Two women having a man for a roommate? What a scandalous and naughty arrangement! At least it was in 1977 when “Three’s Company” debuted. And many of the show’s storylines mine its comedy from the inherent shock value of that premise, with there constantly being awkward encounters and misunderstood intentions between the roommates, their neighbors, and other people in and around their shared apartment.
There are, of course, “Three’s Company” moments that aged poorly, given the nature of its humor and how much has changed since the era during which it aired. But as a whole, it is fondly remembered as a classic sitcom, one that made megastars of its main trio of actors — John Ritter, Suzanne Somers, and Joyce DeWitt.
Rounding out the main ensemble were landlords, neighbors, friends, co-workers, and other members of the social circle that spiraled out from the core threesome. And even then, the makeup of that threesome will change a couple of times after the exit of Somers and the two subsequent attempts to replace her.
For most of the cast of “Three’s Company,” it would either be their biggest role, or at least their final major role of note. But a few did manage to have careers that maintained the momentum they had during the peak of “Three’s Company” mania for years to come.
Suzanne Somers (Chrissy Snow)
“Three’s Company” wasn’t shy about leaning into archetypes. As such, the two main female leads were smart brunette Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt) and ditzy blonde Chrissy Snow (Suzanne Somers). And to that end, Chrissy’s inability to grasp the point of a given situation was a common punchline. Even so, Somers brought plenty of wit to her portrayal of Chrissy, and it went a long way in elevating her beyond the narrow box that the show’s writers often tried to keep her in.
Somers exited the show after Season 5. And even then, during much of her final season, she only appeared in an episode’s closing minutes as Chrissy would call in to her now-former roommates after having moved away.
The reason given to the public as to why Somers was no longer with the show was a contract dispute, with things being framed in such a way as to portray the actor as greedy and demanding. But the real reason Suzanne Somers was fired from “Three’s Company,” as told by Somers and corroborated by others who worked on the show, is that she simply asked for equal pay to co-star John Ritter and was fired as a result.
The actor would later score another lead role in another successful sitcom with 1991’s “Step by Step.” Somers also spent several years being known as the attendee for the extremely popular ThighMaster workout device. Unfortunately, Somers spent many years dealing with various forms of cancer, from skin cancer in her 30s to breast cancer in her 50s. She will ultimately succumb to the latter in 2023 at the age of 76.
Norman Fell (Mr. Roper)
Part of the initial concept of “Three’s Company” was that Jack Tripper (John Ritter) had to pretend to be gay for the building’s landlords to allow an unmarried man to live with two unmarried women. This was especially crucial in appeasing Stanley Roper (Norman Fell), most often referred to as Mr. Roper, the more old-fashioned and conservative of the married couple who ran the building.
In his portrayal of Mr. Roper, Fell brought a very old-school, almost Vaudevillian sensibility to the proceedings in the way he would deliver a joke, hold in the moment for a beat, and then look directly at the camera and offer a mugging smile.
Given that Fell has been acting since the 1950s, that approach shouldn’t have been surprising. That’s especially true since most of his early TV work contained of variety shows that felt very much like stage comedy productions that just happened to be televised, which includes much of early television in general.
Fell had always been a hard-working, journeyman type of actor, and that was something he didn’t want to abandon just because he had suddenly become a huge household name with “Three’s Company.” It was with great reluctance that he participated in the short-lived spin-off “The Ropers,” after which he largely went back to smaller character work for the remainder of his career.
But Fell returned to his most famous character one last time before his 1998 death at the age of 74, appearing in an uncredited cameo on the sitcom “Ellen” as Mr. Roper in one of his final screen credits.
Audra Lindley (Mrs. Roper)
In the first three seasons of “Three’s Company,” when they were still main cast members and key figures of the ensemble, the hilarious interactions between Stanley and Helen Roper (Audra Lindley) were among of the funniest parts of the show. The more open-minded and free-spirited Mrs. Roper was always butting heads with her more stubbornly old-school husband, both in their dealings with their young tenants and also with one another. It was one of the last examples of the kind of classic lighthearted spousal bickering that was made famous in shows like “The Honeymooners” and “I Love Lucy.”
Like Fell, Lindley was already a longtime screen veteran when she achieved a new level of celebrity on “Three’s Company.” She previously had ongoing roles on the TV shows “From These Roots,” “Bridget Loves Bernie,” and the classic soap opera “Another World” before playing Mrs. Roper, in addition to dozens of other movie and television appearances. Post-“Three’s Company” and “The Ropers,” Lindley’s biggest roles were in the 1997 horror movie “The Relic” and an appearance on “Friends” as Phoebe’s grandmother.
Although a few performers of smaller roles on the show had died earlier in the decade, 1997 kicked off the ever-growing list of main ensemble “Three’s Company” actors who passed away when Lindley died at 79 years old from leukemia.
