BONUS SUMMER RERUN: Scarecrow and Mrs. King with Eugenie Ross-Leming | TV Show Creator Interview

Hey, kids, it's Susan dropping in to let you know that because it's the middle of summer and the decline of Western civilization as we know it. It turns out I'm going to Dallas, Texas. Yes, Richard HadAM and I will be at the Podcast Movement Convention April eighteenth through twentieth. So if you are there, let me know and we'll try and meet up. And on Monday night, April eighteenth, Richard is kicking off his twenty twenty five multi city tour, the Light in the Dark Tour, debuting his new live show from his podcast, Richard Adam's Paranormal Bookshelf.

It will be at the on Rotation Brewery in Dallas. It's an all new, never before heard episode read by rich himself live in twenty twenty five. You can get tickets for the Dallas show, plus see all the other upcoming shows we have scheduled so far at event Bright. Just go to event Bright search for Richard Adams's Paranormal Bookshelf and you'll get there before you're halfway through. HadAM.

I will be at all the shows, and not just because I am a very supportive partner, but because I am producing them. There are links in our description and if you heard it here on our Eighties TV Ladies podcast and you show up, I will buy you a drink at the show. Now on to Sharon. We hope you're enjoying a good book, a great show, a wonderful podcast like this one, and a fantastic summer. Hopefully you're getting in a little rest and relaxation and joy.

We are so excited to rerun this early season one episode, Season one, episode four, Scarecrow and Missus King, with Eugenie ross Lemming, the co creator of the show. It originally aired August thirty, first, twenty twenty two. It was our first interview with an Eighties Ladies creator. We're so grateful to Eugenie for being our first official eighties television guest and the interview is fantastic. She's been a big supporter of the show.

I'm so grateful to her, and we were so grateful to talk about Scarecrow, Missus King and her incredible career. Joy day An so pretty to the city. Jean Gunning, Hello, everyone, welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we talk about female driven TV shows from the nineteen eighties. I'm Susan Lambert Adam and I'm Sharon Johnson. I am super excited for today's show.

Sharon, we have a very special guest on We get to talk to the creator of Scarecromis King, mister Genie Ross Limming. I think Susan is going to geek out a little bit today. That is so not fair, Sharon, I am going to geek out a lot. Eugenie Ross Limming is a writer, a producer, and an actress who created Scarecrow Miss King with her writing partner Brad Buckner. She has had an incredibly successful career since the nineteen seventies, when she started writing on Mary Hartman Mary Hartman.

She started as a comedian with Second City and worked as a producer and writer in both television comedies and dramas. Welcome Eugenie, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it. Happy to be here. Before we get to Scarecrow, I do want to talk about Second City because that's an amazing history.

Tell us about your time in the early seventies in Chicago. Well, it was great first because everybody was young and reckless and you believed everything was possible. So just generally it was good at Second City. I had done Paul Sills's Story Theater before it went to New York. I was in the original company when I was still at the University of Chicago as a matter of fact, and so I had a background in improvisation.

And then Second City was looking to start what they called the next generation of a new culturally culturally different comedy troups. They'd had a period where they went through a kind of a more traditional stand up not the original early Second City with Alan Arkin and Paul Fenn and Barbara Harris, which were you know, and Mike Nichols, who were really geniuses, sort of savants in the comedy area. But then they went through a period where they had more traditional like stand up guys, nightclub guys, and they were looking to change that as the country was kind of changing to and being more youth directed. And so they had seen me I guess at Story Theater and Paul Sills had said, you should really talk to this person.

She might be ready, and so I had an audition and with Joe Flaherty, who was a state came up and did a couple of scenes with me, improv scenes, and they hired me, and it was a very It was a wonderful time. I mean, everybody my cast was really brilliant, and it was Harold Rainis, John Belushi, Brian Murray, and then we had other people that came in and out. It integrated. Billy Murray would sometimes work in the show with us, and Betty Thomas and everybody kind of pitched in and it. It was a really good experience and it taught me.

You just taught me to think on my feet, you know, and have a certain kind of confidence that I think you need to survive in this community we live in. That is amazing. And did you know that you were with this amazing group of people or did it just feel like, Oh, I'm hanging out with some crazy buddies and we're doing crazy things. I don't think I knew that there would be history, you know, and a sort of a legacy company. But I certainly knew that the people were a cut above other other casts.

I mean, I really knew you were. We were much more political and I appreciated so I just and we were getting a lot more attention. I just felt that we were onto a good thing. But I didn't think I didn't have a big picture, although I assumed everyone would become intergalactically famous at some point doing something. I just felt we were all on the cusp of.

Something at the time. Did you have more long term thoughts about where you thought or hoped this time at Second City might lead to, or where you might be wanting to go in your career. I think one of the flaws in my characters that I'm not In my personal life. I'm kind of a good planner, but in career terms, I was pretty casual. I think I had this idea that everything was forever and so I didn't have to make important decisions, and I made several mistakes based on that philosophy.

But I think I always felt i'd be an actress of some kind, whether it was film or stage. And you have been an actress. When I first moved to LA I came as an actress. And there were other improv companies floating around the world, and we all knew each other that in San Francisco it was the Committee. In Boston was the Proposition, and we all sort of knew each other.

So when we some of us met up in LA we would meet for just improv classes for fun, and we'd all tell each other while if there's an audition for this, and there's an audition for that. So I went out as an actress to audition, and in one of the early auditions, I remember I was so I walked in the room, you know, holding the sides, and I looked at everybody else that was auditioning, and they were all sort of tall, willowy, thin blondes with straight hair and that look that that early late sixties, early seventies kind of Joni Mitchell hair that, you know. And so that was so not who I was because I had at that point, I had like a perm so I had this huge cascading curls, and I was ethnic looking and I was dark, and I thought, well, this isn't going to I mean, it was a mistake.

It's a hideous mistake. Then I clearly can't be who they were. So I had nothing to lose and I read the script. I thought that was pretty funny, and I went in and I just well, first of all, I was so used to improvising that I didn't realize it's really offensive to other writers when you change their words. When I became a writer producer, it occurred to me that was not cool.

