rarely ever acknowledge it. At one point, during a panel between the cast and crew, Greg Daniels brought up a moment between April and Andy in the episode "Rock Show", which he mentioned was in season 1, and then gave a knowing pause at what he just said, causing everyone in the audience to laugh and Aziz Ansari to yell, "Don't bring up those shitty episodes, man!"
- While he's proud of the show as a whole, Chris Pratt admitted to feeling uncomfortable with the jokes that were done at Jerry's expense during the sixth season especially, feeling they had gotten too mean-spirited and over-the-top to be funny anymore.
Adam Scott feels this way towards his role on the short-lived series Tell Me You Love Me. While he doesn't outright hate it, he's expressed gratitude that it was canceled after one season, as he stated that the show's unglamorized, realistic depiction of sex made for an increasingly awkward and uncomfortable work environment.
Margaret Cho has expressed regret and frustration over her short-lived sitcom All-American Girl (1994). Even though it was the first TV show in history to focus on an Asian-American family and was very loosely based on her stand-up comedy, she had zero creative control. Cho was told that she had to lose weight to play herself, she written to always say no to sex from her dates (who were always male) even when she personally would have said yes, and then she was told she wasn't acting "Asian enough" and was made to work with an "Asian consultant." When that didn't work, they got rid of most of the Asian family members and replaced them with white friends. Unsurprisingly, the show failed, and she spiraled into drug and alcohol problems as a result. In one of her standup specials, she said the show had become "Saved by the Gong."
Ashley Pharaoh, co-creator of the much-derided Bonekickers, penned a "letter to my younger self" article containing sage nuggets of advice... one of which was "Do not write Bonekickers".
Mandy Patinkin has gone on record as saying that starring in the first two seasons of Criminal Minds was the worst mistake of his acting career, despite the praise critics heaped on him for his performance, since he personally considered the show's content too disturbing for network TV, in particular the show's heavy ratio of female victims who were raped and/or murdered.
Friends:
- The creators openly acknowledge in one of the Season Eight commentaries that they don't like the Chandler/Monica plot in "The One With The Truth About London."
- They also have some disdain for Season Six, feeling they were simply going through the motions during that time period. Not surprising, given that this was when a lot of the backstage drama with issues like Matthew Perry's drug addictions really began to hinder the series.
- The one episode almost everyone involved with the show seems to dislike the most is "The One With The Cat" due to the ridiculous plot about Phoebe being convinced that her dead mother was reincarnated in the form of a cat^note. The cast and writers all thought it was a terrible idea, but since co-creator Marta Kauffman was pushing strongly for the episode to get made due to the death of her own mother, they were all reluctant to openly voice their objections to the script.
- In 2019, the writers said that "The One With The Jam" was the episode they regretted the most. Not because it was a particularly bad episode, but because the plot about Phoebe having a stalker and her finding it cute/romantic comes off as incredibly uncomfortable now that male-on-female stalking has become such a sensitive topic.
Spitting Image co-creator Peter Fluck has gone so far to claim he "hates puppets" in an interview with The Guardian. Back in 2000, he planned to throw all the 900 and counting puppets of the original show on a bonfire because he was so sick of them. Luckily, someone got a better idea and decided to simply auction them.
Initially, James Gurney gave his blessing to the Hallmark miniseries of Dinotopia, but he was very unhappy with the final product. He had wanted an original story, preferring to leave the characters from the original books in everyone's mind, but he didn't like where they took that original story.
Ted Knight did not like being remembered as The Ditz Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and it caused him a lot of personal angst. The role's The Danza aspect was responsible for a lot of people confusing actor and character.
The O.C.:
- Mischa Barton publicly blamed the show for her personal issues. Shortly after the show's cancellation, she said it was no surprise the show had been canceled, since they killed her off.
- Tate Donovan has been rather critical of the show's younger actors in interviews following his departure from the show. In a recent interview with Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke on their podcast though, he expressed regret for his comments.
- Adam Brody has been critical of the direction of the show's writing after Season 1, particularly the handling of Marissa's death as a way of writing the character out, and admitted that he was ready to move on from the series by its final season.
- After the show was canceled, Josh Schwartz admitted in interviews that the whole first half of season 3 was a mess, and acknowledged that they spent way too much time on Johnny's character. He also was critical of the addition of Charlotte Morgan, complaining that she was only added in season 3 because of Executive Meddling, and that he and the writers had no clue what to do with her character.
Josette Simon came to strongly regret playing Dayna in Blake's 7, as she felt that the producers took advantage of her youthful naivety and lack of confidence to get her to play a "hot exotic warrior woman" part that she viewed with hindsight as both sexually and racially demeaning. She declined to reprise the role for Big Finish's audio plays based on the series, with the role eventually being recast.
Sally Field absolutely disliked working on The Flying Nun, though she has nothing against the show's fans.
Robert Lindsay and Zoë Wanamaker were both openly negative about My Family even while it was on the air, claiming at one point that they had refused to film an episode because the script was so bad. Right up until the show was finally cancelled in 2011 they continued to state in interviews that they felt there was little of quality in it.
In a posthumous tell-all book called Buck 'Em!, Buck Owens stated that he disliked hosting Hee Haw, but did it for Money, Dear Boy:
"I couldn’t justify turning down that big paycheck for just a few weeks work twice a year…So, I kept whoring myself out to that cartoon donkey."
Community:
- This is the reason Chevy Chase left at the end of season 4. He felt that the new showrunners were doing a poor job and was uncomfortable with how Pierce's bigoted qualities were getting flanderized and made more blatant.
- The cast and crew all seem to have had this reaction to season 4 due to it being widely seen as a drop in quality from the previous seasons. They even lampshade this within the show in season 5, where the events of season 4 are referred to as "the gas-leak year".
Arrow:
- A milder example from Stephen Amell. While he speaks very highly of the show and cast, he's not pleased that Susanna Thompson (Moira Queen) and Paul Blackthorne (Quentin Lance) got virtually no publicity in the advertising/marketing for the second season, feeling that the promotion didn't do them justice. He similarly criticized WB for announcing plans for a Flash film and a new actor the day after The Flash posted strong second-week ratings, showing true staying power, feeling it undercut both the show and Grant Gustin.
  - He also once made a list of what he believed to be the best to worst seasons of the show. This wouldn't count on its own, since a season would have to be considered the worst no matter what, but fans were very quick to point out that the universally despised season 4 wasn't even on the list.
- Caity Lotz didn't like how her character Sara Lance got the Bury Your Gays and Stuffed into the Fridge treatment in season 3, only appearing 2 more times (1 as a voice and another as a hallucination). With fan support, she has taken a much larger role in Legends of Tomorrow.
- Almost the entire main cast (as well as some of the cast on The Flash) have voiced their complaints about Laurel Lance's death, including Katie Cassidy herself.
  I've been very transparent about the whole thing: I didn't want to leave.
- Manu Bennett criticized parts of Deathstroke's arc in the second season, namely the fact that Slade's plan to take revenge on Ollie seemed to largely consist of victimizing (and in one case, murdering) the women in his life. He also criticized his appearance in the third season, which relegated him to little more than a Villain of the Week. The treatment was so bad that he did not return for the 100th episode, while other villains did, and only came back afterwards when it was clear he would have a much better showing. His comments on Facebook have also indicated that he shares the audience's negative opinions about Oliver and Felicity's romance.
- Emily Bett Rickards is not a fan of how Felicity was treated in seasons 3, 4, and 7. For 3, she hated that her comedic elements were pushed aside in favor of angst, an assessment that many audiences agree with. For 4, she disliked how the disability story was handled, specifically saying she was disappointed with how fast she was healed and that she had done a lot of real world research so that she could portray the disability as realistically as she possibly could. For 7, she hated the idea of Felicity getting pregnant, believing it would limit her narrative opportunities, though the writers compromised by having a Time Skip so she gives birth faster.
- Both John Barrowman and Alex Kingston have voiced their complaints about the way Dinah Lance, Laurel Lance's mother, was treated on the show, turning her into an Adaptational Wimp that spends most of her time onscreen crying and yelling instead of being the Black Canary. Barrowman himself has also made clear that Malcolm's death was not something he wanted to do and reportedly told the producers "where they could shove it" once he was done filming. He even went so far as to claim that the only reason showrunner Marc Guggenheim never showed the corpse was to protect himself from the inevitable backlash.
- Thea spends her time Commuting on a Bus in seasons 5 and 6 because Willa Holland wanted to leave the show in season 4 but the writers refused to let her go. She was finally allowed to leave halfway through season 6, resulting in her being Put on a Bus until the finale.
- The other Arrowverse shows have had their share of this as well.
  - Most notably, Dominic Purcell has been blunt about the fact he thinks the first season of Legends of Tomorrow was crap compared to what they made in the following years, and when he left the series he made some pretty overt digs at the studio in a now-deleted social media post.
  - When Keiynan Lonsdale departed the franchise, it was indicated that this was just a sabatical and he'd be back at least for guest appearances in the following season of Flash. These guest appearances never happened, and though he's never directly acknowledged the reasons for his departure, he made a dig at the show in one of his songs later. He returned finally for a single guest appearance but has still not returned full-time despite his character being one of the core characters of the Flash franchise.
  - Ruby Rose has probably had the most explicit case of this, as some time after she departed Batwoman, she decided to air out many grievances with the series, particularly against the producers (who she alleges ranged from being abusive to neglectful to the point the set was outright lethal to work on, and were very unsympathetic to her near-paralysing neck injury caused by a stunt going wrong), as well as two of her co-stars. In her case, the backlash is so bad that it's now allegedly leading to legal action between Rose and Warner Bros TV.
Chris Elliott and Adam Resnick were very disappointed with the direction their show Get a Life took starting around the end of the first season. While Elliott and Resnick imagined a show more rife with extremely dark Black Comedy, show-runner David Mirkin and The Fox Network took the show into a Lighter and Softer direction. Elliott and Resnick threw their hands up in frustration and allowed Mirkin and Fox to do whatever they wanted, with Elliott only showing up on acting days. This is why Elliott and Resnick refused to participate in any of the commentaries or extra features when the show was finally released to DVD, since they sincerely felt that the show had been taken away from them and was nothing like what they originally wanted it to be.
Eddie Huang, creator and narrator for the first season of Fresh Off the Boat later left the show and criticized it for downplaying the darker parts of his life to be more of a traditional family sitcom, to the point of claiming he no longer cared how successful it was because it didn't represent his real childhood.
- When the show was renewed for a sixth season, Constance Wu responded on social media with a series of posts that heavily implied that this mindset had kicked in for her. While the tweets were later deleted and Wu claimed that they were about an unrelated personal matter, let us simply say that when you respond to a fan congratulating you on the renewal of your show and how that must be good news with a curt "No, it's not," it's pretty safe to assume that your job satisfaction is pretty low. Fortunately for her, that season was also the show's last.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird hated Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, especially loathing the female turtle Venus de Milo to the point that he forbade her from ever making appearances in the franchise when it was still under his control. His hatred of the show may be one reason why the show never made it to DVD until he sold the rights to Nickelodeon aside from Saban losing the rights to its shows to Disney for many years.
How I Met Your Mother:
- Towards the end of the show's run, Jason Segel made it very clear that he was ready to leave, and had to be persuaded to return for the final season. In 2010, he did an interview where he mocked some of the more cliche conventions of the series, and stated that he was ready to leave after the eighth season was finished, as he felt the show was preventing him from pursuing other roles. This was even Lampshaded in This Is the End, where Segel appeared as himself and jokingly reiterated his criticisms of the show's writing. The writers responded by doing an episode the final season ("Vesuvius") that actually referenced one of the comments Segel had made in the interview.
- Like many fans, Alyson Hannigan did not like the way the show ended, saying it was like slapping the fans in the face. She also said she was never happy with the Barney/Robin pairing, feeling it complicated the Ted and Robin relationship too much.
