Sandra Bernhard is revealing that one of her “biggest regrets” to this day is the way she treated Morgan Fairchild on the set of Roseanne. The actress and singer of stage and screen spoke about it with Andy Cohen on Thursday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live.
“I was a little, you know, dismissive of Morgan,” Bernhard, 69, said on the on Bravo talk show.
Turning to face the camera directly, she continued, “I would like to say to Morgan, you are incredible to work with, you went there. We were the first gay couple on TV — unlike everybody thinks everybody else was, we were! — and you’re fabulous, and you are on the right side politically. I owe you an apology, I adore you, and thank you for putting up with my snotty little attitude.”
Bernhard played the recurring role of Nancy Bartlett, the estranged wife of Tom Arnold’s Arnie Thomas, on the long-running ABC sitcom. Fairchild, 74, came on the show for three episodes of season 5 in 1992 to play Bartlett’s girlfriend Marla, though the relationship didn’t last.
When asked if Bernhard had reached out to Fairchild, the actress said she “didn’t really know how” but hoped her former colleague would see her apology on Watch What Happens Live. “Everybody was kind of not nice to her,” Bernhard added. “I’m calling myself out, honey, along with everybody else.” Asked if lead star Roseanne Barr was ever mean to Fairchild, Bernhard said, “Eh, you know, she was in her own world.”
Fairchild spoke about her experience playing Marla on the Behind the Velvet Rope podcast just last year, saying her agent was “on the fence” about whether she should take the part.
“Because a lipstick lesbian had never been done [on TV],” she recalled. “I am just this weird person that I like doing iconoclastic things. I don’t like doing the safe thing. I like doing things that are gonna shock people or make them think about something or make them look at you a different way. So I said yes.”
Ultimately, Fairchild thought the role was both funny and eye-opening. “I thought it was a chance to create a discussion in society, because it was a very hot show and I knew it would be water-cooler talk,” she said.
