Question: Why was actress Suzanne Sommers, star of the hit TV comedy Three’s Company, fired and shunned from Hollywood?
Well…she wasn’t.
Suzanne Somers had a contentious contract negotiation with ABC that resulted in her role on Three’s Company being reduced while they were trying to get her to drop her demands and then she was fired from the show. While this certainly didn’t help Somers’ early career, it actually hurt the show more because it floundered in her absence, it used two different actors to replace her, and it cost the show tens of millions of dollars in lost syndication value.
From 1981 after leaving the series until 1987, Somers took on a variety of roles and had her first residency in Las Vegas. In late 1986, she signed on to star in her first television series, She’s the Sheriff. Although the series was not a success (it only aired for two seasons), it began to open doors for Somers, leading to her starring in the comedy Step by Step for seven seasons (ironically longer than Three’s Company and also on ABC, the network that had refused to give her a raise a decade earlier). It also led to her becoming a spokesperson for a popular fitness equipment line.
After Step by Step was canceled, Somers co-hosted a reality show called Candid Camera for three years, then spent the rest of her life appearing in various television shows. She even had a ten-year run on the Home Shopping Network selling some of her own clothing and jewelry. Though she didn’t return to network television in a starring role, Somers didn’t have to rummage under the sofa cushions for spare change any time before her death in 2023.
Somers was never “ostracized,” the questioner said.
She was an attractive woman, not particularly talented, but likable, and she was able to bounce back from a brief period of failure to enjoy a series of lucrative career highs over nearly 40 years.
Rest in peace, Suzanne