David J. Schow's The Outer Limits Companion makes it clear that several contributors weren't universally pleased with how episodes of the original 1963 series turned out, most notably director Byron Haskin with "Behold, Eck!". (As Haskin said in the Companion: "It was an alleged comedy that was just a bomb. They laid that script in my hands; I got one sniff of it and damn near fainted".) Also affected were writers Meyer Dolinsky and Sonya Roberts with "ZZZZZ" and "Second Chance" respectively (the latter two had their scripts changed by rewrites they didn't do, with Roberts taking her name off the finished product in favour of a pseudonym). And then there was "The Invisible Enemy", a Troubled Production due to difficult special effects and multiple rewrites mandated by Executive Meddling. (Schow summed up the episode: "[N]othing cripples a show so much as the producer, story editor, director and writer all hating it.")
- Producer Joseph Stefano singled out "The Mutant" as the worst episode of the series.
  "'The Mutant' was probably the worst show we did. Just terrible. I didn't care for the cast on it, either."
- Harlan Ellison, a writer of two episodes for the second season, notably dismissed the entire first season as crap.
  "The first season, I thought, was garbage, the usual monster bullshit. They were doing 'the bear on the beach', in which you open with a bear on a beach, then you ask how the bear got on the beach. It was a lot of funny rubber masks, and basically silly ideas. Until (second season producer Ben) Brady came in, there were no science fiction writers working for the show."
- He also expressed dissatisfaction with how his episode "Soldier" turned out.
  "In TV they don't understand the subtleties of character. When a script runs long, or has production problems, the first things cut are the scenes that deepen characterization. Those changes tore the gut out of that show. That's why, for me, it's a less attractive or interesting show than 'Demon With a Glass Hand.'"
Late into the run of Two and a Half Men, Angus T. Jones became a born-again Christian and began openly trashing the show as "filth." He later apologized, only to take back his apology shortly after and left the show (and acting period) at the end of season 10 because he felt like a "paid hypocrite."
Jay North was put through the wringer when he played the titular character on Dennis the Menace (1959), never getting a moment's peace between the show itself, various crossover appearances in other sitcoms and films, and commercials for their various sponsors, plus keeping up with school. Combined with the death of Joseph Kearns (the actor who played Mr. Wilson), the abuse he suffered from his aunt when he would "make mistakes", and his beginning to seriously age out of the role, he was tremendously relieved when it was cancelled after four seasons.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Sarah Michelle Gellar told Entertainment Weekly that she disliked season six due to its darker tone, the destructive romance between Buffy and Spike, and how unrecognizable Buffy was. She also hated the Parker Abrams storyline from season four, as she felt it was out of character for Buffy to engage in a casual fling so soon after Angel's departure.
  It wasn’t who Buffy was, or why people loved her. You don’t want to see that dark heroine; you don’t want to see her punishing herself. You want to see her killing vampires and making quips. It didn’t feel like the character that I loved. Joss always explained that season as being about your 20s, where you’re not a kid anymore, but you don’t know what you want to do [with your life]. He always said that I didn’t understand last year because I’ve always known what I wanted to do, and I didn’t have that confusion, [that] dark, depressive period. But I think the heart of the show lies in the humor of the drama. I felt like Buffy’s spirit was missing last year.
  - During the twentieth anniversary reunion, she elaborated:
  I've always said that season 6 was not my favorite. I felt it betrayed who she was. Even just getting to talk to Joss and be able to get his opinion was not as easy when he’s not upstairs. He had three shows. He had Angel and Firefly so that was hard.
- Most of the cast came to hate the library scenes because they would take forever to film.
- Subverted with Alyson Hannigan. She requested that she not sing too much in "Once More, With Feeling" because she hates her singing voice. But upon seeing the episode, she was surprised at how good she sounded and regretted not singing more. While Gellar was proud of the episode, she hated making it, due to the extra workload it involved.
- Willow's "magic addiction" arc was disliked by both Alyson Hannigan and Joss Whedon himself; the latter added a scene in "Lessons" where Giles explicitly states that magic is not addictive, and it's explained that Willow's actions were actually due to her NOT using magic.
- James Marsters was so disturbed by Spike's Attempted Rape of Buffy in "Seeing Red" that he had his contract updated so he would never be involved in such scenes again.
- Seth Green left because after being really excited about his character arc in the second season, the third season he described as being on set all day just to say "I agree with Buffy." His career taking off in other directions because of the Austin Powers movies made him ask to leave in the fourth season, even though they tried to keep him with a story arc involving a female werewolf. Rumors say they tried to bring him back for guest returns on either Buffy or Angel, but he was uninterested.
- Jenny Calendar's actress, Robia Lamorte, had become a born-again Christian by the time she reprised her role as a guise for The First Evil and didn't take kindly to it, seeing it akin to playing Satan.
- Like many fans, Amber Benson was unhappy about her character Tara's death, to the point where she declined all offers to return to the show when they wanted her to play the First Evil.
- Emma Caulfield was a little annoyed at Anya's death when she saw the completed series finale. She had volunteered for the character to be killed off in the final battle but didn't realise it was going to be so sudden.
- Marti Noxon, who took over as showrunner for season six, later admitted that the season was too dark and that Tara's death was a mistake.
- Anthony Stewart Head disliked the plot of Giles possibly being the First in season seven, partially because it didn't go anywhere, partially because he found it frustrating to not touch anyone. He also felt it was Out of Character for Giles to just leave Buffy in season six.
- Joss Whedon always disliked the "sexy vampire" trope and had to be persuaded into it by David Greenwalt. He was perturbed how much fans were into it even after Angel turned into Angelus and Spike attempted to rape Buffy, getting into a physical confrontation with James Marsters over it who didn't get why he objected.
- It wasn't just the fans who hated the HD remaster. Whedon stated that the show in widescreen was nonsense, writer David Fury called it "piss poor" and "an embarrassing mess", writer Steven S. DeKnight said that somebody should be indicted and director of photography Michael Gershman said:
  It's a shame to have all my work thrown in the garbage. I tried to give Buffy a texture that would turn a teeny bopper show into a serious dramatic presentation. Alas, once any piece of art leaves the artists hands, control is lost. Sorry everyone can't see the work in its original incarnation. Thanks for keeping me up on the look of the show.
The 100: Take a seat...
- Bob Morley was quite unhappy with Bellamy's story in Season 3, and went so far as to warn fans it wouldn't ever get any better.
- On Javier Grillo-Marxuach's Tumblr page, a fan asked about Lexa's death and whether he and the rest of the writing staff was aware of the omnipresence of the Bury Your Gays trope and the otherwise lack of happy endings for queer couples on TV:
  I absolutely did, it absolutely was, we discussed it, and yet, in spite of all of our best intentions and conversations, we were naive enough - or arrogant enough - to believe that the lgb representation in our show, and out ability as writers would separate/redeem our use of the trope. We were wrong.
- And after that, the floodgates really opened with numerous actors (most prominently Ricky Whittle and Lindsey Morgan) complaining about the increasingly toxic work environment and describing Jason Rothenberg as a petty tyrant who refuses to hear a single word against his ideas, and retaliates against any actor who dares question him by cutting their scenes.
- Whittle upped the ante after the episode where Lincoln was killed off aired, making a point to thank everyone involved with the show except Rothenberg, including "the writers whose hands are constantly tied."
Kurt Sutter had a giant Sons of Anarchy guide that went into detail about each episode. There was just one tiny problem: it was sent to fans early and spoiled how the series ended. Sutter accepted responsibility for the idea before going into a rage over the timing, promising a "basket full of the heads" of those responsible.
Jon Lovitz really isn't fond of his time on NewsRadio, due to having to replace his friend and Saturday Night Live co-star Phil Hartman after his death, and the fact that and he and Andy Dick hate each other due to issues related to that (which are best not discussed here).
General Hospital's Anthony Geary (Luke Spencer) has made comments that indicate that he never understood the "Luke & Laura" phenomenon and found it distasteful, given that their relationship started with him raping her.
The Roseanne revival wasn't well-liked by the original series' writing staff, who viewed the reflection of the real Roseanne Barr's support of Donald Trump as everything that went against the character from the original series. Things reached the peak on May 29, 2018 when Barr made a comment many found to be racist and anti-Islamic, which Barr's ex-husband Tom Arnold, producer Wanda Sykes, and co-stars Sara Gilbert and Emma Kenney condemned, with Sykes and Kenney going as far as to quit—and the day wasn't even over before ABC canceled the show and reruns of the original series were pulled, including Hulu pulling the show from their service.
Game of Thrones:
- Sibel Kekilli didn't like that Shae testified against Tyrion at his trial, feeling it was out of character for her to betray him and Sansa that way.
- Ian McElhinney, who has read the books, expressed disappointment that his character (Ser Barristan Selmy) was getting killed off halfway through a storyline his book counterpart plays a major role in; he even wrote the showrunners a letter explaining why he thought it was a bad idea. Benioff and Weiss rather ungraciously mocked him in an interview for this, much to the fans' annoyance.
- Stephen Dillane, who played Stannis, summed his time on the series up as a "disheartening" experience, criticizing the show's direction and writing for often being vague, and at times even non-existent, to a degree where he frequently had to rely on co-star Liam Cunningham to have any idea what his scenes were about. He also admitted without any constraint that he only agreed to participate in the project for the money.
- Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry, described season 7 as "Character Development? What's that?" And after a brief pause: "I should shut up". Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) was present with him in the interview and simply chuckled while replying, "You're brave!"
- Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has openly stated that he wasn't happy with Jaime's story line in the seventh season; he regards the relationship between Jaime and Cersei as toxic and he'd assumed that Jaime would reject Cersei and leave her right away when he realized that she'd blown up the Sept of Baelor, and all their children were dead. He was flabbergasted when he learned that this wouldn't happen until the end of Season 7, and had many arguments with the writers about how it didn't make sense for his character to still be hanging around King's Landing.
- When talking about Tyrion's role during the Battle of Winterfell, Peter Dinklage made several jokes about how no one in the show's universe seemed to think about how putting the non-combatant characters in a well-used crypt could prove disastrous if the Night King decided to bring all of the dead people in it back to life.
  Dinklage: And they put the women and children in the crypt with all the dead people, so, *argh*. Tyrion's smart but I guess he's not that smart.
- Conleth Hill admits that the last two seasons were not his favorite as he is very disappointed with how Varys was treated in the latter half of the show since he knows that Varys is supposed to be intelligent but he's very dismayed about "losing his knowledge".
- Charles Dance has kind words about the show and the showrunners, but admitted that he was disappointed by the final season, more specifically with Bran having been elected king by a committee. He believes that Tyrion would have been a better choice.
- Pilou Asbæk, who plays Euron, expressed disappointment at stripping the character of his more mystical book elements, which he felt made the character feel more one-dimensional. Also, when asked about why Euron could nail Rhaegal with a perfect shot through the neck above cloud clover using a single ballista in one episode, and then fail to hit the larger and closer Drogon with dozens in the next, he just quipped "maybe they needed it for the storyline."
- Lena Headey said she was disappointed in Cersei's death scene after dreaming for years about how grand it could be. Both she and Maisie Williams agree Arya should have been the one to do it. Headey also revealed shortly after the show ended that she was crushed to lose a scene in Season 7 in which Cersei has a miscarriage.
- Natalia Tena, who played Osha in seasons 1, 2, 3 and 6, admitted that she didn't like the last three episodes of the series, and that it didn't seem to have been written by the same people who wrote the rest of the series. Despite this, she thinks the online petitions to remake the season are stupid.
- Emilia Clarke admitted she felt "annoyed" that Jon Snow didn't really experience any consequences for assassinating Daenerys. She also thought that the ending was a bit abrupt and the showrunners "could have spun it out for a little longer."
House of the Dragon: Olivia Cooke has commented on how she did not like Alicent's "foot scene" with Larys, mostly because it once again degraded Alicent after she finally stood her ground against her father, but also because she doesn't like the idea of people looking up pictures of her feet. She also dislikes how shocked the general audience was by the scene, in comparison to all the way worse things that happened in just that episode, and previously.