But at the moment when I was in there figuring, I'm not going to get this part anyway, so why don't I just act the way I want to act. I kind of massage the words a little, the dialogue and the pages that they've given me, and I got lots of laughs in the room, and I thought, well, okay, cool, whatever, but I'm not going to get this part. And I did get the part. And then when I did the week of rehearsing and shooting after, I continue to improvise more. I was more discreet about it.

I would go and ask the ad or the director, can I say this slide instead? Or what if we did this? And they were pretty cooperative. At the end of the shoot, the one of the producers came up to me and said, you know, you're really a good You're funny. I mean not just as a performer.

You have good ideas. If you're ever interested in writing scripts for us, we'd entertain you know, reading them. And I thought, well, that's a good thing to know, and that, in fact is what happened. I was between auditions, in between trying to get other gigs and doing you know, day work on whatever series was on the air at the time. I met Brad Buckner, my writing partner, and we came up with an idea to pitch around and it sold as it was.

It was just an episode, it wasn't a series, but it got us on that road. But for most of the first early years of my time in LA I defined myself as an actress, not as a writer, even though what I was doing was writing. In fact, we weren't at the age yet were someone like Rosanne or or Tina Fey, you know, where women could be their own, their own producers. They were the product, they were the brand. I was still in the age where you you know, you had to join someone else's enterprise.

So and I wasn't very entrepreneurial. I just I just thought from gig to gig, but not big career dreams. So I was really happy, you know, because we kept selling scripts and we're. And at the time, so in television this is we're now in late seventies. I think you would go around and pitch an idea to shows right.

There, three writers you know. Now, shows like even our old show was totally staff written. But in those days you were obligated to hire freelance writers. The Union demanded that, so I just and I became those people that would go from show to show and write. And then we got sort of discovered by Norman Lear, and he made a deal with us, a development deal, and we just stayed there and had a lot of luck with him, And not even give you more confidence, but it clearly changed my perspective on am I an actress or I?

You know, am I just doing this writing thing till I have enough money that I can go out and act again, you know? And I think it kept that fantasy alive for a while well. And so with Norman Lear, you did Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. And a spin off call Forever, which only lasted a year, And then we did about three or four pilots, and one of them came a series, Highcliffe Manor. But it had a tragic sort of trajectory.

It was design as a like Mary Hartman, as a late night but network strip show, so it'd be on five nights a week, but at night, late past primetime, so it could have different standard rules. NBC decided they wanted to put it out once a week smack dab in primetime. Soap had just come on. Soap was huge and big, and there was a similarity in tone diluted. Once you diluted it, you ruined it.

So we only had the you know, about eight episodes, I think, and then that was it. And I was in a hideous car accident that really almost killed me, and so I missed one of the episodes. But I was so crazy, I said, well, I put a neck brace on, I'll wear a scarf over it. I'm gonna I'm gonna finish the series. But you know, I really wasn't in fighting shape.

I wasn't ready to like go to the network and fight for the show or do any of those things that you do when when you know more network savvy, I would say the wrong thing is to everybody about it. You know, I just assumed what I had to say was interesting to them, that they wanted to hear my perspective. Since Brad and I were running the thing, surely our opinion meant something. Yeah, you would think that that would make sense. That's always the case.

Sometimes people were enchanted by it, but there were plenty of people who were not enchanted. So how did the idea for Scarecromasis King come about? I don't remember which one of us thought of it or if it was a moment and insight, but I know we were. We went into CBS to pitch several ideas. They had wanted to take a meeting with us about some ideas, and we had I had several half hour ideas because half hour was our milieu.

But we did have a couple of one hour ideas. And there were the usual lot of people in the room, you know, the head of development, County Development, and then his underlings, and they were all taking notes, and so we pitched a couple of ideas that we were really hot and they were kind of eh, not so much. And then to not waste the opportunity to be in the room, we sort of pitched this idea of Scarecrow Missus King hour an hour. I think we pitched it as an hour, but nobody was in. We left the room was very congenial.

Our agent call and said, no, they're not really interested, so come back in another day with something else. And then several months later, maybe six months later, we got a phone call. CBS had switched positions and the person who had been in charge of comedy development had either been promoted or had left. I can't remember. And one of the people who had been silently in the room listening to the pitches had now been promoted to head of development and Carlo Singer, and she had loved the scarecrow pitch from day one her first outing as head of the department.

She wanted to develop the thing. She wanted to develop right away and make her mark. So she wanted us to come back, and she said, let's buy it, and I want to do it. I don't or so that's how it it sort of happened. What were you trying to do with that show?

Well, it wasn't primarily a political statement, but certainly from an aware point of view, we thought television could could use a little different perspective, and things were starting to happen anyway, you know, things like Remington Steele and all that, and we just felt like we could turn it on its head the traditional you know, girl, We actually saw it as a funny situation. We knew it was going to be an hour show and there would have to be action and adventure in bullets, but we also thought we could make a good dynamic between this guy and this woman, and especially since she was basically a civilian with no skills except you know, typing maybe and making lunch for her kids. And we said we wanted to see how her personality would emerge.

So but it wasn't a political statement for us. I mean, I would be disingenuous, and I said, you know, we were on the march. It really just appealed to us as having a lot of comic possibilities. It was sort of the time like we were noticing now as we were looking at Remington and we're looking at Moonlighting and we're looking at Scarecrow, like there was something happening right, Like everybody was sort of exploring this sort of gender dynamic in this particular way that just felt like television at the time. But I think now that we're looking back at it, it feels like people were trying to explore sort of different dynamics in gender relationships to a degree.

You know, it was in the zeitgeist. I mean it was there. I don't think it was an organized movement, but it certainly anyone who was thinking would would say it's time to, you know, move the show down the road a little and we can do better. So and I think all of us fed each other, you know, we learned from each other and saw other things and TV. So, you know, Moonlighting was much more sophisticated in terms of its familiar than Scarecrow, which was really much more main stream you know, mom, suburban mom, kids.

You know. I think if we'd been on the show longer and stayed longer, would have of its own momentum become This is probably not the right word I would say. I was going to say darker, but I think it would have certainly become more complicated. Yeah, and so all right, So so you have the pilot, and then how did Kate Jackson get involved? I assume she was the first person to get involved, or did you start looking for other actress.

