Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt of 'Three's Company' reunite after 30 years
Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt's five season stint together on "Three's Company" might lead one to think that the women grew close, but apparently the only thing they shared after the show ended was 30 years of silence.
This week, Somers invited DeWitt to be a guest on her web series "Suzanne Somers: Breaking Through" and the pair reminisced about their "Three's Company" characters, sexism on set and their late co-star, John Ritter.
"Three's Company" followed the lives of three single roommates, Jack Tripper (John Ritter), Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt) and Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Somers), their living arrangement and sexual exploits. At the time of the show's debut in 1976, co-ed living was still somewhat taboo and the trio told the landlord Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) and his wife Helen (Audra Lindley) that Jack was gay. Somers and DeWitt got a little teary-eyed upon seeing each other and talked about coming from different paths to the series, which ran for eight seasons between 1976 until 1984.
"When I came to 'Three's Company,' I had come from being a single mother. I needed money," Somers recalled. "I was so happy to get this job because I was finally going to make some money... but you came from UCLA, you were in the theater department, probably on scholarship, knowing you. You were plucked out by a talent scout. John [Ritter] had studied acting; he'd been on 'The Waltons.' So everybody's theater and I'm there going, 'I'm so happy to be making money.'"
Somers and Dewitt had different approaches to acting and they also embraced fame very differently.
"I really never wanted any attention, which is why becoming famous, I just tried to hide as much as possible," DeWitt said. "I've often said to friends that when the press would come into the room, John would be hysterical, you would graciously hold court and I would hide."
"I couldn't figure it out!" Somers replied. "Why don't you want to be famous? It's so incredible to be famous. Not many people get to be famous."
The women had not talked to each other since Somers left the show in 1981 and though it seemed there were tensions beyond what they let on, they shared kind words for each other.
"We had very different approaches to our careers, we had very different needs," Dewitt said. "I did not have a child that I was supporting on my own. I didn't have a business head, so I didn't understand someone who did."
"But I respect the training so much and I do want you to know how much I learned from watching you," Somers told DeWitt. "You were the first one to tell me we were doing farce and I thought we were talking about farts or something."
Somers asked DeWitt about the sexual relationships which occurred on the set of "Three's Company" because she was apparently not aware of any.
"Well I didn't know and I didn't think so, but years later, I found out that there was some going on," DeWitt revealed. "I can't really say, but I think Jonathan and a lot of our guest stars."
"Well, John was very horny," Somers said. "I mean, like the horniest guy I've ever known, but it all seemed very innocent. I guess not!"
"I was in shock because it was all very discreet," DeWitt added. "I didn't know!"
Somers said that she received a call from Ritter, about a month before his death in September 2003, asking her to join DeWitt to do a dream sequence on his series "8 Simple Rules."
"I wasn't ready," Somers admitted. "We needed to do this."
"When I got the script, I said 'John, this is not a good script, can they go back to the table'" DeWitt said. "And ultimately, when they went back to the table, as you know, they had his children on the show play us."
When asked of her last conversation with Ritter, DeWitt said, "I was staying in a hotel in Central Park South and John was staying in another hotel in Central Park South doing the up fronts for his then new series '8 Simple Rules.' So I'm walking, and there's this huge mass of paparazzi outside this hotel and I've got on my sweats, I've got on my sunglasses, I've got no makeup on, I have on tennis shoes. Click, click, click, click. And I'm like, oh for heaven's sake, just don't make me look too hideous... as I'm maybe five or six feet away from them, this voice says, 'You know, John's inside.' ...I say 'what? Oh no, I didn't' and I walk on another eight or nine steps and I went, 'Joyce Anne, don't be an idiot, that's a message.' So I turn around and go back to the hotel and call the hotel and leave a message for John... as I'm walking out the door, the phone rings and it's John and he says, 'Baby, we've got three parties tonight and a dinner, pick you up at seven.' ... A month later he was dead."
The women also discussed the day Somers was fired from the series in 1981, after asking for a raise from $30,000 per episode to $150,000 plus 10 percent of the profits, according to The Museum of Broadcast Communications.
"I never thought they would let you go," Dewitt said of Somers firing. "Taking on those boys& I think that we're not going to spend time on chauvinism because it's this concept that whatever. There's also the control factor that DLT, so flying in the face of that, they could not respect the feminine contribution. You went up against ruthlessness and it came down."
"You and I did deserve to be paid equal to what the men were being paid, is my feeling about that," Somers said. "It was their loss."
Somer's character Chrissy Snow was sent to care for her sick mother in Fresno and was temporarily replaced by Chrissy's cousin Cindy Snow (Jenilee Harrison) before a permanent roommate, a nurse named Terri Alden (Priscilla Barnes) moved in.
Ritter died of an aortic dissection caused by an undiagnosed congenital defect.
Watch Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt's reuinion below.
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