Cooke: It is wild, because there are beheadings, people getting their cocks cut off, graphic violence and brothel scenes, but getting my feet out and him wanking off, that's the most shocking. It's funny, isn't it? ... It's wild how you can’t predict which scenes people have the biggest reactions to, and unfortunately it was that one.
The Golden Girls: Not counting the Post-Script Season Golden Palace, the series ended with Bea Arthur leaving the show at the end of Season 8 after growing tired of her character. One of the things she hated about playing Dorothy was the insults she got. All the girls made jokes at the others' expense, but whereas the jokes towards Blanche, Rose, and Sophia were about the fictional characters' personalities, the insults toward Dorothy were based on Arthur's actual appearance, and she felt Dorothy's wardrobe—often accentuating her lanky frame—didn't help matters either.
American Horror Story: Coven: Jessica Lange admits that she considers this to be her least favorite season of the series. She clarifies that although she found her character well written, she did not think the same about the plot.
The Twilight Zone (1985):
- In his introduction to New Stories from the Twilight Zone, the series' executive story consultant Alan Brennert admitted that they produced their share of stinkers:
  - He considers "Welcome to Winfield", "The Leprechaun-Artist" and "Take My Life...Please!" to be "bad scripts we never should have greenlighted in the first place."
  - He describes "Button, Button" and "Monsters!" as "good scripts mauled by bad directors, bad production, bad acting, or all three." He later says that the series screwed up Richard Matheson's script for the former due to "network interference, dreadful acting, direction that turned the point of the story 180 degrees around from what was intended."
  - He admits that he tried to get "Opening Day" killed about twelve times "but everytime I thought I'd finally driven a stake through its heart the damned thing would rear up from the dead yet again."
  - Brennert was particularly critical of the presentation of his own story "Healer", which he thought was so badly directed and acted that he took his name off of it.
- J.M. DeMatteis criticized the presentation of his story "The Girl I Married" before it even aired:
  "I have a feeling that the show that appears will not bear much relation to what I wrote. What I've found out is that this season - unlike last, where the script was pretty much regarded as sacrosanct - the network is really interfering a lot...Regardless, I know I did a good job and it was a real satisfying experience."
The groundbreaking 70's sitcom Good Times was criticized by the actors playing the parents, John Amos and Esther Rolle, after eldest son JJ became the show's Breakout Character ("Dy-no-mite!"), as they saw his slapstick comedy as Uncle Tomfoolery that went against the show's intended tone. Amos was let out of his contract due to his disagreements with the producers, by way of his character dying at the end of the third season, and Rolle, no longer having an ally among the cast, quit at the end of the fourth. As she told Ebony magazine, "He's 18 and he doesn't work. He can't read or write. He doesn't think. The show didn't start out to be that; little by little—with the help of the artist, I suppose, because they couldn't do that to me—they have made JJ more stupid and enlarged the role." Her exit was explained as her character Florida moving to Arizona with her new husband Carl at the end of the fourth season. Ratings sank in the fifth, as viewers felt the show was Jumping the Shark with both parents gone, causing the producers to beg Rolle to return. But she had a list of demands: 1. A higher salary, 2. For JJ to become more mature and take the lead as man of the house, and 3. To get rid of Carl, as she felt it was out of character for Florida to move on so quickly after James' death and ditch her children in the Chicago projects to move across the country with a new flame. The producers quickly acquiesced, though ratings didn't improve and the show ended after its sixth season.
Father Ted gives us a backlash over a specific episode; in the DVD Commentary for the Christmas Episode "A Christmassy Ted", Graham Linehan makes no bones about how terribly over-long and riddled with Ending Fatigue he thinks the episode is, to the point where the final few minutes of the commentary consist mostly of him screaming "End! END!" over what's happening.
Fringe: Jasika Nicole has no fond memories of the series, complaining that Astrid was poorly written and "relegated to a caretaker role of white people for 5 seasons".
Riverdale:
- Luke Perry wasn't happy with Fred being an Extreme Doormat and letting Archie treat him like shit throughout Season 2.
- Vanessa Morgan accused the crew of having a problem with showing homosexual content beyond the occasional token kiss after she had numerous scenes cut.
- Skeet Ulrich announced in late May 2020 that he was leaving the show, and when asked on the matter, the actor replied that he "got bored creatively."
Westworld:
- Ed Harris admitted in an interview with Vulture that he didn't particularly enjoy William's role in Season 3, as he felt that he had signed on to play the Man in Black, not the "Man in White" seen in that season.
- Thandiwe Newton admits she's frustrated with Maeve's storyline in Season 2 and 3, feeling she's following a different directive that's not her own.
When Lucille Ball's fourth and final sitcom Life With Lucy was a total flop, cancelled before the first season was finished, executive producer Aaron Spelling said his biggest regret was giving Ball complete creative control. She relied on her signature brand of physical comedy that made her a star in the 50's, but by 1986 Ball was elderly, and Spelling noticed the live audience (and presumably the viewing audience as well) was uncomfortable with the show's slapstick moments because they were more worried for her safety than laughing at her humor.
Jennette McCurdy, best known for her portrayal of Sam Puckett on iCarly and its spinoff Sam & Cat, has spoken at length, in both interviews and her book I'm Glad My Mom Died, about how much she loathed her experiences on those shows. She hated playing Sam, as she felt that the character was a bad role model for children and found it difficult to portray a character so different from her real self. She also suffered from depression, eating disorders, insecurities, and embarrassment over being on a kids' show. It was never her intention to pursue a full-time acting career, but her mother made her become an actress at a young age to financially support the family. Shortly after her mom died, Jennette cut ties with Nickelodeon and would retire from acting in 2017, refusing to return for iCarly's revival series on Paramount+. Despite her opinions of the show and her character, she has said that she remains good friends with her fellow iCarly castmates, particularly Miranda Cosgrove (who played iCarly's titular protagonist Carly Shay), who she credits with having helped her get through and recover from that period of her life without losing her mind.
Fellow iCarly cast member Noah Munck was not a fan of his character Gibby being the punching bag and the expense of the joke on the series, which followed him whenever he had interactions with fans, stating it as the reason why he also refused to return for the revival.
Andy Dick hated Go Fish, the short-lived sitcom series he co-starred in. He only stayed on the show due to pressure from his agent, and regrets the most that he gave up the chance to play Dr Mugatu in Zoolander due to the scheduling he had on it. After it got cancelled he immediately fired his agent.
Richard Schiff is extremely critical of the final season of The West Wing as he felt Toby Ziegler's storyline (where he leaks classified military information) was a completely out of character. He only agreed to remain on the show because he got paid a full season's salary despite only appearing in half the episodes. He also decided to play his scenes as if Toby was taking the fall for someone else, a theory shared by fans who also hated the storyline.
Zach Galifianakis was very uncomfortable doing the show Dog Bites Man, which involved comedians pretending to be a news crew amongst actual journalists who didn't know they were acting. When he was asked if the show was cancelled in an interview, he simply responded "Yes, thank God."
The Book of Boba Fett headliner Temuera Morrison has admitted that he felt Boba had too much dialogue in the scripts, compared to Boba's previous appearances in the Star Wars movies. He tried to let Fennec Shand have the bulk of it, but this only worked until Ming-Na Wen began feeling that Morrison placed too much burden on her. Staff writer Noah Kloor assured him that the editors would cut out some of Boba's most extraneous dialogue, but he still ended up thinking the final cuts of Chapters 1 and 2 had too much.
Melissa George's time as Angel on Home and Away, based on this, may be a mashup of Old Shame and Berserk Button.
The Got Talent channels don't want to upload content from the Australian version (which has aired on-and-off since 2013, when a Channel Hop to Nine Network occurred, then was revived once in 2016 for a Britain's Got Talent-like rebrand and again in 2019 for a comeback to Seven Network), resulting in an odd case of it being impossible to find obscure content from the series.
Noted children's television hostess Xuxa tried at all costs to retrieve old pornographic material involving her, which is understandable. This includes a 1982 issue of Playboy that is consequently highly sought by collectors. There was also concern over a film she appeared in that saw her in, shall we say, a romantic interlude with someone who would have fallen within the same age demographic as her TV show. After the advent of the internet, Xuxa successfully sued a big auction website to stop sales of a soft-porn movie with her, as well as a widely-circulated newspaper for showing a half-naked picture of her.
- Xuxa also has a downplayed example in the 1988 children's film, Super Xuxa Contra Baixo-Astral, that rips off Labyrinth and Captain EO copiously and only got a DVD release in 2017. On the movie's 30th anniversary, she admitted the thing is trashy and looks cheap, but likes that spread a message and struck a chord with fans.
Multiple examples with the Degrassi franchise:
- Pat Mastroianni, who played Joey Jeremiah, would admit to having this twice, the first being in the wake of Degrassi High in the early 1990s, in part due to the heavy typecasting he and other cast members experienced. By the time of Degrassi: The Next Generation in 2001, he had embraced his role and was willing to reprise it to pass the torch. But as the series went on, he felt that Joey had served his purpose, and he turned down an offer to appear in season six, instead leaving. He would later admit to feeling this trope again after his second departure (though its unclear what led to this second wave), up until the early 2010s when he discovered (or was made aware of) the original Degrassi's continued online fan following, which led him to embrace his legacy as Joey Jeremiah once again: since then, he has been very active in organizing actor appearances, including Degrassi Palooza, a major reunion of the original Degrassi cast in 2019, and also runs a merch shop.
- Amanda Stepto, who played Spike the punk teen mom on Degrassi, doesn't resent the actual show, but moreso Degrassi: School's Out!, the television movie finale of Degrassi High. One online interview from the late 1990s quoted her as saying that she thought the movie was "too adult" and a poor send-off, and criticized it for its overfocus on Joey and Caitlin and the lack of proper closure given to other characters, including hers. When asked about the movie in a 2019 podcast interview, she elaborated that she was extremely broke at the time of the film's production and couldn't pay her rent, and wanted to appear in the film's party scenes (presumably to make more money), which was turned down by the producers.
Drake:
- For a long time, he didn't like to talk about his days as Jimmy (or to some people, that black kid in a wheelchair) on Degrassi: The Next Generation. This is a weird version of this trope of him, since that's one of the only things he's known for other than rapping. When he was on MTV's When I Was 17, he didn't discuss it at all even though, again, Degrassi was the only notable thing he did when he was 17. It's actually quite understandable that he wouldn't bring it up given how his success as a rapper has largely overshadowed his acting career. He seems to have been more willing to embrace it in recent years, though. When Drake hosted Saturday Night Live on January 18, 2014, he admitted in his monologue that, yes, he was Jimmy on Degrassi (and that he was credited under his real name Aubrey Graham). If the video for his song "I'm Upset", which featured a full-on Degrassi: TNG cast reunion, is anything to go by, then any lingering shame he has about the show seems to have dissipated.
- In another old shame admission from that same SNL hosting job, he admitted that was the one who came up with the "YOLO" meme and that he's sorry for it, since it led to a lot of annoying family members and coworkers harassing people with that phrase.
One episode of the TV series Ultraseven features Monsters of the Week who resembled atomic bomb radiation victims, complete with scars and welts. Their plot was to suck blood from women and children in order to rejuvenate their polluted bodies. In the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used on it, this sparked an obvious backlash (especially from real radiation victims, who were already suffering severe discrimination). Similar to the Pokémon incident above, the producers' reaction was to strike the episode from the Canon and act like it never existed.
Much like Danny Slavin, who was the Red Ranger in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, the actor who played Ginga Red (the Super Sentai counterpart to Slavin's character), Kazuki Maehara, seems to feel the same about the role. He is also retired from acting and like Slavin he refused to appear in the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger tribute episode to Gingaman, and only showed up when the cast and crew begged him to appear. As a result, he only shows up late in the episode. He seems to have gotten over it since; after the last episode of Gokaiger, he tweeted in-character as Ryouma that his ranger key had been returned to him.