She had the same agent as we did, and they saw this as an opportunity to show and back in those days, get a package feet and we were very They suggested, what do you think about this? And we said, well, that's a pretty good idea and she probably can do this. And I think we might have been a little worried about our comedy shops. Except most of Kate of not Kate, but Amanda King's stuff was reactive. The reaction is hard to do.

You have to really have timing and you know, we do only seen that Charlie's stuff, Charlie's Angels, so we had some questions. CBS loved the idea, which you know, was their store. They can buy whatever they want. And so we met with Kate and she was very engaging, very bright. She had a really good energy thing going and so we just I can't remember there ever been me in the controversy.

We just said, yeah, let's go for it. Well, it's all so excited, right. She was a she was a huge star, proven edity, wanted to do it, didn't have a lot of script notes, didn't want to change a lot of which you know, is unusual when when a performer of her her stature comes in, usually they want to they asked for certain things to be different. She didn't. So we were to school the big The hard part was getting the least sets in character.

We really had to find someone who was a leading man but was really funny. And you know, this really was before Renminton Seel and before Magnum, where those guys were reasonally much straighter, they were much more earnest, and we wanted a guy who could be could be frustrated and charming and ironic Cass Bruce at the very end. I mean I think we saw finds. I mean, we still saw so many people. It was hard, and the network has some people they really wanted us to see and I don't remember who, but they just weren't right or we felt they weren't right.

And then somehow Bruce I can't remember if someone brought up it's his name, but it was literally the Saturday before we were going to start shooting, and he was just really good. He nailed it in the room. That's so great because the pairing is really special. It really does feel like it's one of the things that's kept the show so beloved for so long. Is there something about their chemistry on screen that feels really unique and.

You can't you can't to make that happen. You know, it either happens or it doesn't. And so I did read a draft of the script where Amanda King was married. Is that an early draft? No, she Dean was always going to be this invisible guy.

I'm trying to think of any any incarnation, but I know we absolutely pitched her as a single mom, a mom who had to face the world with her mother basically. Alone watching the show. The first time as a kid. My mom was a divorced mother of two and and she worked for CDC, So she worked for the federal government and she had this like amazing day job where she was a micrologist kind of you know, trying to save lives and and then you know, came home and you know, yelled at us to clean our room. So there was something about that that really did resonate with me at the time because I was like, Oh, she's she wants to be a spy and a mom.

Like I think that was I knew that was unique in my in other parents that I saw, and and it felt to me it was one of the things that first struck me about the show. I think that's probably really probably why they Carla at the CBS bought it. I mean, I know she was very impressed with that component, that this woman would be so out of her league and yet so capable. So when did Beverly Garland come in? Because what's interesting, we were just watching Remington because we're gonna go to that show next, and she's Laura Holt's mom in Remington.

In a couple of episodes, Beverly Garden plays Laura Holt's mom, and so we're watching it and we're like, oh my god, was that her audition? Like did they just go she's really good at playing moms, let's get her in. I think she was in the pilot we had it. I don't. I think she may have auditioned.

She was great, and of course I knewho she was because I'd seen her on TV a lot. So she was also enormously professional. It was just so great to have her there as a steadying personality, no drama, no nothing. She just knew the gig, you know. And uh, days when Beverly worked were always good days.

But I think she we had just a regular We had to We did have to audition her. We were sort of you know, there is a thing in Hollywood that and more so now than when I was starting. When you're super famous or at least have a track record, you don't audition, you know, you just say, okay, how about you know, civil Cheherd for this. But we really felt we had to see people. We thought, you know, if Bruce was willing to read for the part, surely everybody else would be willing to read.

And we got some resistance from some people, but not from her. She was more than happy to come in and read, and she was terrific. It's really again another dynamic that that I think is just incredibly fun in the show, and it's nice to sort of have that. And and then I'm also just curious about, like Martha Smith, who's gonna she's actually gonna come on the show and talk about Francine and mel Stewart and how they got cast. And then I have another question about Francine.

Well, I don't remember all of this, except Francine came in and read, and she was a nice princess, which is exactly what we wanted her to be, you know, poised and just unflappable, whereas Kate was, you know, multitasking and balancing and making peanut butter sandwiches and you know, trying to fix her kids a broken bike or whatever, and scattered but really capable. But Francine was never ruffled and someone that you think Kate might be jealous of if she saw her as just a or admire in a ways that I can never be like that woman so perfectly quaffed, I mean, Francine was always perfectly quaff and she was really good. I mean, everybody we cast we liked, so it wasn't like we had to settle, you know.

And we definitely wanted a person of color in the cast and the main cast, which I don't think was as common back then, and but we met no resistance with that. But that was definitely part of the plan, so that when I'm speaking now about Mel, not about Fancine, we got lucky with everybody. I just wondered when you were talking earlier about how back at that time there were shows instead of having more writers on staff they had they worked with a lot of freelancers. To what degree were there women that were out there like you that were also writing or submitting scripts to shows. I didn't feel as much of an imbalance as there may have been.

I don't know if we just got We just we would read sample scripts of people and if they were good, we'd call them in the meet. And many of them were women, so I didn't we were good writers, so I didn't feel there was a lot of imbalanced But of course, now looking at it from a less narcissistic perspective, I was the only really well, we had one other one writer, Patricia Green, on the show, but it was you know, it was a It was accepted even without knowing it that there was. Certainly it was more of a masculine world at that time, even though there were the woman who launched Scarecrow was a woman, the executive was a woman at the CBS. So and also I would have to say that in Second City, the tradition had always been and for many years stayed that tradition that in a company of seven people, five were men and two were women, and that was unviolable.

It's only changed, I think in the last ten or fifteen years. So I was sort of used to that. The mathematics of that. What kind of guidance were you giving writers at that point about or were you giving any about what you're looking for in terms of stories for Amanda and Lee and the rest of the show. But we didn't have an over an arc, you know, a seasonal arc the way you would see on a show like X Files.

But we did have the sense, not unlike moon Lighting or even a can Seal, that there would have to be a blossoming of their relationship. And so that was something we always said that the constant will be, there will be challenges to there'll be the caper of the week, there will be that, and that'll be done in a week. But the overarching story of who they are and how they grow as a professional couple and maybe a personal couple should always be in your mind. And so when you have the opportunity to exploit that in a script, that should be a runner. But it was certainly the emphasis was on come in and pitch a good caper, you know.