Richard Kline (Larry Dallas)
While Jack, Chrissy, and Janet lived upstairs from the Ropers, they weren’t on the top floor of the apartment building. Above them was Larry Dallas (Richard Kline), Jack’s best friend and, impossibly, an even bigger womanizer than Jack himself. But Larry didn’t pull women the way Jack does, and often pretended to be Jack when he was on the prowl — which then ended up getting Jack into sticky situations that he himself had no previous part in or knowledge of.
And in another example of “Three’s Company” checking all of the archetype boxes, Larry was a used car salesman, further hammering home how he was slimy and not to be trusted.
Prior to “Three’s Company,” Kline had a three-episode stint on “Maude,” thus making Larry Dallas his breakout character. After a number of years in either one-episode appearances on TV shows or as a major character on forgotten series that didn’t survive their first season, Kline landed a recurring gig on “The Bold and the Beautiful” that stretched across two seasons between 1995 and 1996. Though his career largely returned to the way it was between “Three’s Company” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” after the latter, Kline has remained a steadily-working actor ever since — up through a recurring role as a judge on “Blue Bloods” that stretched between Season 3 and Season 14 of the police procedural.
Jenilee Harrison (Cindy Snow)
Given that the show was called “Three’s Company,” it was important that there had to be a central trio of roommates. So once Chrissy was out, someone needed to fill the void that she left. Enter Cindy Snow (Jenilee Harrison), Chrissy’s cousin — which conveniently allowed her the excuse of essentially being Chrissy 2.0 without being called a copycat character
This isn’t to shade Harrison, who was great in the role and did the best she could with an awkward situation, but Cindy never quite landed as a suitable replacement for Chrissy. After two seasons, Cindy was also out, as was Harrison.
As for Harrison, it didn’t take her too much time to find her next big role. Just two years after leaving “Three’s Company,” she joined the main cast of “Dallas” as Jamie Ewing, a role she played for 70 episodes across Seasons 8, 9, and 10 of the primetime soap opera. The actor kicked around a bit in small roles on TV and in movies after that, though Jamie Ewing would be her last major character.
Harrison’s final screen credit was a 2002 TV movie, after which she shifted to life out of the spotlight. However, in 2017, Harrison and fellow “Three’s Company” co-star Richard Kline took part in the ’70s Rock & Romance Cruise, which also featured concerts by popular bands of that decade like Styx, Air Supply, and America.
Ann Wedgeworth (Lana Shields)
Season 4 of “Three’s Company” was one of several major cast additions and shake-ups. In addition to Larry graduating from recurring to main cast member and Mr. Furley (Don Knotts) taking over landlord duties from the Ropers — more on him shortly — that season also saw the debut of a new character named Lana Shields (Ann Wedgeworth).
After three seasons of Jack mostly hopping from one female guest star to another, Lana represented the first woman on the show with which Jack had any sort of ongoing romantic entanglement. That being said, it was largely one-sided, mostly consisting of Lana pursuing Jack and Jack continually declining her advances.
Wedgeworth eventually grew bored of the one-note nature of the character and left “Three’s Company” by the end of Season 4 after it was clear that Lana wasn’t ever going to evolve into anything more complex than she already was.
The actor would eventually prove that she indeed had more talent than her flat “Three’s Company” character deserved; first, in her National Society of Film Critics Awards nomination for the 1985 movie “Sweet Dreams,” and again with another award-nominated performance for her role in the 1990 sitcom “Evening Shade.” The latter would be her last TV series role, though she continued to appear in TV and direct-to-video movies throughout the 1990s.
After her final screen credit in a 2006 movie called “The Hawk is Dying,” Wedgeworth seemed to retire from acting. She would then become one of the far too many stars we lost in 2017 when she passed away that year at 83.
Don Knotts (Mr. Furley)
When the Ropers went off and did the spin-off thing, someone needed to become the new building manager to constantly check in on Jack and the gals. And thus, the Mr. Furley era of “Three’s Company” began. To the show’s credit, Mr. Furley wasn’t just another Mr. Roper.
Instead, he had a more amiable relationship with his tenants, up to and including being okay with the eventual revelation that Jack wasn’t actually gay. If anything, Mr. Furley had more in common with Mrs. Roper in that he was more open to modern trends and sensibilities, not to mention more prone to bright and flamboyant clothing.
Don Knotts was arguably the biggest existing star of anyone in the “Three’s Company” cast. He had previously played the iconic bumbling deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show.” In fact, many cast members from “The Andy Griffith Show” joined another successful series afterward – Griffith himself would later play another titular role with “Matlock,” Ron Howard was part of the nostalgia sitcom “Happy Days,” and Knotts became Mr. Furley. After that, Knotts was most content to coast along doing cameos — often as himself — for the remainder of his career. But if anyone earned that sort of easy victory lap on the home stretch of an acting career, it was Knotts.
In 2005, his final on-screen, non-voice role credits were fittingly as himself on the NBC series “Las Vegas,” and as a landlord on “That ’70s Show.” Knotts died in 2006 due to complications related to lung cancer. He was 81.