- Presumably to head these rumors off, Kamen Rider Kabuto star Hiro Mizushima posted to Instagram to explain that he didn't appear in Heisei Generations FOREVER simply because Toei hadn't gotten touch with him and reassured fans that he's still fond of the show and considers it the starting point of his career. He later did a couple of episodes of his Youtube cooking show Hiro Meshi where his Kabuto co-star Yuki Sato showed up to share a meal and reminisce about old times.
One of Peter Davison's (aka The Fifth Doctor) early jobs was a guest shot on The Tomorrow People (1973), an episode known as "A Man For Emily." Let's just say it opens with a nearly nude Peter sagging against a wall and goes downhill from there. Peter expressed utter horror upon learning that the episode had actually been broadcast in the US.
Doctor Who:
- To the shock of many fans, Douglas Adams viewed the unfinished but legendary Doctor Who story "Shada" as this, publicly stating that he'd only signed the release to allow the 1992 VHS issue of what was made to go ahead because he hadn't noticed that it had been included in a folder with a bunch of other routine paperwork.
- Robert Holmes has said that "The Power of Kroll" was the least favorite serial he'd written for the show. He never liked doing "scary monster" stories, so right from the start he was wary of the premise that script editor Anthony Read gave him. He found the finished product dull and shakily executed.
- Steven Moffat has regrets about the second episode he wrote during his tenure as executive producer, "The Beast Below". He's called it "a bit of a mess", citing the fact that he had too many ideas that would have been fine on their own, but having them all packed into a short 45-minute runtime didn't give them all enough time to properly stew or be focused upon.
- Speaking of Doctor Who, Martin Clunes is very embarrassed about his guest role in the 1983 serial "Snakedance".
- Peter Kay has called his guest spot as the Abzorbaloff in 2006's "Love & Monsters" the one thing in his career that he regrets. While he had fun making it, he was disappointed by the finished product ("I'm a big green lizard running around Cardiff? Is that it?") and is aware that the episode is considered by some fans to be one of the worst ever.
- While Peter Capaldi does not per se view his award-winning work on the sitcom The Thick of It as an "old shame", ever since taking on the family-friendly role of the Twelfth Doctor, he has worked hard to separate Malcolm Tucker and the Doctor, rarely speaking about Malcolm and generally refusing requests to swear and do other Malcolm-esque things. He is also on record as stating he doesn't expect to ever play Malcolm on screen again.
Martin Shaw didn't get on well with Lewis Collins, his co-star on The Professionals (and vice versa), and he also hated the show itself to the extent of blocking repeats for years. He later relented upon learning that the widow of the late Gordon Jackson (who played their boss) was having money troubles; the series has subsequently been shown frequently on British cable television. (Shaw and Collins also later smoothed things out.)
If you want to stay on Jane Leeves' good side, never ask her about her appearances on The Benny Hill Show.
Every episode of Before They Were Famous hosted by Angus Deayton opened with an advert that Deayton would rather pretend didn't exist. Most of the other clips were, presumably, Old Shames for the people involved as well, although we don't learn their reactions (except for a few In-Universe; The Stinger of the first episode showed Nick Hancock accosting Deayton in the BBC carpark and punching him for repeatedly showing a particularly goofy moment from Hancock's early role in a series of cheesy beer ads, while the second episode ended with Martin Clunes hiding in Deayton's car to strangle him for showing a clip from the Doctor Who serial "Snakedance" in which he wore a very silly pseudo-Roman costume (which he also wore to strangle Deayton).
The BBC would love to disassociate themselves from any show that starred TV presenter Jimmy Savile (who was posthumously revealed to have been a serial child molester and rapist) in it. This is particularly bad for Top of the Pops, where not all of Savile's introductions can be simply cut away, and Jim'll Fix It, a children's show where most of the funny and amusing footage will forever be tainted by memories about the person who presented them. (This has also crossed over into the Doctor Who franchise as BBC Worldwide was forced to withdraw the DVD release of one story in order to remove a Jim'll Fix It installment in which the Doctor appeared, which had been added as a special feature. The DVD in question was then re-released without the Savile clip.)
- Even references to Savile have been banned. A repeat of an old episode of the children's show Tweenies in which one of the characters dresses and acts like Savile was accidentally shown again and caused a stir among viewers. The BBC apologized for the broadcast and quickly pulled the episode from rotation.
Louis Theroux:
- Louis did a documentary on Savile in the early 2000s, then admitted in a 2016 follow-up documentary that he felt ashamed about not being able to see Savile for who he really was, and that in retrospect it was one occasion where his style of questioning was completely inadequate.
- He also reviewed his 2011 interview with Joe Exotic ten years later following the latter's arrest. While Louis was not as wowed by Exotic as he was by Saville to begin with, he's still surprised that he failed to truly register Joe's manipulation tactics and cult-like mentality at the time.
Monty Python's Flying Circus: John Cleese once said he felt that too many episodes in the series were recorded cheaply and quickly, while they could have been a lot better. Therefore he isn't particularly fond of most of them. This also shows on the DVD "Monty Python: John Cleese's Personal Best" where the amount of sketches he seems to like is far lower, compared to the "Personal Best" DVDs of his fellow Python colleagues. The other Pythons are far more proud of the series in general. It must also be mentioned that Cleese felt particularly bored with the format, even in the first season, gradually getting worse after the third one. So many of his embarrassing feelings might stem from the fact that he didn't enjoy it that much anymore near the end. In "Life and How To Survive It," Cleese also said that only after Graham Chapman died he suddenly realized, remembering the series, that he never had so much fun during a project in his life.
The presenters of Top Gear apparently didn't think much of the India special episode, and James grimaced when he dropped it in convo.
Verity Lambert regarded Adam Adamant Lives! as a severely-flawed flop, and was somewhat bemused when it developed a fandom in later decades.
Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson and producer John Lloyd have made no secret of the fact that they consider the first series of Blackadder to be complete garbage, and to this day are amazed that the BBC ever agreed to fund a second series (though less surprised that they forced a Retool and a massive cut in the budget).
While Red Dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor has defended the basic idea behind the "Remastered" versions of the series released in the late 1990s, he's admitted that in terms of execution it was a complete misfire, and that the time, budget and effects technology weren't anywhere near enough to achieve what he aimed to.
P J Hammond has said that he agrees with the generally negative fan opinion of the Sapphire and Steel story "Assignment 3", believing that he let his enthusiasm for the story's Green Aesop override his normal self-evaluation abilities.
While the show has already been criticised for exploiting the lives of its participants, with some likening it to a form of human bear-baiting, ITV took down all social media accounts for the The Jeremy Kyle Show along with its official website. This was following the apparent suicide of 63-year-old Steve Dymond, who had been found dead after his appearance in the show's polygraph test where it was determined that he was being unfaithful to his partner. A number of individuals, MPs and organisations called for the show to be banned, which eventually led to the series' cancellation.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 refused to re-air KTMA episodes after they left that station and requested Comedy Central cease airing Season 1 episodes shortly before Season 4. While some of these (especially the KTMA eps) had to do with the legal issues surrounding the movies in use that has plagued the series to this day, they admitted to this very trope in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, likening it to becoming a famous writer and then having an old classmate publish one of your shameful high school works. It's worth noting that several movies from the KTMA era were reused (with the rights properly attained this time around), giving Best Brains a chance for a do-over. When the franchise eventually became a cult classic, series owner Jim Mallon became a lot more liberal about putting KTMA snippets on the MST3K website and official DVD releases, likely because the odds of it doing any harm to the show's rep are minimum and fans are quite fascinated by them. Similarly, no prejudice is held against season one episodes when it comes to the DVDs and about half the episodes have been released. In fact, as of July 2014, every Season 1 episode has been on DVD (at least at some point).
- While still embarrassed by the quality of the KMTA episodes, Joel Hodgson allowed the inclusion of the first two KMTA episodes as special stretch goal rewards for the Bring Back MST3K Kickstarter.
This post from Jack Coleman of Heroes, aka Noah Bennet, may utterly define this Trope.
Tina Fey apparently feels this way about the first episode of 30 Rock, saying "if I never see that pilot again, it will be too soon."
Joss Whedon has made every effort to ensure that the unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is never seen.
"Ow! That was my favourite spine!"
- Whedon doesn't have fond memories of Roseanne, either. The eponymous star was apparently on her worst behavior, and the whole crew bore the brunt of it.
Sarah Michelle Gellar would like to burn all the tapes from Girl Talk, a show she did when she was little.
In several episodes of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart refers to his previous film career in this manner. He seems particularly regretful over Death to Smoochy, as he said in his opening speech at the Oscars:
"Tonight is the night when we celebrate excellence in film - with me, the fourth male lead from Death to Smoochy."
Good luck getting Comedy Central to acknowledge the first host of The Daily Show, Craig Kilborn, or any of the episodes he hosted. Might be justified, since the show got insanely popular once Jon Stewart took over. Seems as though Stewart's farewell show was one of the only times that it was acknowledged that Kilborn once hosted the show.
Facts in the matter are sketchy, but supposedly, George Reeves hated playing Superman in the old series from the 50s. He thought such a role was beneath him, and he wasn't thrilled with being associated with such a role on an international level. (While not confirmed, there's a story about how an audience at a test screening for From Here to Eternity the audience would recognize him as Superman in every scene he appeared.) It probably wasn't helped that Reeves wasn't paid what he likely deserved for the role, due to the shoestring budget, or that he had to appear on cereal commercials as a result due to product tie-ins.
The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss seems to be one for The Jim Henson Company, as the second season did even worse than the first; not helping matters was the show trying to compete with Bear in the Big Blue House in said season and being moved to Nick Jr. on Nickelodeon.
Stargate-verse:
- The Re-Cut of Stargate SG-1's pilot was the result of Brad Wright viewing it again and realizing how much Old Shame was in it. To wit:
  - Carter's infamous reproductive organs speech.
  - The Lampshade Hanging of Richard Dean Anderson's previous role as MacGyver.
  - The full frontal nudity scene used to Avoid the Dreaded G Rating.
  - As well as numerous continuity issues, such as the Death Glider carrying a set of transportation rings when cargo ships served this purpose throughout the rest of the series.
- The SG-1 Season 1 episode "Hathor" is viewed by both fans and the writers as one of the worst episodes of the series, not just for bad writing but for the Squick factor of the content. The events of the episode are never brought up again, except in meta jokes about how much the episode sucked; everything about Goa'uld physiology the episode revealed was quietly retconned, except for the fact that Goa'uld Queens exist; and Hathor herself was unceremoniously killed off in her very next appearance.
Bob Saget feels this way about his family-friendly roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s on Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos. He has since cultivated an image as an edgy, dark comic and has made a career out of Adam Westing his previous family-friendly persona by portraying a fictionalized version of himself that is drug abusing, foul-mouthed and sexually deviant in his stand-up. While most of the actors who starred in Full House don't particularly care about the show, Bob Saget is definitely the most vocal about it. However, that didn't stop him or any of the other actors from reprising their roles in the Netflix revival Fuller House. It helped that the writers tone done his sitcom dad tendencies and let him be a little more sarcastic and crusty.
- Mary Kate Olsen has been vocal about how she hated having grown up as a child star and apparently refuses to do anything with Full House anymore—she apparently even told Ashley to turn off the TV when she saw her watching an episode once. As the Olsen twins were the only regulars who didn't return for the revival, that story may well be true. Ironically, it was Mary-Kate's view on Full House that softened over the years. While Ashley had said upfront that she does not wish to participate in Fuller House, Mary-Kate did later extend an olive branch by saying that she's interested in possibly making a return if her schedule is clear. However, Mary-Kate never appeared on the series, not even on the Series Finale in 2020.
Going back to America's Funniest Home Videos, that show has disowned the time from 1998 to 1999 that John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes hosted it (and brought it to just this side of cancellation, then demoted to a "special" show with rotating hosts, before returning as a regular series with Tom Bergeron). This disownment is evidenced by a retrospective episode of the Bergeron era, which brought back Saget but didn't even mention Fugelsang, along with it only being offered in syndication to WGN America.