I also like that the way that through the course of this each season, the season in particular, that Amanda became began to see that she had a certain facility for this and and something that agency, Yeah, exactly, and she was kind of pushing for that I can do things, I'm willing to try things I want to be trained, which I thought was really great as well. So I mean, uh yeah, that's part of the ongoing evolution that we wanted to see. And you know, as a writer, you you may have some plans in your head, but your most fun comes when you surprise yourself when a story actually takes a turn you didn't expect. While you're write it, you think, oh, well, instead of going this way, what if I did this instead, and would this further another element deepen the characters somehow, and so that would happened less and less to man.

These things happen in a controlled world like fast TV writing. But once in a while you find you take a moment and you're and you're in another another path and you know it pays off. So that's part of the fun of writing, too well. I want to I want to talk about Martha Smith for a minute. We were sort of arranging for her to come on the show and she sort of mentioned something, she said that you created the freant scene.

Was the friend scene she liked the most. The friend thing that you guys worked on, I think in creating the show was the friend scene that I think she felt maybe later and we'll find out when we talked to her, kind of drifted somewhere else. And so I'm I'm really curious because the other thing that was nice to see is even though there was a there was sort of a snark between them and they were they were different, it was also this very unique relationship that was started and I thought was, you know, had a lot of possibility, the Franccee Amanda relationship. Neither one of us wanted to do the traditional women rivals thing, which we thought was old school and sort of not useful and counterproductive and corny.

So we wanted someone that would start out being who she was and really never lose that in franc semness, But as you saw more of her and she was allowed to develop over time, there would be a deepening and there'd be more to her that would be less snarky and more I mean witty, but you know, a certain level of humanity and compassion and all the the things that we like about people, and that she and Kate would appreciate each other and appreciate each other's differences and not it reduces women when you have to make them rivals, as when they can both be capable colleagues, even though one may have one strength and one may have a different strength. And so I think we never had a manifesto put out.

But the way we write is to develop people to be the best they can be, and that would have had we stayed with the show, I think we would have absolutely evolved it, I think in a little more. And I did not continue watching Scarecrow in large after we left, but I think we would have been a little I like to think it would have been a more complicated relationship and less easily defined. The way it sort of was sort of careful, and I think even in the third year, I think didn't a guide the guy. Right the third year, Anita Bartlett took over when we left, but she was only I think for a year. She was on for the end of season one, and then season two and then three and four were run by men.

All right, all right, and all right, so we're going to come back. We're gonna take a little break. We're gonna come back. We're going to ask some more questions. All right, Sharon, welcome back.

There you go. We haven't a suet. Genie ross Lemming tell us about ndy department. Juanita's kind of, you know, feisty, and I mean she was, you know, I like Jandia Bartlett's vibe. I don't know what went on creatively under her regime, who else was working with her, and how you know, how she was accepted by Kate or anything, but I do know that I think France scene, what little I saw was under exploited in a way and diluted from what I would have done had Brad and I hung around.

So all right, well let's talk about it, you know. We were. I can tell you that we were young and excited and inexperienced when we got this gig. And as I've told you before, I always thought everything's possible, and let's just all get together and talk about it and we'll come up with the best answer. But not everybody sees the world that way.

And I'm sure there were things that I was disappointed in, and Brad was disappointed in, and Kate was disappointed in, and Bruce was disappointed. Everybody gets a little disappointed. It just it stopped being as much fun as it we felt in our youth it was supposed to be, and we were willing to work around the clock. It wasn't that we were, you know, malingering and wanting to go to you know, happy hour at some club and you know call it a day or go play tennis. When things became a little more complicated and a little abusive, perhaps we just felt this isn't healthy for us, and we you know, now, looking back at it now, I think we should have stayed and fought for our position.

But I just felt, well, there's always something else better, and I don't need to be unhappy. You know, being happy is really a very important part of life, and particularly in this industry and the industry that you're in. I think it's interesting when people make healthy decisions for themselves, even if it may not be like, oh I can five with this. And I don't think you know how to fight when you're in your twenties and thirties the same way you do when you're older. I certainly didn't.

There was no paradigm for me and proper behavior. I just thought, well, I'll be clear, and Brad'll be clear, and we'll be honest. And there were just so many forces, there were so much mistake. When the show premiered, it was like the highest rating of any premiere that Warner Brothers had and like you know, forever, so everyone was really excited. But with that excitement, some people became, I think, fearful of losing that peak and became not confident in what got them to that moment and started to rethink everything.

And when you start rethinking your instincts, I think you can do more damage than good. You should go with what works and not say, oh no, no, it was a mistake that it worked, or it was just black magic, you know what I mean. I think there was a lack of faith in well, on a deeper level, I'm sure it's lack of self confidence, but I think you can lay it at anyone else's feet. You could say, oh, if you had been a better tennis coach, I would have won Wimbledon. If the ball maker had made a better ball, I would have had a better chance.

So there was a lot of if numbers wobbled, there was a lot of anxiety among some people. And constancy is the most important thing in a creative enterprise. You have to have faith in the team. You just can't not. That'll undermine you faster than you know, fan fickleness or anything.

So we were all, I mean Brad and I were really young, really inexperience, and over our heads in terms of the politics of what makes the show work. We just thought, well, if the show works, everyone's going to want it to keep working. And it turns out that's not always true. So it was. It was difficult, but I certainly I learned a lesson.

And yet you created such a dynamic show. But I think it actually continues to steer in a direction. I mean, how much of the first season were you in do you remember? I think we did the first, my memory was we did the whole first season, but it may have been only the first twelve episodes. And I think in those days we did twenty three episodes.

Maybe, yeah, crazy crazy amount of episodes, And. So I think we did through the Hey, we did the first twelve, I think, And it was just I mean, I'm not saying it was easy to leave, but you know, in my mind and Brad's mind, we thought, well, the shows that that we sold and that we produced is being changed. It's not the same show. So if people are fighting for the things that we don't believe in, what are we gonna What are we gonna do? I mean, you know, I can't put my name is something that I don't like, and uh, you know that's of course really stupid, because I'm sure there would have been a better way to see that.

