Lindsay Lohan has continued to stay in the spotlight thanks to her acting career, which kickstarted as a child actress in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following her successful career as a child actress, she became a teen icon with her work in Mean Girls. After pursuing her music career for a while, she continued to stay in the limelight, be it for personal reasons or her comeback attempts.
Little did she know that jumping from one project to another would affect Bette Midler’s sitcom. The latter recently revealed that her sitcom, Bette, couldn’t really hit the mark, and she believes that the former’s exit contributed to its lack of success
Bette Midler Wished to Sue Lindsay Lohan for Exiting Bette
In a recent appearance on David Duchovny’s Fail Better podcast, Bette Midler reflected on a series of mistakes that affected the 2000 sitcom, Bette from becoming a success.
Among the mistakes, she pointed out that Lindsay Lohan‘s exit after starring in the pilot episode played a significant role in the outcome.
She shared,
“Lindsay Lohan was cast as my daughter in the pilot. Well, after the pilot, Lindsay Lohan decided she didn’t want to do it. Or she had other fish to fry. So, Lindsay Lohan left the building. And I said, well, now what do you do?”
Lohan’s exit catapulted her to face the reality, which she revealed was chaotic. She added,
“And the studio didn’t help me. It was extremely chaotic . . . and if I had been in my right mind, or if I had known that my part of my duties were to stand up and say, ‘This absolutely will not do, I’m going to sue,’ then I would have done that.”
She added,
“But I seem to have been cosseted in some way that I couldn’t get to the writer’s room. I couldn’t speak to the showrunner. I couldn’t make myself clear.”
Lohan’s exit not only pushed the lead star into a corner, but her influence also would have affected its popularity. At the time, the Mean Girls star was newly enjoying The Parent Trap‘s success.
While Midler jokingly thought about suing her on-screen daughter, she knew what was wrong on that show.
Bette Midler Also Put Herself to Blame for Bette‘s Failure
She shared,
“It was the wrong motivation. It was a part of the media I simply did not understand. I watched it. I appreciated it. I enjoyed it, But I didn’t know what it meant to make it.”
She continued,
“I had made theatrical live events. I had made films. I had made variety television shows. I had been on talk shows. But I had never done a situation comedy. I didn’t realize what the pace was. And I didn’t understand what the hierarchy was. And no one bothered to tell me.”
She revealed that she was “kicked to the curb immediately” with no one by her side to guide her in making a project in the Television world.
“I didn’t know what to do about it… I didn’t know that I could have taken charge, that I could have asserted, because I think because I was so terrified of being branded a grandstander.”
She was executive producer of Bette which was canceled after one season. Midler played a version of herself on the show, with Kevin Dunn playing her husband. The show consisted of 18 episodes, two of which went unaired with the show getting canceled after one season.