And speaking of Bergeron, he's ashamed of Fox After Breakfast, an attempt by Fox to bring his earlier morning show, Breakfast Time, which aired on FX (when it was chock-full of live programming and classic TV reruns). The show was subject to much Executive Meddling which stripped Breakfast Time's good qualities and saw the departure of Bergeron and others, turning into The Vicki Lawrence Show before being canned in 1997. He says as such in the foreword to What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, where it ranks at #23.
Tina Louise did not play Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island. Don't even try to talk to her about it. She was the only surviving cast member to refuse to participate in the animated series or the reunion movies, which resulted in her being portrayed in Surviving Gilligan's Island as a vapid bitch while everyone else had no negative traits at all. In fairness the heading for her official Twitter account describes her as "Still living on an island (Manhattan)," so maybe she's made peace with it.
The Star Wars Holiday Special, a quick exploitation TV one-off produced a year after the original movie was released. George Lucas has gone on record to say he would hunt down and destroy every last copy of the Special if he had the time and money, and virtually every actor who appeared in it (most notably Harrison Ford) refuses to admit it exists. Carrie Fisher did at least acknowledge it (she asked for, and received from Lucas, a copy of the special in exchange for her recording a DVD commentary — she used it to drive out party guests who'd overstayed their welcome, apparently), but claimed to have remembered very little about making it. Sadly, this may well have been much closer to truth than hyperbole given her well-documented struggles with drug addiction.
- Patty Maloney is an exception, as evidenced by this interview.
- Bea Arthur also reportedly enjoyed her role, but that may be because her scene in the bar was the only watchable part of the entire thing (besides the animated short introducing Boba Fett) and she wasn't actually aware until after it was released that it had anything to do with Star Wars.
- Lev Mailer apparently also has some fond memories of the special. Though it helps that his scenes were in Saun Dann's shop (the "groomer" sketch) and that getting to ad-lib alongside Art Carney is a little like having Chuck Berry invite you to jam with him.
While this show has been around a long time and fans have differing opinions on what seasons are considered good or bad, there is one thing Saturday Night Live fans can agree on: Season 6 (the 1980-81 season spearheaded by Jean Doumanian) was generally bad. So much so that, outside of a 60-minute Comedy Central rerun and a full 90-minute rerun on NBC, Season 6 hasn't aired in full anywhere in America, except for when it premiered in the early 1980s (Canada, on the other hand, did air all the episodes from Season 6) and it's highly unlikely that the episodes will be released on DVD now that Seasons 1-5 are out.
- Season 11 (1985-86) also qualifies as an Old Shame, at least to current Simpsons writer George Meyer, ex-Simpsons writer Jon Vitti, and NBC executives. It was bad enough that the cast was written out at the end of the season by being trapped in a burning room, and Season 12 opened with Madonna (who hosted the Season 11 opener) declaring the past year "a horrible, horrible dream". Of the Season 11 cast, only Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Nora Dunn, and feature player/writer A. Whitney Brown were retained, while Al Franken returned to the writing staff and re-emerged as a feature player in Season 13.
- Season 20 (1994-95) could be considered this in the eyes of Janeane Garofalo, who left mid-season after putting up with the "unfair boys' club" attitude of the cast and writers (in a comedy special, she compared being on SNL as being the Indian who gets the smallpox-ridden blanket from the white settlers) and Lorne Michaels (who cites the season as the closest he's ever been to being fired and having his show canceled).
- All this said, you can watch the above seasons and all the other ones on Netflix, if you're so inclined. Unfortunately, the episodes are heavily edited, and some run less than 30 minutes.
Disney really doesn't want to be reminded that they have to continue giving Pat Robertson and his 700 Club three hours a day on Freeform (formerly ABC Family), along with one day in January for his yearly CBN telethon, just because some underling of Rupert Murdoch couldn't persuade him to give up the network completely. The network airs the show very reluctantly, putting disclaimers on before it stating that they don't support Robertson's views and refusing to put up anything identifying the channel. They also air the show at the most out-of-the-way, least likely to be watched times they can, and refuse to do any promotion for it (their website only makes mention of the fact that it's a show that exists, and what times it airs). When Disney rebranded Freeform in 2016, they offered a $42 million buyout to remove the show, only for Robertson to demand an "astronomical" amount.
- Why not just shut down the channel and debut a new channel with the exact same programming, slightly altered in times, on the same day? Well, this was in fact Disney's original intention, to re-brand the then-Fox Family as an ABC rerun farm and young-adult channel called XYZ. However, when they saw Robertson's contract stipulations were iron-clad, they realized the only way to break them was to completely start over and build XYZ from the ground up, which would put them in the very bad position of having every single contract with providers null and void, then having to renegotiate with every cable system to get back on, which for any basic cable network would be a disastrous proposition. There might be room for a bit of Loophole Abuse though; Freeform has tested the edges of the agreement in the last few years as far as marketing the network, since it technically applied only to the analog era version of the channel, while the HD version could be considered a new network under different carriage agreements.
Evangeline Lilly of Lost, The Hobbit and The Hurt Locker once did quite a few ads for LiveLinks, hilariously mocked here. As soon as she hit it big on Lost, the company ran with it and seemed to air those ads far more frequently than they might have otherwise.
Cartoon Network disowns all of their live-action series. Not only they were all flops, but by the time the network returned to an all-cartoon line-up, they eventually erased all traces of these shows on their website overtime, are no longer on any streaming service, and will most likely never be referenced in the history of the network in the future.
Disney and the time that they owned Power Rangers. The cheesy, bright kids show franchise was part of the package when they bought up Saban Entertainment, Fox Kids, and The Family Channel, and they clearly never were proud of it, to the point that they had no real problem eventually selling it back to Haim Saban and Shuki Levy. Several ABC affiliate groups like Hearst and Allbritton (the latter of whom was later bought and merged with Sinclair) outright refused to carry it on their stations because of lack of educational value. After Operation Overdrive (considered by far the worst of the Disney-era seasons), Disney attempted to cancel the show outright; Jungle Fury and RPM were only produced because of pressure from its international units and toy maker Bandai.
- Interestingly, despite its large cast, there are very few actors who actively treat it as such. Danny Slavin is the biggest case; he only took the job to pay for law school and hasn't even thought about it since. Among those who have distanced themselves from the show include:
  - James Napier (who saw it as just a job and hasn't been interested in returning)
  - Emma Lahana (in more recent years has became annoyed by fans who keep referring to her by her character's name when meeting her)
  - Michael Taber (who drunkenly posted, then later deleted, a Tweet calling his time on the show "horrible" ^note)
  - Camille Hyde (who has deleted all references to the show off her social media accounts and failed to show up for an appearance at Power Morphicon 2018 with no explanation, despite being announced as an attending guest months prior).
- Others have felt some embarrassment but most have come around to some degree:
  - Steve Cardenas (who originally refused to even mention it, but has since warmed up to it, to the point that he eventually reprised his role as Rocky in "Dimensions in Danger").
  - David Yost (who didn't hate the show, but was understandably upset about the homophobic bullying he had to put up with behind the scenes)
  - Eka Darville (who remembers his season fondly, but has moved on to much bigger projects and has emphatically stated that he'd never return to the franchise)
  - Rose McIver (enjoyed her time with the show but is unlikely to return due to her career taking off with iZombie)
  - Amy Jo Johnson (she did go through a period of genuine Creator Backlash for several years due to how she hated that it hindered her chances of being taken seriously as an actress, but she seems to have softened up a bit over time, enough to even make a cameo in the 2017 movie; however, between a phobia of large crowds and past issues with stalkers, don't expect to see her at any large conventions anytime soon).
- The above mentioned Michael Taber and Camille Hyde were—according to Brennan Meija in his react video—willing to do a voiced Role Reprise for the dinosaur team up in Power Rangers Beast Morphers, even though they didn’t film anything on camera with everyone else.
- Slavin's case is interesting; as detailed on Lost Galaxy's Trivia page, there was a lot of Executive Meddling (especially for the team-up episode with Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue) that understandably rubbed him the wrong way. Initially Slavin refused to return for the 10th anniversary episode "Forever Red", but changed his mind at the last minute as a favor to the producers. After this, though, he effectively retired from acting and has turned down numerous invites to Power Morphicon. In light of all this, the news that Slavin agreed to reprise the role of Leo for Power Rangers Megaforce was especially surprising. Granted, he could've had less than noble reasons for that, but that, along with a Facebook page dedicated to his career, may mean he's started to move on...
- The main reason a lot of former Ranger actors choose not to return to the franchise is because many of them are SAG members now and Power Rangers is a non-union show.
  - Though Eka Darville was able to do a voice only reprisal for "Clash of the Red Rangers" by using a pseudonym, which Alex Heartman revealed several years later during a convention panel.
Apparently, almost every one of the live actors involved with ALF, mainly since the puppet was treated better than the actors (the numerous trapdoors that they would use were time-consuming to reset, which gave the option of either exhausting your actors, or risking their safety by leaving them open). So much, that after the final scene of the final episode was shot, actor Max Wright simply walked to his car, drove off, and never spoke to any of the cast members ever again. While Wright still refuses to acknowlege the series due to the damage it did to his credibility as a stage and dramatic film actor, he did admit in 2006 that "it doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like, ALF brought people a lot of joy."
CBS seems to try to ignore the existence of the first season of Big Brother as much as possible, to the point of actually asking contestants in later seasons to not discuss it while on the show. Interestingly enough, this was the only season that was close to the original rule set of the show (and wasn't as dependent on gimmicks as later seasons were). It changed in season two to keep in the interesting people in the cast as long as possible.
Saved by the Bell:
- Seems to be the case with Dustin Diamond. When the cast did a reunion for a magazine shoot sometime in early 2011, he was the only one who didn't participate (even Dennis Haskins, AKA Principal Belding, was there) and instead released a book bashing the show. In an interview with TV Guide, Tiffani Thiessen said she thought this might have just been anger since he wasn't doing anything major at the moment, while the rest of the cast (except Lark Voorhies) were. Diamond claimed in one interview that he didn't feel like he fit in with the rest of the cast, being the youngest of the actors playing students.
- Another example would be Mark-Paul Gosselaar, although for him it would be one particular episode of the series. His favorite episode initially was "Running Zack", but in a November 2016 interview, he now admits to being ashamed of the episode and apologized for it, stating how insensitive it is to Native Americans.
Drew Carey is still extremely embarrassed by Geppetto, his 2000 TV movie musical adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio, which the American Whose Line Is It Anyway? cast frequently mocked him for.
- The Drew Carey Show lampshaded this during a live episode, where the kid that played Pinocchio showed up in costume and asks how come he never wants to hang out with him anymore.
- Speaking of Whose Line, performers Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie have said they don't watch their earliest appearances on the British edition because of how awkward and unfunny they were.
In a 1989 "decade in review" special MTV News named The Monkees as "most unnecessary comeback" of the 80s, despite the fact that it was MTV's airing of the sitcom's reruns that led to the Monkees' comeback in the first place. Though this may well be sour grapes — MTV indeed had been instrumental in the band's comeback, but were enraged that, due to miscommunications, The Monkees failed to appear on a MTV Super Bowl special in 1987.^note
Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune fame starred in a 1988 TV movie for NBC called Goddess of Love. When Wheel host Pat Sajak brought it up on an episode, Vanna physically tried to stop him from saying any more about it.
Some performers are fine with their work for Sid and Marty Krofft Productions being brought up. And then there are Deidre Hall (Electra Woman and Dyna Girl) and Jim Nabors (The Lost Saucer)...
Ellen DeGeneres has several segments on her show that highlight the old shames of audience members, notably "bad paid-for photos" and "hot glam, girl!" featuring embarrassing studio photographs and glamour shots, usually taken in the 80s and early 90s.