But you know, and there's so many levels of power that you're you're when you're that young and naive. I mean, I didn't think of myself as iive, but you know, there's the studio level of power, there's a network level of power, there's the talent level of power, and then there's the agency. So it was just so tiring to have to navigate. It took away from the writing and the thinking. You know, you can't really think if you're always under under see you feel under siege.

It's hard to uh be clear about what you're doing. And you know, we made great friends on that show. There were great people the studio and that I like, and there are people that the network, and there were a lot of really good moments. But there were some issues that I just think challenged us in ways we weren't ready to be challenged. And I might and our only ability, I don't think it was the correct choice, but our only ability was to remove ourselves from what we considered too big a challenge.

And then one Nida Bartlett came in and so you did you work with Bernie the Bartlett or you were just like, here you go. Through the keys. Yeah, she's a veteran, she'd been around one hundred years longer than us. She was tougher than us. She wouldn't be bothered.

I felt pretty sure she'd triumph. That she would or she'd get fed up and leave, which I think happened, and she was so well, Yeah, we just went off and just started developing other stuff and doing other gigs. And you know, we didn't feel I don't know that anyone could have stayed in that situation longer than we did and survived. Frankly, did you know? Because the show has has kept a fan base, right, Scarecrow Missus King has a very passionate fan base in ways that other shows of the nineteen eighties don't necessarily have.

Although I think everybody love us eighties TV, which is why we're doing a podcast about female driven eighties TV. But it seems it has resonated. It's still like in you know, over the pandemic, people found it again and there's a very strong fan base. I'm curious how you feel about that, having created a show and then you know, walked away from it, and then but you created it. And well, you know, I walk.

When you walk away from something, I think something happens in your brain. You click it off and you don't. I mean, you can either nurture, regret or ill will or whatever. Which didn't seem to be an idea for us. We didn't want to.

We just had other ideas we wanted to develop. So I'm always surprised when I meet someone who says, oh my god, Scarecrow and miss Kidding, my favorite whatever I used to watch with my mother, blah blah. You know, it surprises me. It takes me a minute to absorb that because it was so early on and it was the first show, you know, major network show we'd sold, and so early on in my career that I just I just filed it away, you know, as a step towards other things. And there's other things I remember more completely because they're more current in my brain and I have more I have more tools to appreciate them than I did Scarecrow.

I mean, but you know, looking back on it, obviously I would have liked it to have turned out better. I mean I would have had you know, longevity would have meant that we could have developed more between Kate and Bruce, more between Francine. When you create star character templates, you have in mind you're going to develop more than what you've sold. You know, what they are in the pilot is not who they're going to become, So that would have been nice. But I don't know, I just can't.

I think I've just decided to appreciate what it did give us and not regret what we didn't get. I mean, you've had an incredible career, and you've worked on huge, huge, huge shows Supernatural and Lois and Clark. You have the same writing partner that you had when you started. You've been married to producer Robert Singer for a long time, and that's really impressive to have that in an industry like Hollywood. And I'm curious if you ever think about that or if it's been a very conscious effort to have that.

I think I couldn't imagine doing all this without Brad because we are in each other, We have each other's backs, and you need that more than anything. So for me, there was never a well, I just and first of all, he said, we have a really good relationship. So it's not a stormy relationship. It's not it's not uneasy. He has a very solid personal life with his wife and children, so it's not it's not a contest.

There's not a lot of contention in our lives. But I think we really know that we got lucky when we met each other, that we had such an instant synergy that that's kept us afloat. You know, so when someone is really to at least you know Brad's going to be in your corner and vice versa. If I have a bad meeting with someone, or a bad phone call, or a fight with an actor or an actress or anybody a stuntman, you know, if I just know that when no one understands me, Brad does. And so that is a really important element in I suppose whatever success I have.

My relationship with my husband is, like all relationships, more complicated and more story than my relationship with Brad, because you know, it's everything. It's got work, it's got romance, it's got survival, it's got family, it's got finances, it's got policy. You know, it's in everything relationship. So they're more fronts to take care of in a personal relationship than in a work relationship. But you know, we just are conscious.

We just work on it, you know. I mean it's not always great. You know, there's bad things where we don't talk to each other, but you know, that's everybody. It's you know, whether he was an accountant and I were a neurosurgeon, that would happen. I'm sure so, But I think probably the what sanity I do have, and it's not great, but what santitay I do have is more, I think because Brad and I are so loyal to each other and comfortable with each other's opinions.

I don't believe that if I write something that he doesn't think works in a scene, if after the conversation we have over it, I don't question his motive for wanting to change something. I always think it's for the best for the scene. I don't always agree, nor does he, but I never doubt his how straightforward he is, you know, and that's really important to know that someone in this business, which is very fickle, who is not situationally your friend, but eternally your friend. You know, we just laugh all the time when we're together, Brad and I and I mean, even when things are horrific, somehow we find the funny thing in that and we just get there's a sort of relief system we have. I guess that just makes it bearable.

So, because you know, it's it's really hard to maintain anything in this business. I'm curious in terms of you know, basically women in television, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, what your perception of what has happened over the last since the eighties. Well, you know, Lewis and Clark was maybe the end of that kind of epic in a way, that period, and it had some really wonderful ingredients to it. But Lewis and Clark was definitely still old school screwball comedy kind of men and women. You know, it was a little more promiscuous.

People did sleep together obviously, I don't know, you know, in the Scarecrow days on CBS at eight o'clock, it would have been you know, implied, but it wouldn't have been you know, you wouldn't have people waking up on the same bed. We had a not a lot of women, and I don't think we had any female director. I directed Lewis and Clark, but I don't think there was anyone else. And I had an inside, you know, with my shows, so you know, and I had a lot of help. I don't know that I have a metrics to employ to tell you about the shift, because I think the shift into a female engagement and authority is more subtle than I can identify as like, oh, it happened, then, you know what I mean.

It just seems to be something since I've been living inside it, It's just always been happening. As I got better and stronger, more opportunities were throwing my way. I suppose I had an advantage because I had already a history in the community. But for new people starting out, you know, there weren't all those programs yet, like writers diversity programs that the studios run now. It certainly helped that really dynamic powerful women writers LIKEDINGA.

