11 Stars Who Hated Their TV Jobs (PHOTOS)
Kathleen Turner
Kathleen Turner tells Vulture she “didn’t feel very welcomed by the cast” when she guest-starred on Friends in 2001: “I remember I was wearing this difficult sequined gown — and my high heels were absolutely killing me. I found it odd that none of the actors thought to offer me a seat. Finally it was one of the older crew members that said, ‘Get Miss Turner a chair.’ The Friends actors were such a clique — but I don’t think my experience with them was unique. I think it was simply that they were such a tight little group that nobody from the outside mattered.”
Angus T. Jones
The “half-man” of Two and a Half Men once urged viewers to tune out of the CBS sitcom. “If you watch Two and a Half Men, please stop watching Two and a Half Men,” Angus T. Jones said in a 2012 YouTube video for his church. “I’m on Two and a Half Men, and I don’t want to be on it … Please stop watching it and filling your head with filth.”
Chace Crawford
Just before the final season of Gossip Girl premiered in 2012, star Chace Crawford lambasted the CW teen drama in an interview with Us Weekly. “I’m gonna look for my dignity,” he said. “My dignity is somewhere on set. I think it happened around Season 3. Leading into Season 3, it was all out the window.”
Penn Badgley
Crawford wasn’t the only Gossip Girl star to trash the show: Penn Badgley did so in 2013 as he promoted his film Greetings From Tim Buckley. “To be proud of something is a really nice feeling,” he told Salon. “And it’s a new feeling, and it’s something that I wanna keep going with. I can walk a little taller feeling that I don’t have to be constantly apologizing for the work that I’ve done in the past.”
Mischa Barton
In 2014, Mischa Barton told Metro she probably wouldn’t sign up for FOX teen drama The O.C. if she could turn back time. ‘It’s something I came so close to not doing. I had a really great thing with film. People say be grateful for what you have but it certainly not the kind of thing I was expecting it to be.”
Mandy Patinkin
Mandy Patinkin left CBS crime drama Criminal Minds in 2007 after just two seasons as the star of the show, and he aired his grievances in a New York Magazine interview five years later. “The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do Criminal Minds in the first place,” he revealed. “I thought it was something very different. I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality. After that, I didn’t think I would get to work in television again.”
Chevy Chase
In 2012, Celebuzz released a voicemail from Chevy Chase to his then-boss, Community creator Dan Harmon, in which the SNL veteran dissed the NBC comedy. “It’s just a f**king mediocre sitcom! I want people to laugh and this isn’t funny. It ain’t funny to me … I’m 67 years old, and I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been making a lot of people laugh a lot better than this.”
Joe Jonas
The Disney Channel sitcom Jonas solidified the Jonas Brothers’ teen stardom… but alienated the brothers themselves. “The thing about the show was that some of the writing on it was terrible,” Joe Jonas told New York Magazine in 2013. “It just ended up being some weird slapstick humor that only a 10-year-old would laugh at.”
Billy Ray Cyrus
Speaking of Disney not being the Happiest Place on Earth, Billy Ray Cyrus regrets that he and daughter Miley Cyrus starred on the Disney Channel sitcom Hannah Montana. “The damn show destroyed my family,” he told GQ in 2011. “It’s all sad … I’d take it back in a second. For my family to be here and just be everybody okay, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.”
Miley Cyrus
Miley herself also resented her time on the show, from the sounds of her 2015 interview with Marie Claire. “From the time I was 11, it was, ‘You’re a pop star! That means you have to be blonde, and you have to have long hair, and you have to put on some glittery tight thing.’ Meanwhile, I’m this fragile little girl playing a 16-year-old in a wig and a ton of makeup … I was made to look like someone that I wasn’t, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn’t on that show, it was like, ‘Who the f**k am I?’”
Robert Reed
Robert Reed played patriarch Mike Brady over all five seasons of ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch, all the while hating the show and clashing with creator Sherwood Schwartz, as People reported in 1992. “It was just as inconsequential as can be,” he told the magazine. “To the degree that it serves as a babysitter, I’m glad we did it. But I do not want it on my tombstone.”
TV stardom may be glamorous, but it’s not always easy. Small-screen stars have to endure unrelenting schedules, unfriendly colleagues, uncomfortable wardrobe, and unsatisfying scripts… and those are just a few of the issues reported by the actors in the gallery above.
We’ll start with a Golden Globe winner’s not-so-golden experience on the set of the NBC sitcom Friends.
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services