Fox celebrated its 25th Anniversary in April 2012, which doesn't seem too out-of-place except for the fact the network actually debuted six months earlier (October 9, 1986) with The Late Show starring Joan Rivers. Okay, so the show had a rather tumultuous history until it was canned in mid-1988, but ignoring the first six months of your network to establish a "fake" start date falls squarely into here. However, only the O&O's actually tried to promote that show, while the network struggled to string enough affiliates between October 1986 and April 1987 to get the network going before the primetime launch. There were even cases where seeing the iceberg ahead, some stations like WCGV in Milwaukee would only affiliate with the network if they didn't have to air The Late Show, while Omaha's KPTM outright refused, not wanting to endure the wrath of local legend Johnny Carson (who blacklisted Joan Rivers from Tonight, a rule that lasted until Jimmy Fallon buried the hatchet in 2014, months before her death). Desperate to have as many affiliates as possible when the network launched in primetime, Fox allowed stations to avoid carrying it. Most sources thus call April 1987 the actual start of the network, and regard The Late Show as a Fox syndicated production instead before then.
- There was also no mention of Fox Kids or its shows in any way, shape or form. This was less due to shame and more to do with Disney owning most of the programming that aired there (though many affiliates— particularly ones that switched to Fox since they got the NFL— not bothering to carry the block once they switched to Fox since it would interfere in their plans to run cheap syndicated programs and more newscasts also played a major role).
When you star in a TV series that has your name in the title — for the sake of argument, let's call it David Cassidy: Man Undercover — and you still don't discuss it in your autobiography... yeah, shame of oldness. David did, however, discuss the series in his VH1 Behind the Music special, claiming he felt embarrassed at his talk-show appearances promoting the show, humorously lampooning his attitude that he be taken as a "SERIOUS artist".
Meanwhile, two other members of The Partridge Family weren't too proud of the show - Susanne Crough (Tracy) once described the (fictional) group in an interview as "the original Milli Vanilli". (Susan Dey absolutely refused to take part in any reunions.)
Nickelodeon:
- Nick has tried to deny the existence of CryBaby Lane, a movie that was banned due to its terrifying content, since its first (and only) airing in 2000. However, that didn't stop TeenNick from airing the movie on Halloween 2011, thanks to growing hype from a Creepypasta written about it; a representative from Nickelodeon claimed that the movie was never actually banned, and a lot of viewers felt it just wasn't that scary, or at least no more than a typical episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?. The Old Shame spiel could have been just for hype, or something else entirely.
- The network has also denied requests to release their first major show (Pinwheel) and Eureeka's Castle on DVD due to rights issues involved with the original animated shorts used on them.
The very first pilot for The Aquabats! Super Show! in 1998 is regarded as an old shame by the band. "No one wants it, not even The Aquabats". The Aquabats! have never made the 1998 pilot available for public viewing, and probably never will.
Kirk Cameron really feels bad about getting Growing Pains castmember Julie McCullough fired for posing for Playboy due to his religious views, as well as the controversy surrounding it, which he blames on lack of maturity.
Denis Leary admitted that he made a big mistake by arguing with Greg Giraldo on Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn.
Larry Hagman admitted to disliking the Dallas reunion movies, as did Patrick Duffy. When the show was revived in 2012, the continuity of the movies was mostly ignored.
One of David Letterman's first TV roles was on The Starland Vocal Band Show, an embarrassingly bad show made to cash in on the success of the band. Reportedly Letterman (as well as the SVB for that matter) left the show off his resume.
Jimmy Fallon has said he views his infamous The Tonight Show interview he did with Donald Trump as a setback.^noteHe's not wrong; ratings dropped like a rock after it happened. He's also said not getting out in front of the controversy was a massive mistake on his part.
- Another old shame for Fallon: While at first he tried to defend it (saying “everyone did it”, which earned him even more hostility), Fallon has since expressed shame and embarrassment for his constant habit of corpsing, shameless mugging, and constantly breaking character during his tenure on Saturday Night Live. At one point, he was more famous for this than any impression or character he played. It got so bad that fellow Tracy Morgan once threatened Fallon with physical violence if Fallon did it once during a Morgan skit. When he later hosted, Fallon actually said during his monologue “I laughed during a lot of sketches and nearly ruined ALL of them.”
Dana Carvey said that he thought One Of The Boys (the sitcom he did with Mickey Rooney) was terrible!
James Cromwell does not look back on his tenure on 24 with much fondness. He hadn't seen the show beforehand and only took the job at the urging of his agent, claiming it would make him more-well known, and because he was being offered a lot of money for it. He hated how the show glamorized torture for information, and hated playing a character with no redeeming qualities.
- This view is actually shared by the writers too, as Cromwell happened to guest star in Season 6, widely considered the weakest of the show.
- Freddie Prinze Jr. also didn't care for his time on 24, mainly due to his working relationship with Kiefer Sutherland.
Nick Kroll has made fun of Cavemen in his stand-up.
Rob Schneider said he didn't care for his sitcom, Rob, and thought it could have been executed better^note.
The creators and cast of Farscape acknowledged the poor quality of the first season episode "Jeremiah Crichton" to the point that some DVD issues include a commentary entirely devoted to apologising for it and trying to explain how it got so bad.
J. Michael Straczynski has offered to personally apologize to all Babylon 5 fans for the episode "Grey 17 is Missing". He claimed that a lot of the episode sounded better on paper.
Carol Burnett did not have fun making Stanley, mostly because Buddy Hackett kept stepping over all of her lines.
Angus T. Jones felt regret over doing Two and a Half Men because he felt they made too much light out of serious issues in the world — he even made a whole video criticizing the series.
Tom Chapin, brother of musician Harry Chapin, recalls his series Make a Wish which aired on ABC Sunday mornings as "a show for six-year-old speed freaks."
Jason Momoa is not proud of his stint on Baywatch because it prevented him from getting any good work for a long time.
Tim Burton regrets the TV movie adaptation of Hansel and Gretel he made back in the early 80's and refused to release it until just recently.
Though Christina Applegate credits portraying Kelly Bundy on Married... with Children with starting her career, and doesn't appear to regret the role, a low point for her must have been an ad by the then-fledgling Fox Network in which she danced to "Foxy Lady" in tight jeans and a red halter top.^note
Bobby Lee says he does not like MADtv, saying that working on it felt like a sweatshop. He also says he doesn't know how it stayed on the air so long seeing as "nobody watched it".
Mariah Carey doesn't look back too fondly on her experience as a judge on American Idol Season 13, especially due to her stormy relationship with fellow judge Nicki Minaj, which the network played up considerably. She once said "It was like going to work every day in hell with Satan," and later called it the worst experience of her life.
A few of the actresses on Charmed didn't hate the show itself - but rather the increasingly skimpy outfits the sisters would have to wear. Alyssa Milano got the worst of it and actually went to producers before the final season to protest against them. Rose McGowan named her least favourite episode as the nymphs one, solely for the costume she had to wear. Kaley Cuoco also burst into tears when she saw the outfit Billie would have to wear in "Battle of the Hexes". It apparently was meant to have a cape as well - but Cuoco refused to wear it.
- Zachary Quinto finds the episodes he was in to be embarrassing.
Rebecca Mader - better known as Charlotte on Lost or Zelena on Once Upon a Time - has this attitude to her modelling career. She's said that she only did modelling as a way to break into acting, and was overjoyed when she didn't have to do it anymore. She's ashamed of the L'Oreal commercials she did but pokes fun at them too.
Peter Pan Live! seems to have become this for NBC. Its ratings seemed drastically lower than those of their telecast of The Sound of Music the previous year, and it also became made fun of by the Internet community. This reception prompted producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron to call adapting Peter Pan "a mistake", figuring they realized too late that it seemed too outdated and/or Adaptation Overdosed.
Scott Baio, perhaps best-known as Chachi on Happy Days, expressed regret for starring in its short-lived Spin-Off Joanie Loves Chachi, due to a semi-Troubled Production that involved being stuck with writers unfamiliar with the Happy Days characters, as well as "chemical use" among certain members of the staff.
Pernell Roberts was not proud of his time on Bonanza, and eventually left the show because he felt its writing was juvenile (he especially chafed at having to play a man in his thirties who still lived with his father and listened to him like a kid) and his talents were better used elsewhere. However, he had nothing against his co-stars. When Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker, and Michael Landon eventually died, he would sometimes watch reruns of Bonanza so he could see and remember his old friends.
John Wesley Shipp had fond memories of his time on The Flash (1990), but he disliked the Flash costume because it was uncomfortable and goofy.
While neither he, Keanu Reeves, or George Carlin starred in it (one of the show's many problems), Alex Winter has still made it very aware of his disdain for the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures live action TV series. He even appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show and flat out said "it stinks" before the series even made it onto the air.
Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have been known to tease each other about their old shames: Devour for Jensen and New York Minute for Jared.
Angela Bettis hated the 2002 made-for-TV version of Carrie, in which she played the title character. She described it as "Carrie meets 90210" and said that she only took the role (after turning it down three times) so that she could have the money to keep doing indie films, and that, had she not starred in it, she never would've watched it and probably would've instead been one of the fans of the 1976 film furiously denouncing it sight unseen. Regarding the planned TV series that the film was a Pilot Movie for (which ultimately never got off the ground), she had a similar Money, Dear Boy attitude, saying that she was reluctant to do it but that everybody has a price. Ironically, her performance as Carrie is generally agreed to be one of the best parts of the film, even by those who hated it.
The short-lived Roseanne revival quickly became this for many involved after Roseanne Barr posted a tweet about Valerie Jarrett that many found racist and Islamphobic, with many involved condemning Barr including Sara Gilbert and Barr's ex-husband Tom Arnold; producer Wanda Sykes and actress Emma Kenney both quit in disgust—and ultimately ABC cancelled the show before the day was out, with Hulu pulling it and the original from their service, and reruns of the original were pulled as well.
The Discovery Channel has walked-back on their Shark Week special Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, a Mockumentary that claimed that the Megalodon was still alive. For the 30th anniversary of Shark Week, they released Megalodon: Fact vs. Fiction where scientists pointed out the original special's inaccuracies, as well as taking potshots at the bad acting and visual effects.
Edward James Olmos all but pretends his time on Miami Vice didn't happen, despite winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance as Lieutenant Castillo.
Stephen Talbot, who became a left-wing radical who heavily protested against The Vietnam War and later a journalist and documentary producer, has often been embarrassed when his childhood role as the Beaver's mischievous best friend Gilbert Bates in Leave It to Beaver has been brought up.
Kelsey Grammer found Hank to be such a boring show that he personally asked for it to be cancelled.
Erinn Hayes was let go from Kevin Can Wait after the first season with her character being Killed Offscreen and replaced with a new one played by Leah Remini as a ploy to increase the show's ratings. Hayes has nothing nice to say about her experience on the show and wound up getting the last laugh when Kevin Can Wait got cancelled after Season 2. She was even tickled when she heard AMC was developing an unrelated series called Kevin Can F**k Himself, to the point she made a cameo appearance in an episode making fun of what happened to her previous character.
Dan Levy recalls his early appearance as the villain in a Lifetime Movie of the Week as terrible, but he did use it as inspiration for Moira's career on Schitt's Creek.
Egyptologist Colleen Darnell has disowned the Netflix series Queen Cleopatra, for which she was interviewed without being told of its controversial casting decisions.
The cast of Coppers End didn't give the series much hope. In 1990, Bill Owen later remarked, "All you could do was keep your fingers crossed someone would laugh".
Writer David Nobbs thought Shine a Light was awful, which was especially seen as a shame to him as he thought the concept could have been very good. He also thought that having the characters be trapped together by something literal (in this case, water), was too easy compared to how a series like Steptoe and Son had the characters trapped together as they needed each other and regretted having such a small and unlikeable main cast.
Writer Troy Kennedy Martin didn't feel connected to If It Moves, File It. At the time, he was in France doing rewrites for Kelly's Heroes, so he wasn't able to steer the actors in the direction he initially planned in his scripts.