Fay became or Amy Poehler became producers. I mean, that's a big step and that would have been what a how many years ago helped? When did thirty Rock start? I mean two thousand, two thousands, I think so. I mean the two thousands of obviously been beneficial.

I know that in Supernatural, towards the end of the run, we were and we started using women directors years before, but we really increased our women director schedule, and you know, it worked. It wasn't like surprise that it would be a good idea. But you have to have a pool to draw from. What is a feminist show to you or a female driven show, and what are the components of that that you feel are necessary to sort of take that batch. Well, you know, I don't write generally or haven't written a from an ideological posture, so I don't define things as feminists or I really just wanted this to be a story, not a mission statement, but a story about one woman's emergence from a phase of her life that was no longer viable and how she turned it into something satisfying.

And so just from a personal, non political statement, it was about her journey through disappointment and dissatisfaction. And we never got to develop what happened with her in Dean and why didn't work, But we we always saw it through more intimate eyes than culturalize and always knowing that it would have obviously cultural resonance. But it wasn't a mission statement about it's time for women to get up and to do more. Personally, I think it would be doing a disservice to women. Like in my own life, it's very hard when I hear women say, you know, you can have everything.

You can have it all. You can be a mother, you can be a neurosurgeon, you can be a sex goddess, you can be a great cook and you'll be happy. It's more, there are surges where some of those things are possible sometimes and then they become more they received a little and other things emerge in your life. I think for a woman who can't live up to all those opportunities. I think the woman a woman should have those opportunities, but too if she doesn't succeed at all for colum of motherhood, career, romance, she'll feel less and that she'll feel she will have failed the call that her sisters gave to her, you know, and I don't want women to feel well.

I had all this. And I couldn't make it work. I still got divorced, or my kids still not like me, or my son doesn't want to be a doctor, he wants to be a roller skater. I just felt it was a show. I wanted to show a woman who could make opportunities for herself, that the world would allow her to make opportunities, and she would be ingenius enough if the world gave her obstacles to make those to make her own opportunities that could be then expanded into a cultural program.

But I really thought of it as a woman's story because I didn't want anyone to be to carry the burden of having to be, you know, joan of arc for everybody else, because you can feel really bad about yourself if you don't have children, if you don't have a good job, if your husband doesn't love you and want only you in his life. You know, if when I hear everyone says you can have it all, nobody can have it all. You should at least have the opportunity to try to have it all. But if you don't have it all, you shouldn't feel less because not everybody has Kardashian money. Not everybody you know where they can have their own nanny and their own plane and they can go off to Barbados and at the same time come back to la and run for mayor.

You know, it's just it's an unfair there's no equivalency in those lives. I know, I'm all over the place on this, but it kind of I felt like we feel like something as we do, a disservice to women when we say you can have it all, there's nothing holding you back. Well, it's true, you may have the talent to do everything, but circumstances may not permit you at the same time to do everything. But you shouldn't be guaranteed at least the opportunity to struggle and fail, because I've had as many failures as I have a lot of failures, and I've learned a lot from them. Notice any of that makes sense, It does, It makes a lot of sense.

I completely agree with you. I think what you know, it's sort of what I mean. I think women should have the opportunity to sort of do what they want to do, which seems like it doesn't mean having at all. To me, like it means I can decide for myself what I want my life, what I want to try to achieve, and that that again isn't really a political statement, and yet still continues to be a political statement, you know, and I agree as well. I mean, to me, feminism has always been about being able to make the choice.

If your choices. You want to stay home, you don't want to have a career, that's fine, your choices you don't want to have kids, and you want to have a career, that's fine. If something in between, that's fine too. But you should have the ability to choose what that path is and not be forced into something that doesn't fit you. And that's why I think it's hard a little bit for me, Dane.

I mean for me, I always resist categories, and so I think I've always resisted any category except a king. I'm okay with activists or abolitionists. Those two categories I'm okay with. But my feminism is a little more idiosyncratic than I think the norm, justin by what I've said. I also think the story, I'm glad that Scarecrow is embraced by and fulfilled feminist standards.

But the idea when we wrote it was really one woman's transition through different moments in a complicated life. Yes, which I think is what makes it feminist. Or again and again, I know feminist is a loaded word, right, It's a loaded word for my generation. It's a loaded word for generations above and below me and so, but I use it. So I use it to basically be female driven.

Absolutely a female driven story. It had to be written from a female's perspective, from multiple female perspectives, and so that I am raised totally. And I'm not sure if I feel that way about I'm not sure how I feel about you know, I love Moonlighting as a show. I just loved it, but I'm not sure for me it was almost more his show. Yeah, And I think and Remington actually starts because Pierce Brosnan is such a discovery that it actually starts to veer away from her a lot.

But then but then it fears back. And it's wonderful. I mean, she's wonderful, isn't it. But he has like a secret, there's a thing about him that's unfinished, you know, which just draws you more into his aura. But I will say they sort of start to write back in to try to to give her stories too.

But anyway, this isn't Brimington yet. We're not there yet. But but I agree, like it's fascinating. And again we're also talking about these are these are only like male female gender explorations, which now also feels pretty quaint. I'm curious about some fond memories and just like memorable moments from the you know, the beginning of Scarecrow, and like some of like oh it was really great when this happened, or it was really terrible when this happened.

It was great. We had a great pilot experience. Rod Holcomb was a supreme director. Kate was great in the pilot. She was at her peak of generosity and willing to do I mean, she was really lovely.

We had fun in Washington, d C. Where we had to go to shoote. It's a beautiful pilot. It's really, I'm very proud of it. But I have to tell you, you know, we shouted as if it was aut of it.

It was like a nine thousand degrees. So that Bruce, who was wearing suits, we had to have like four suits available. Every time we finished a shot, we had to take off his shirt and his jacket of finished when we were outside, and then dry him off and put on a new shirt and jacket. But he was probably miserable. But the city looked beautiful and she was delightful.

He was delightful. It was like a field trip. We all everybody got along and we had a great time. So that's a wonderful memory because pilots can be very fraught with oh my god, everything's on the line. We don't do it, We're never gonna have this location again.

