Cindy Williams Suddenly Quits ‘Laverne and Shirley’

Cindy Williams’ run on Laverne & Shirley arrived to a seemingly abrupt end in the tumble of 1982, when she left the clearly show two episodes into its eighth season.

Though viewers at residence had noticed Williams’ Shirley Feeney marry Walter Meeney in the eighth-period premiere (building her Shirley Feeney Meeney), it was a startling improvement for just one-half of the show’s titular duo to depart so abruptly.

The improve was just as stunning guiding the scenes, and for superior rationale: In March 1982, Williams received expecting with her daughter, Emily. She coordinated with the clearly show to carry on functioning by way of her being pregnant, recalling on Now in 2015, “I assumed I was going to come back and they’d conceal me powering benches, couches, pillows, and that wasn’t it.”

Alternatively, Williams claimed, the demonstrate experienced her scheduled to operate via her due date that drop, all of which was stipulated in her deal. “When it arrived time for me to indicator my deal for that period … I explained, ‘I cannot indication this,'” Williams told Currently. “And it went again and forth and back and forth, and it just in no way got labored out.”

Look at the Opening Credits to ‘Laverne & Shirley’

The actress chose to wander absent from the sitcom as an alternative of signing what today would be deemed a discriminatory and unrealistic deal. With then-spouse Invoice Hudson, she’d later sue the exhibit for $20 million (the scenario was settled out of court docket for an undisclosed quantity). Williams instructed Currently that soon soon after she remaining Laverne & Shirley she found that additional and a lot more demonstrates had been making nurseries on sets and supplying nannies for their stars.

At the time, celeb media wasn’t what it is right now, and Williams’ decision to leave the collection was still left pretty opaque to the two viewers and folks watchers. Some reviews mentioned that a longstanding feud with costar Penny Marshall led to her determination to go away, whilst others claimed that Williams experienced built outrageous demands during deal negotiations, primary to her remaining fired from the role.

Check out a 2016 Interview With Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall

In fact, while Marshall and Williams’ marriage had grow to be a little bit strained for the reason that Marshall believed Williams’ husband was “a pain in the ass,” Marshall did try out to get her costar to remain on the display, offering to do regardless of what it took to preserve the duo collectively. “I never care, Cin. Lay in mattress the total time and be the most important suffering-in-the-ass pregnant man or woman you have at any time noticed,” Marshall recalled declaring. “I’ll run all over! Just acquire treatment of the dialogue.”

When Williams selected to depart the demonstrate as an alternative, Marshall attempted to connect with her, but forces stored the two from talking. “They would not set me by to her,” Marshall said. “I missed her not currently being there.”

Fans also missed Williams, and the actress’ abrupt departure remaining Marshall in an uncomfortable scenario. “I was heading out in entrance of the [studio] viewers and they explained, ‘What took place with Cindy?’ It was a drag.” At some point, Williams and Marshall reconciled and hung out commonly until Marshall died in 2018.

The way Laverne & Shirley dealt with Williams’ departure on-air was jarring. In the second episode of Season 8 – which aired on Oct. 12, 1982 – issues were seemingly ordinary with the wacky duo, as the pair invested a 7 days in a shop screen right before by some means currently being hypnotized to think they had been chickens each time they read a bell.

View Cindy Williams’ Last Episode of ‘Laverne & Shirley’

In the show’s following episode, however, Shirley was absent, owning disappeared although Laverne and Carmine ended up out at a dance contest. The plot observed that Shirley experienced packed up all her matters and remaining in the space of a few of hrs below the guise of her new spouse being transferred overseas, leaving only a note to say goodbye. It was an ignominious ending to Williams’ prolonged operate on the demonstrate, but 1 that mirrored the weather for performing mothers at the time.

Laverne & Shirley wasn’t renewed at the finish of its eighth season, and the exhibit quietly faded from ABC’s routine right after its year finale in May possibly 1983. In the meantime, Williams ongoing to have a very long and effective acting job, showing up in a wide variety of other TV exhibits and films. In 2017, she produced the memoir Shirley: I Jest!: A Storied Life, which chronicled her lifetime on the traditional sitcom and in other places in Hollywood.