The crew of The Gnomes of Dulwich were frustrated by the "giant" human effects, as there were numerous imperfections visible onscreen.
It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling...:
- Writer Jilly Cooper wasn't happy with how her scripts were mucked about with and didn't even care that a second series wasn't commissioned after everything she had gone through.
- David Croft (who had been asked to help rewrite the episodes) thought the series was an unfunny, conventional Sitcom, and didn't approve of how the girls were so open with their sleeping around.
In a minor case, Ray Romano reportedly hates the title of Everybody Loves Raymond, since he feels the ironic meaning (spawned by his real-life brother Richard, a cop like his TV brother, Robert, "I had a day where people were shooting at me, and you're bringing home trophies. Everybody loves Raymond, don't they?") is lost and makes the show seem like It's All About Me.
Dad's Army:
- John Laurie was quite vocal about his dislike for the series and feeling like a Classically-Trained Extra, griping, "I’ve played every part in Shakespeare, I was considered to be the finest Hamlet of the twenties and I had retired, and now I’m famous for doing this crap". According to some sources such as Bill Pertwee however, he did actually like the show, or at least became a lot fonder of it the more successful it became. His flip-flopping inspired Frazer's habit of lambasting Maninwaring's latest scheme, only to say he never doubted him for a moment when it succeeded.
- Janet Davies wasn't happy about Mrs. Pike's lessening appearances in the series or with how she wasn't asked to play the role for the radio adaptation. Pamela Cundell also wasn't happy about missing out on the radio and thought that Mollie Sugden wasn't right in the role of Mrs. Fox, playing it too broad and not feminine enough.
Doctor at the Top was regarded as a mistake by all who took part in it. When George Layton appeared on an episode of This Is Your Life honouring Bill Oddie, the latter referred to Doctor at the Top, for which Layton and Oddie had both been writers, as "Doctor Down the Drain".
It Ain't Half Hot, Mum: In his autobiography, David Croft admits that while Kenneth MacDonald would later do great work in Only Fools and Horses, he regrets how he was never able to write him a part better than "bit of a nutcase who occasionally made very realistic bird noises", and also thought the last three series suffered without Michael Bates on the cast.
Hi-de-Hi!:
- Penny Irving's departure after Series 1 was because she hated the show and didn't find it funny at all.
- Rikki Howard thought the role of Betty was getting stale and left after Series 5 to return to the theatre.
- Barry Howard grew unhappy with his role and began to drink heavily on set as a result. Jimmy Perry gave him several chances to stop drinking (the character of Julian Dalrymple-Sykes was written into "The Epidemic" as a warning that if Howard's misbehaviour kept up, he would be replaced). Still, the final straw came during the filming of Series 7 when a drunken Howard pushed one of the Yellowcoat girls into the pool. He was written out the next series, replaced by who else but Julian, as mentioned above.
Are You Being Served?:
- Trevor Bannister hated performing before a Studio Audience, and by the end of his run grew tired of performing the same old reused jokes.
- By 1980, David Croft was also thinking the series was getting too far-fetched and rehashing too many older episodes.
Keeping Up Appearances: Patricia Routledge does not approve of the Young Hyacinth prequel special, as she felt The BBC was running out of ideas by revisiting old programmes. Kerry Howard, who played Hyacinth in the special, defended it by saying that it's not a remake or reboot of the show, but a side story that rounds out the character.
Richard Briers knew Birds on the Wing was a flop and was embarrassed that he had taken part in it:
It was a bit of a flop and lasted just six episodes. Trouble is, in my day if you had a flop, and we all have flops, you took it off your CV, like a play that ran ten days, you didn't put it in Spotlight. Naturally, you put up your good notices and the losers went out the window. Now with these bloody computers and the internet, you can't get rid of it. Birds on the Wing, why would I want that on my credits? It was terrible; sorry love, it's there. All your sins are remembered.
Jimmy Nail wrote in his autobiography that he felt the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet lacked the gritty edge of the first. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais agreed - on the DVD Commentary, Clement said the season was much more contrived in getting and keeping the gang together, and La Frenais said he felt the gang weren't trapped together enough. In particular, he felt the Spanish episodes were too luxurious for the gang, which reduced the impact of the series.
The Sex Lives of College Girls: While she was thankful to the creators of the show as she shared on an Instagram statement responding to the news of her departure, in a 2023 podcast interview Renée Rapp had opened up about her "terrible" experience during the first year of filming, elaborating on how hard it was for her to play (Leighton) a character similar to her. Rapp, who is bisexual, thought she wasn't "good enough", as most gay men on set openly showed skepticism on her sexual orientation, something that pissed her off. She would even feel a lot of pressure while filming intimate scenes.

Game Show

Richard Bacon, host of the short-lived British quiz show 19 Keys, would later say of the show, "It was a game show that was almost impossible to follow, let alone enjoy. Buzzers, sirens, a prize fund that would go up or down for no apparent reason — imagine being in a pile-up on the M25 with me in the car screaming general knowledge questions at you. That was 19 Keys."
Peter Tomarken, best known for hosting Press Your Luck, later did a home shopping/game show hybrid called Bargain Hunters, which he is reported to have called "a piece of shit".
Art James, host of Blank Check, said that he and the staff hated the show, and would sometimes call it "Blank Mind" because it required so little skill from the contestants.
Gene Rayburn did not recall hosting the 1985-86 Break The Bank as a happy experience. He feuded with director/producer Richard S. Kline (one of the defectees from Barry and Enright after Jack Barry's death) over the tone of the show, and by December of 85 it was clear he was just going through the motions at times. He ended up being replaced by Joe Farago later that month.
- Rayburn was infuriated when Rolling Stone magazine revealed his real age in an article, claiming that the information would probably get him fired due to insurance problems. And he was right: shortly after the article appeared, he was fired. Making it even worse was that despite the format being silly and calling for a silly host (with Gene known for being a total goofball on Match Game), Kline & Friends insisted on telling him not to be silly because Break the Bank was supposed to be a serious and suspenseful show. He ended up putting an embargo on his episodes (so when CBN Cable briefly reran the series, it was only the Farago-era episodes).
- Then there's the case of The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour. Rayburn wasn't happy on the show, partially due to the inexperienced Jon Bauman (aka Bowzer) being picked by Orion to host The Hollywood Squares part instead of original host Peter Marshall, but in large part because the Squares format was so broken; Gene Wood reportedly said that Rayburn was "dragged kicking and screaming" into the show, and Rayburn even criticized the format change on-air. But the show isn't under an embargo — it was held up by both Match Game and Hollywood Squares being owned by different companies, and finally began airing on Buzzr in 2019.
When Double Dare (1986) was revived as Double Dare 2000, original host Marc Summers became the show's executive consultant. In an interview with AfterBuzz TV, Summers admitted "there were issues" with the revival, most egregiously the Triple Dare Challenge. He said it took way too much time out of the game, and the show would have been just fine without it.
The Price Is Right has led to a few such examples:
- While Tom Kennedy enjoyed doing a nighttime version of The Price Is Right in 1985-86 (stating that he would've continued with it had it been renewed), he felt he didn't do a good job.
- Shortly after Drew Carey took over for Bob Barker, Drew began involving then-announcer Rich Fields in a series of "humorous" skits during the Showcase rounds. These skits, which gained the Fan Nickname "Drewcases", were widely derided by the fanbase as unfunny and demeaning. Drew apparently got the message, as he quickly phased them out and admitted that they didn't work.
- Roger Dobkowitz was phased out as a producer in 2008 a year after Barker left. If his Facebook page is anything to go by, he isn't too thrilled with the way the show is currently run. An example of this occurred when Triple Play was won for the first time in eight years on December 21, 2015. Roger was quick to point out that the staff should not treat it as a milestone and that it was shameful the way Drew acknowledged it on the air.
David Ruprecht hosted two runs of Supermarket Sweep on Lifetime and PAX in the 90s and early 2000s. Within a day of the Leslie Jones-hosted 2020 revival's first airing, he made a post on the show's official Facebook page where he called it a "debacle". Christopher Ryne, who composed the theme music from the same era, was not pleased with the producers ignoring the agreement he made with them to feature his music. They switched it out in favor of "Push it" by Salt-N-Pepa at the last minute.
Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak has made it abundantly clear that he hated the show's short-lived "Megaword" category, used only for a few months in late 1994-early 1995 (the puzzle was a large singular word that, after solving, a contestant could use in a sentence for a cash bonus). He would snark about the category every time it came up, and Vanna White and Charlie O'Donnell got in digs at the category's expense. When a contestant mentioned it in a 2014 episode, Pat remarked that he "hated every moment" of the category.
The Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950s were this for the entire genre. When Dan Enright was exposed as having rigged several game shows (most notably 21), many networks scrubbed clean of most, if not all, of their game shows at that point. (A few, such as the original The Price Is Right, escaped largely unscathed.) When they eventually regained confidence in the genre, they took great steps to make sure an incident like what happened on Twenty-One never happened again. Some networks placed a soft cap on how much accumulated winnings a champion could win before they were retired ^note. While game shows caught a second wind in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with even Enright and collaborator Jack Barry seeing a Career Resurrection, it was not until Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? that extremely high stakes and drama would again become the norm.
Art James hosted a show called Blank Check from January to July 1975, which he and the staff called "Blank Mind" because they thought it was an overly simple number-guessing game with no skill, designed to cash in on the ESP craze at the time. The only exception was its co-creator Dan Enright. When The Price Is Right had a pricing game called "Blank Check", Enright threatened to sue Mark Goodson Productions over trademark infringement. That game was eventually renamed "Check Game".
Ever since Steve Harvey gained popularity on Family Feud, Fremantle Media has been pushing aside the versions with prior hosts:
- Richard Dawson's original run is the only version to air on Buzzr, although as of January 2022 it only airs on Sunday nights and in the most dead of hours during the week. They did put a little-known blooper on their official YouTube channel the day after he died, likely out of pity. Dawson's 1994 return was pulled from Game Show Network before 2000 and only aired once since in the wake of Dawson's death.
- Mark Goodson expressed getting to a point during the original where he hated working with Dawson because of the host’s ego and personality changes. He refused to work with Dawson for years afterword.
- The Ray Combs edition ran on Game Show Network for many years as a companion piece to Dawson's version before being dropped in the mid-2000s. That network and Buzzr have reran it sporadically since, though its only current availability is YouTube.
  - Particularly, episodes featuring the Bullseye round were rare even while the Combs era was running regularly. Family Feud Challenge hasn't been seen on Game Show Network since before 1998; New Family Feud (Combs' last two syndicated seasons, with the Bullseye game) was last seen on the network in 2008.
- In the case of Louie Anderson and Richard Karn, their runs are divisive among fans. Anderson's version was rerun on PAX from 2002-04 and was last seen as part of a Game Show Network Feud marathon during Thanksgiving 2013. The Karn and John O'Hurley runs disappeared on Game Show Network as Harvey's reruns were racking in the ratings for the network.
Jeopardy!:
- The March 1986 five-day champion reign of Barbara Lowe is all but forgotten now. She was considered by fans and the show's staff to be a Jerkass, and she lied on her application as to her frequent past game show appearances under aliases, which violated her eligibility requirements. Her episodes have never rerun, despite her first win coming over Lionel Goldbart, a four-day champion and eventual Tournament of Champions competitor. They discovered the lies after her 5th and final game, and they barred her from the tournament. They also refused to give her the winnings until she threatened to sue the studio.
- Season 30 five-time champion Jerry Slowik was later arrested for an unlawful sex act, prompting Jeopardy! to drop him from the 2014 Tournament Of Champions and replace him with Mark Japinga, a four-time champion who had the most money in that cycle. (Slowik's episodes haven't been barred from reruns; at least one aired during the 2014-2015 weekend rerun cycle.)