We have to do this scene right. And everybody just rose and they brought their best game, you know, So it was that was a lovely memory. And we all got really drunk at night after we've done shooting, and I remember having from a champagne at a bar and having to go spend the night because the room was moving, standing up in the shower for about four hours, just because it was anyway I could not get sick, so that was great. There was an injury, like so Kate Jackson gets injured. And I did think it was very clever that, like she's wearing basically a footcast in one of the episodes, and it felt so very much in character.

She's like I heard it slide teaching the kids how to slide into home, and it just felt it really sort of I think one of the few times I've seen that happen and you're like, oh, this is totally working for the character, even though it might have been a nightmare. If she were playing Queen Elizabeth or something, it would not have worked. But I have to say it, Yeah, we got lucky. I mean because and she's a real jock, so she's not she's tough, and she could admit hurt her to stand up even on that thing. So it was hard for her to do those scenes.

But she you know, she didn't she didn't ask for special you know, we had a like wheeler across the room, so or we had a double. We had to find a body devil who could walk across the room because she really couldn't walk, and then have her pick her up on the other side having arrived, and we were lucky to find someone who was sort of sort of built like Kate. We could do the hair and all that. But it happened so fast. She got hurt on a weekend and we had to do all this, you know, in twenty four hours, find a double, and we range the shooting schedule because at the beginning she couldn't.

I think we had She was odd for about a few days, five days. Maybe it was tough, but she was game. She wasn't like, you know, a baby about it. She said, I'll do it. Just point me, I'll do it.

And it did work with who she was. We haven't really talked about Kate and working with Kate Jackson, and again based on stuff that was happening at the time, there was there was talk that it was difficult, but I also know that that happens with a lot of actors that are the lead of a show. Well, she was very complicated. She I'm sure she felt an enormous amount of personal responsibility to breaking free from the trio, you know, the cultural phenomenon that was Charlie's Angels, and I'm sure she felt the pressure of carrying the weight of this show. I'm sure she saw it as her gig.

Any rejection would be a rejection of her. That of course wasn't the case, but I could totally see why that would affect her, and that's so I'm sure it was difficult for her. The kids are really sweet in this show, and they come off really well, and yet they also don't feel like Hollywood kids in a lot of ways. Right. They don't.

We got lucky. I mean they didn't. They felt like they weren't precocious or presenting themselves. They just felt like we caught them in life sort of. That's at least that's what I tell myself if I felt like, oh gee, I don't feel like I'm watching a you know, a precocious child actor.

I just feel like I'm watching some kids stumble through something. Yeah, and it was a really sweet part of the show. I really appreciated the balance between basically working home and I. Think she was very good at that. She had a good vibe with them on camera.

She portrayed that woman very that that reality. I thought she covered really well. Fans are going to kill us if we don't talk a little bit about supernatural, even though that's not a female driven eight TV show. It's super famous and popular and a force of phenomenon. So how was working on Supernatural?

It was the greatest experience. It was totally brilliant. It was, and I would like to say that while it is definitely the story of two brothers, we introduced a lot of serious and long term women characters to that show. Rowena the Witch, and Amara, who was equal in the in the mythology, she was God's equal, his sister, his, his twin his. So we had a lot of women characters and never had a problem and no one ever said you can't have people liked it.

We're at the age now, I think in television where I mean people know that boys and girls can play together and it's just good. Clearly the perspective is the perspective of this family. But we bring back the boy's mother and see her life revealed a little more, uh and why because she was just sort of a myth in the early years of the show. Just her death was all we ever knew about. We didn't really know about her life.

We bring her back, so there is a female component to the to the casting. But in terms of selfishly, it was just a great experience. The actors were all wonderful as people, I mean not just not only as performers. The crew was fantastic. Our cinematographer, Surgeon Le Ducier was was just I mean, this stuff looked great.

You know. He was a brilliant lighter. And I don't know, we just had a great time. You know, Vancouver is a great city, so we we had it was it was really a work of It was a team effort. Everybody worked really really hard, and I'm like, everybody were sorry, but we got tired, you know, we just couldn't do anymore.

We sort of asked all our guests these week three questions, besides Scarecrow, Miss King, what was the eighties ladies driven television show that resonated with you at the time. I don't watch a lot of tele I didn't watch a lot of telema television back in those days. I was either writing or working or dreaming up my idea for the next show, So I kind of I kind of stayed away from television. But I you know, I know we've discussed the degrees to which these shows are ladies driven. I was a fan of one Lighting, and I was a fan of Reaving to steal and I'm not sure, and I wasn't a fan of those other I think they were eighties shows.

What was that show that Western with Barbara Stanwick, Big Valley or some things? It was her place. I kind of liked the idea that this stately woman had three grown sons and sort of and she took in the son of her not her physical song but her husband's lover's son. I guess I kind of liked that as a I liked her as a woman. I thought Barbara Stanwick was really stand up.

I wasn't a fan of the show, but I liked her. Yeah, And that was I felt, even though it was a cowboys show and there were a lot of guys and horses, she had the authority in that show, and you felt that even if she wasn't in every scene, and if she wasn't, I really liked But this is earlier. I was just coming up really, when I was at Norman's place at Tandem, I loved I thought Maude it was good. Well. I liked in the early days talk about complicated Roseanne Ye.

It was hugely groundbreaking. And I loved her stand up back. I thought she was great, and I thought she was really dangerously unpredictable, but at the time it totally went with my worldview. I thought, yeah, that's right. So yeah, I guess mod I mean not mod.

Roseanne was something that I really dug. No, it's a hugely groundbreaking show and it did have that really like huge raw energy in some ways because of her. But I also really loved the kids. There were two, you know, the girls on the show really got to do a lot, all right, And so our other question is, are there what are your favorite female driven TV shows now that are out? Do you watch any television?

Well, I'll tell you what I watched and we'll see if if any of them I watch when it comes on The Crown, which is female driven, but it's also it's the Empire, so there's a lot of vibe there. Uh. I think if there's anything new I've seen that you know this is not female well, if it's talking about airtime, I think, even though my heart goes out to the character of Ted Lasso, the women have keep getting more and more meat, and so I love that show. I love the woman, you know, the team owner, and I love Temple. Yes.

Yeah, they're great, They're amazing. And they're really in so many ways. They their perspective does drive a lot of what happens. While the guys are spinning out of control or having problems, the women somehow manage to move the move the act down the road. So I kind of like that show.

