Suzanne Somers, known for playing Chrissy Snow in the groundbreaking ABC sitcom Three’s Company credits John Ritter for creating the series magic.
She recounted how iconic her character became in the world of pop culture, sharing how being fired from the series was one of her biggest regrets.
Chemistry was ‘magical’ between Suzanne Somers and John Ritter
“It was a magical time in the television era,” she said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. “I think there was a chemistry between Suzanne Sommers and John Ritter that was magical. And Joyce Dewitt didn’t enjoy this role, but she was the setup person for Chrissy and Jack to spar.”
“It was easy to understand,” she reflected. “It was simple. I was in Israel and people are saying that they learned English watching Three’s Company. I was with prime minister Netanyahu last spring. And he said, I know all about the books, but I’ve been watching you for 25 years. He said there was one television station in Israel and it was Three’s Company. So it’s been all over the world Chrissy Snow to me, I think of her as different from me. She’s appealing. She’s a woman child.”
Somers added, “She has a circuitous route to logic. She never tells a lie, she’d never steal your husband or boyfriend or girlfriend or anybody. So there’s some people who felt protective of her.”
Suzanne Somers regrets getting fired from ‘Three’s Company’
Somers said she doesn’t have many regrets in life but one. “My only regret was getting fired from Three’s Company,” she said. “I seemed to get fired a whole lot. I asked to be paid what the men were being paid at that time because all the men were making 10 to 15 times more than I was on lesser shows.”
“Including John was making so much more money than me,” she remarked. “So when my contract was up, we went to the producers and they wanted to put a stop to Laverne And Shirley. And so they had decided before I even walked into that lawyer’s meeting that we have to stop this. So we take the biggest female star on television and fire her to stop all the other actresses from having the audacity.”
This month marks the 45th anniversary of #ThreesCompany’s first episode starring John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and an unknown girl from San Bruno, California! #TBT It was 1977 and I had no idea at the time… full post: https://t.co/2oaGTyO55N pic.twitter.com/xnAmxhXO4m
— Suzanne Somers (@SuzanneSomers) March 24, 2022
“So I was so sad to be fired from that show because I loved the job, but I was particularly sad that I didn’t get to finish the character of Chrissy Snow,” she said. “I had so much more I was going to do with her and have her grow and become something that no one would ever forget. But maybe it was enough. Maybe they’ll never forget her. Maybe it was enough.”
“And clearly had I stayed on that show, I would have continued doing sitcoms, but I wouldn’t have done all these other things, which I think are pretty valuable. So in the big picture from 350 feet, with perspective, I think it’s all gone as it should have,” she concluded.
Is a ‘Three’s Company’ revival possible?
Somers mused about a return to the hit series, even though Ritter died in 2003. She considered a new Three’s Company using a hologram for Ritter and his son in real life playing Jack and Chrissy’s son.
“I had suggested a show where you would imagine that Chrissy snow and Jack Tripper eventually got married and they had a child and the child was Jason Ritter,” she said. “And I had suggested this to Jason’s people and that the show would be me and Jason, but that John would appear as a hologram because it’d be like he was back and alive, but Jason doesn’t want to do anything reminiscent of what his father did. So that kind of went out of the way. That was the last time I got kinda turned on by thinking about doing a series again.”