- The Kids' Weeks, which were done from 1999-2014, became this thanks to a couple of sportsmanship issues. The first in 2013 had media outlets and angry Facebook posts ignoring a $66,600 win in favor of a judgment call that didn't affect the game. The following year, the Sony hacks uncovered host Alex Trebek's feud with a Stage Mom who demanded that an act be re-shot. The show never aired a Kids' Week again.
- Jep!, a kids' oriented spinoff from the late 1990s which incorporated Double Dare-esque stunt rounds, was quickly forgotten. Jeopardy's application form does cut a little slack, allowing players from this version to be contestants; at least one Jep! contestant made the leap to the adult version 24 years later.
The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour:
- According to the show's announcer Gene Wood, Gene Rayburn was "dragged kicking and screaming" into the Hour and disliked working with co-host Jon Bauman. Contrary to popular belief, Rayburn did not place an embargo on reruns, even though he would've had plenty of reason to complain; the Hour never aired in reruns until 2019 because of cross-ownership issues.
- Hour was also this for longtime Goodson-Todman producer Ira Skutch who called it "misbegotten". Skutch was so displeased that he severed ties with Goodson after it was cancelled.
The Price Is Right:
- Fur coats (and, in at least five instances, live dogs) used to be offered as prizes. Obviously, this was long before Bob Barker became an animal-rights activist, and per his wishes none of the fur coat episodes were ever rerun. ^note(...At least not intentionally; Game Show Network accidentally aired three episodes with a fur in them {November 16, 1972; 1977; 1980}, which Barker graciously allowed to slide.)
  - Among the fur-containing episodes are the first three episodes ever taped, the last of which went unaired (and got replaced six days later) due to an ineligible contestant. BCI, which wanted to put the whole first week on the DVD set, offered to donate to Barker's favorite charities and/or put a disclaimer before the offending shows. Barker declined.
- Dennis James' five years (1972-77) as host of the nighttime version, which frequently offered fur coats. That would be fine, if the remainder that could be legally aired hadn't been shunned by GSN at the same time they were doing "Game of the Week" during the Sunday Night In Black And White block. Only one James episode was aired by the network, and then only twice — a daytime show (December 25, 1974) where he filled-in for Barker, which amounts to a "pity airing" since it followed James' death in 1997. Further compounding matters is that his involvement with Price predates that of CBS, which in turn predates that of Barker (who initially wanted nothing to do with it).
  - Notably, Price itself finally acknowledged Dennis James by posting clips of a nighttime episode (specifically, a lady winning a Showcase with an airplane in early 1976) to its official YouTube page in September 2012.
- Drew Carey, who took over for original host Bob Barker in Season 36, attempted in Season 37 to change the Showcases at the end of the show into little skits that were often demeaning to then-announcer Rich Fields. Such skits, dubbed "Drewcases" by the fans, were mostly poorly received and deemed unfunny by the fanbase. Carey got the message and stopped doing them, and later admitted that they didn't work.
- The original Price Is Right with Bill Cullen averted any shame and ensured it. A viewer from New York City was arrested for attempting to bribe the producers into selecting his home sweepstakes entry. Then, as the Quiz Show Scandals broke, there was an accusation that producers were instructing certain contestants to not exceed a certain price ceiling. The accusations were never proven.
- Retired pricing games are often this to the staff, most notably the short-lived Telephone Game which was "lame" according to Roger Dobkowitz. Buy or Sell, Give or Keep and Joker were also disliked by many of the production staff, although all three games lasted at least thirteen years each in the rotation.
Wheel of Fortune:
- The show has refused to acknowledge two of the three pilots. The first (Shopper's Bazaar, taped in September 1973 with Chuck Woolery as host) had little in common with the final product other than the overall mechanic of "hangman meets roulette". The two pilots shot under the title Wheel of Fortune on August 28, 1974, more closely resembled what made it to air, albeit with a drunken Edd "Kookie" Byrnes hosting. In the E! True Hollywood Story, showrunner Merv Griffin and NBC boss Lin Bolen disowned all three. Outside two brief clips from the first Byrnes pilot on the ceremonial 3,000th show in 1998 and about five publicity shots of Bazaar, no trace of them was made public until all three ^note surfaced on YouTube during 2012. To say the fandom rejoiced would be a big understatement.
- While the show started on NBC's daytime schedule in 1975, the version more familiar to viewers is the nighttime syndicated version, which began in 1983. Acknowledgments of daytime overall are rare, although they may be somewhat justified as a large part of the first 10 years was erased thanks to idiocy at not only NBC, but also Merv's company. This means little acknowledgment of original daytime host-hostess tandem Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford (who were replaced in 1981 and 1982, respectively, by Pat Sajak and Vanna White — the same pair that has helmed nighttime since day one). Likewise, there is little to no acknowledgment of the two men who took Pat's place after he stepped down from daytime in 1989 to do The Pat Sajak Show: Rolf Benirschke ^note(of the San Diego Chargers) and (after a Channel Hop to CBS) Bob Goen. In short, the show has sort of undergone an Adaptation Displacement of itself, as the nighttime version outshone daytime and continues to this day with Pat and Vanna.
- David Sidoni and Tanika Ray co-hosted the short-lived Wheel 2000, a No Budget children's version that aired on CBS in 1997-98. Much like its kiddie companion Jep!, it is largely forgotten and has rarely aired since. Unlike Jeopardy!, contestants who've played on Wheel 2000 are ineligible to appear on Wheel of Fortune.
- The lack of acknowledging Rolf Benirschke, who enjoyed hosting his six-month stint on the daytime version, is particularly sore. His stint was indirectly acknowledged on February 20, 2013, when footage of the bonus puzzle from Rolf's premiere (THE HIMALAYAS) aired after Round 2. Wheel has done quite a few things with his team, the then San Diego Chargers, over the years.
- The staff seems very reluctant to dig deep into the vault for vintage Wheel episodes. While classic episodes of Jeopardy! have made their way to streaming sites and summer reruns, it's a different story for Wheel. The furthest they went back in syndication during the coronavirus pandemic was 2016, and the oldest episodes that GSN has most recently aired were from 2013. The last time any episode prior to the 21st century aired on television was when GSN aired the 1994-95 season from 2008-10. The last time anything from the 1980's (or 70's) was seen was during GSN's Merv Griffin tribute marathon in 2007. In addition, the vintage clips that occasionally get replayed on the show are usually the same selection of clips, the most frequent of which are Pat and Vanna having a pie fight (1991), Pat and Vanna in a hot tub (early 90's), Pat cutting Vanna's hair (1995), a college contestant solving GOPHER with only the last two letters (2001), and a shocked Vanna revealing a bald Pat (April Fools' Day 2008).
The two Press Your Luck episodes featuring Michael Larson (who memorized the big board's patterns to win $110,237 in cash and prizes) were banned by CBS and producer Bill Carruthers from being rerun for 19 years, as they saw the Larson episodes as an embarrassment. Outside tape trading, they weren't officially broadcast until GSN's documentary Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal aired in March 2003. They’ve since ahowed up several times on Buzzr though.
The eighth syndicated season of The Joker's Wild was to begin in Fall 1984 with Jack Barry announcing his retirement and passing the mic to Jim Peck on the premiere. Barry died shortly after wrapping up the previous season, and his partner Dan Enright had doubts on whether or not Peck could regularly carry the show. Enright instead called on Bill Cullen to host, a move that angered key staffers to the point of resignations. With Cullen in his mid-sixties at this point and not quite as sharp as he had been even earlier in the decade, The Joker's Wild lasted two more seasons before getting the axe. Enright later regretted his decision to snub Peck.
Mark Goodson, the man behind many famous game show formats, once called his 1954 game What's Going On? his worst. The show involved celebrities doing an activity from the live remote while the panel tried to guess the activity. It lasted only five episodes and was greatly hampered by the still-developing TV broadcasting technology of the 1950s.
Sony quickly buried any involvement with Mike Richards who was the executive producer of both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune for the full 2020-21 season and a fraction of the following season. Fans of the former were not happy when Richards effectively wormed his way into the host's spot, and news sites wasted no time reporting the sketchiness of his character. Richards stepped down after one week of Season 38 was filmed which caused a scheduling snafu when the following tape day had to be postponed^note. Three weeks he hosted—two in Season 37 and premiere week of Season 38—are likely to be placed on the "Do not rerun" shelf. Considering the latter week was part of super-champ Matt Amodio's run, this is especially regrettable. A Credits Gag on Wheel was dropped unceremoniously and edited out of weekend repeats.
Although he isn't known to have said it in-show and hosted it with the same avuncular nature he gave all of his other work, Bill Cullen thought his short-lived game Winning Streak "just didn't work".
Bob Eubanks:
- The Diamond Head Game, a dull quiz with a tacked-on Hawaiian theme, is "the worst piece of boop-boop that anybody has ever witnessed", if his quote from Card Sharks is to be believed.
- It had long since reached Urban Legend status that a lady on The Newlywed Game gave "in the ass" as an answer to "Where is the weirdest place you've ever gotten the urge to make whoopie?" For years, Eubanks denied that it ever happened, although this could be due to mis-remembered details. Many people thought it was a black lady who gave the answer assertively; when the clip finally surfaced (on GSN), it turned out to be a white lady named Olga who said it questioningly. The clip appeared on several blooper shows that Eubanks hosted or co-hosted (always censored, except for its appearances in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Alex Trebek's Game Changers documentary), and on one such special Eubanks remarked, "I hope we bury it!"
- He never liked Trivia Trap because he didn't think its format made sense (players worked to eliminate the wrong answers instead of just providing the right one), so the format was overhauled partway through the run...into a rather lackluster Q&A with an Artifact Title.
- He also didn't care much for Dream House, calling it "Dream Furniture".
The one episode of You're in the Picture that aired on January 20, 1961, was so horrible that a week later, its timeslot was filled by host Jackie Gleason on an empty stage apologizing for how horrible it was. Ironically, the apology was far more well received than the original show was, and led to Gleason doing a one-on-one talk show format called The Jackie Gleason Show. This show reached the #4 spot in the book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History.
Monty Hall never looked back at his hosting tenure on Beat the Clock with fondness, later saying: "The people were asked to do stupid stunts and so on. I just didn't care for it." The only reason he was even picked was because CBS had him under contract at the time, and up to that point hadn't found anything for him to do, and hence was forced to host.
Tom Kennedy's first game show was Big Game, which aired for about 20 episodes in 1958. It was a bit like a mini-version of Battleship, but with questions and a hunting theme. Oh, and Kennedy wore a pith helmet. Decades later, after watching the one existing episode, Kennedy said he was "absolutely pitiful".
One of Regis Philbin's first TV shows was The Neighbors, a lame knockoff of The Newlywed Game which asked gossip questions of five (always female) neighbors. The A&E Biography on Philbin failed to mention it, and he was none too thrilled when Alex Trebek brought it up on an episode of Live With Regis and Kelly.
Gene Rayburn:
- Gene didn't have fond memories of The Amateur's Guide to Love which aired for 13 weeks on CBS because the hidden camera atmosphere reduced his ability to be spontaneous in-studio.
- He also declared an embargo on his version of Break the Bank, as he wasn't happy with his performance and the behind-the-scenes issues.
Peter Tomarken reportedly called the 1987 game show / home shopping hybrid Bargain Hunters "a piece of shit".
Alex Trebek:
- During a 2002 episode of Jeopardy!, Alex accidentally referred to his first American game show The Wizard of Odds as The Wizard of Oz. He later admitted that it was "easily forgotten", and jokingly asked "Was it me or was it the show?" before confirming it was the latter.
- He considered Pitfall! one of the low points of his career, largely because his paycheck from the show bounced (he had it framed in his office). The production company, Catalena Productions, filed for bankruptcy at the midpoint of the show's lifespan which also resulted in many of Pitfall's contestants not receiving prizes they'd won. Trebek wasn't exactly pleased when a contestant brought it up as "the best thing ever" when he was young on an episode of Jeopardy! some years later, and he jabbed the contestant by saying that program was the one time he was "stiffed for his salary".

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