I don't think if that counts. Well that's there are strong female roles in there. I would definitely say that. If I look at you know, I also liked, well, this is not a long time series, but I don't know if you saw un Orthodox. I did not, but I heard about it.

Well, it's only about four episodes. It's it's so brilliant and it's complete. I mean, there are men in it, but it is a woman's journey and of liberation and validation. It's eloquent and brilliantly acted by an Israeli actress, Shira has So I recommend you see that. I also love Stitzel.

The women over the three seasons that it ran emerged more and more. But it's clearly the story of a man and his son, but it's the whole family. What are you watching, Well, we've been watching Abbot Elementary, which I'm really excited about, and they're doing this thing now instead of just dropping everything, you have to like wait week to week, which has been very frustrating to my concept. I don't understand. It's so eighties.

I'm watching Missus Maisel. I also just recently finished watching On the Other Side of the Spectrum Reacher, which was great. Not a female driven chow at all, and we've been watching that. Rich is a huge fan. Not at all.

I mean, this is outside of the things I'm watching for the podcast. But I am still watching Grey's Anatomy. I am one of those people who is still watching Grey's Anatomy. I watched it last week for a while, and I liked it because you know, it's addictive. I always ask myself that when they're all together, like watching a surgery or in the hall talk who's running in the hospital.

All the leads are in the same room something, and you know, I'm sure their gunshot victims in somewhere needing attention, but you know, it's kind of a Hollywood hospital. Is your most sort of action hero television moment that you've experienced in real life, or you can tell me your favorite moment on set. I can tell you my one of my favorite moments. It was very stressful. But it was the first time I directed Lewis and Clark, and it was a big action sequence.

It was it was the first night. It was a night shoot. It was the first night. So I had the whole whatever ten days ahead of me. I had to, you know, keep my sanity for ten days and it's really hard work and I felt, you know, overwhelmed.

And so we were on the back lot at Warner Brothers in Burbank. You guys are all from the neighborhood, so you know what that looks like. I mean, it's the Warner brother studio and we were shooting outside on the street and my husband, who was on a different show, was shooting a night sequence way up the hill at Universal looked Warner Brothers, and we happened to be doing night sequences together action sequences at the same time, and we were sharing the same stunt crew. So even though a lot of the guys were different, the head the sunt director was having to go back and forth between both sets and I felt particularly needy this since I was I was a neophyte. I wanted him with me, but you know, I couldn't quite get pulled that off.

So he was going back and forth. It was night lights were glowing everywhere, and I had a sequence where the the third story window in this building, all the glass was gonna break, and these guys were gonna catapult out verdict, yeah, horizontally, not you know, not fall drop, but somehow or and then PLoP. And everybody swore it could be done. It was gonna work. Fine, fine, fine, And you kind of shoot these things a couple of times because you have to reset and rebuild glass windows and all that.

So I'm there and the guy is not there. He's up with my husband on his set. But I've got I'm covered, I got people right who know more than I do. And you could sometimes hear what was happening the way the sound patterns were. My husband said, you could sort of hear gunshots and explosions, and you could sort of and he could hear mine every once in a while.

So all this odd noise was happening, and I was feel like I was in a dreamscape, you know, it didn't feel real. So I'm under such pressure to not screw this up. It's nighttime, it's a full on movie set that I'm saying words like action, you know, em and I can barely get the words I'm seeing loud. I don't want to upset anybody. I'm terrified, but I say action.

They come out of the window. There's some explosion at Universal at the same time from Bobby set, and so the two things happened. I'm only focusing on what I'm happening, and it works. It's you know, it's fine. The guys fall on mattresses, They're okay.

And I hear later that Bobby who has a full view, Bobby, my husband, has a full view of He can see his set and my set, so he can see what's happening on my set while he's keeping an eye on what he's doing. He said. It was like, so it's really almost more his story. He said, it was like this Hollywood, this cheesy Hollywood story of the couple that like works together and plays together. Because we're both shooting and the star of our of our movie is the stunman who has to go back and forth and tell each one of us what to do and you know, and say action.

And it was like, I mean, there's no big punchline except that I can't explain it. It was like this on Nexus, which I felt was a metaphor for my life at the time, of reality and imagination meeting somehow and both having the same power over me because I was living in this moment. I mean, I had to produce this scene. It had to happen. But I was also kind of worried and interested about what was going on with my husband's life.

He was doing the exact reverse. And I don't know if that makes any sense, but it was such a It just felt like this ought to be in someone else's movie. It felt like it really was in my life. I was part of a bigger movie. You know, you could say it's a metaphor for everybody, but it was so palpably grand to have two big, highly lit, expensive action sequences happening by a couple.

I don't know that was so I always remembered that as a fun thing to be able to tell people. That's a great that's a great story, that's amazing. This has been so great. I've been so excited and to have you on and thank you very much. Please say hi to Martha when you see who I haven't seen in decades.

But she was really a stand up person. She was good. She seems amazing We've really enjoyed our email conversation, and so we're excited. Maybe we're going to try to do a little well, we'll get you all back on at the same time and just let you guys tell stories. Thank you so much for doing this.

I really appreciate it. All right, And today's audiography. We have the Facebook fan site for Scarecromas is King Facebook dot com slash Scarecromas is King, and I want to do a shout out to the SMK fans who are incredibly lovely and helpful folks, especially Jeanette Valary and Talia Johnson and the entire team over the podcast Missus King Chronicles. You guys should check that out. They do a walk through every episode.

It's amazing. They're adorable. It's really fantastic. The books I want to talk about, and again, these are on the website When Women Invented Television by Jennifer K. Armstrong and Ladies of the Evening Women Characters in Primetime Television by Diana M.

Mehan. Anyway, check those out if you want to read more. And the website again is eightiestv Ladies dot Com. That's eight zero s TV Ladies, La d ies dot com, and of course you can follow us on the social media's at Eighties tv Ladies. That's at Eighties tv Ladies.

Let us know if you're liking this podcast, Giving us a shout out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram really helps a lot. We hope you will join us for the next episode where we continue our scarecrow Missus king love because I love it. So please send us your questions and we will ask them. We want to hear from you. We hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century.

Eighties by Stapilar having train, a gutting were going had important, A band pled anything Night Pas