5 Stars Who Were Fired From Their Own Sitcoms

One of the risks that come with making a TV show is that real-life circumstances can interfere with the writers' plans. Sometimes an actor dies and the TV show must figure out how to handle it — do they replace the actor or write out the character entirely? Sometimes an actress is pregnant, and the TV show's writers can either hide her pregnancy from the camera or make her character pregnant too. 

Sometimes a show's plans can be interrupted not by death or pregnancy but by behind-the-scenes drama. Such was the case with these five actors. They all starred in major TV series in seemingly irreplaceable roles, but the show replaced them anyway. They're hardly the only TV cast members to be fired from a hit show — just barely missing the cut was Roseanne Barr's firing from "Roseanne" and Jeff Garlin's removal from "The Goldbergs" — but they're certainly some of the most memorable. 

Suzanne Somers played Chrissy, the third member of the hit show's roommate trio. At the start of Season 5, Somers demanded an equal salary to John Ritter, who played the show's star character, Jack Tripper, and reportedly made five times what she did. 

"The show's response was, 'Who do you think you are?'" Somers told People in 2020. "They said, 'John Ritter is the star.'" Somers' husband, former TV producer Alan Hamel, believed that ABC wanted to "make an example of female actresses so that no other woman would ask to be paid what men were making. And then [Suzanne] was fired." As an apparent part of Somers' negotiating tactic, she would often call out sick right before the taping of Season 5 episodes, a strategy that frustrated a lot of the cast and crew. 

"They painted me as 'she's trying to ruin the show,' and so the whole show — cast and crew — shunned me," Somers told ET in 2020. "... So, I never talked to anybody on that show ever again." Somers was soon replaced with Jenilee Harrison, who played Chrissy's cousin Cindy, a girl who shared much of Chrissy's personality and was given nearly the same dynamic with the other two main characters. Harrison herself was replaced in Season 6 by Priscilla Barnes as Terri Alden, who stuck around for the rest of the series.

Before Robert Downey Jr. became a reliable A-lister leading the Marvel Cinematic Universe into one box office hit after another, he severely struggled with addiction and was seen by Hollywood executives as a major risk. Downey Jr. briefly seemed back on the upswing during Season 4 of "Ally McBeal," when his run as the main character's love interest impressed critics and boosted the series' ratings.

In April 2001, however, Downey Jr. was arrested again on drug charges, and Fox cut him from the series. "We are wrapping up the stories on the final few episodes of 'Ally McBeal' for the season without him," a Fox producer told the Los Angeles Times. The next season had been planned to focus on Downey Jr.'s character's marriage to Ally, but the show was forced to write Downey Jr. out of his character's own wedding.

Downey Jr. described his time on "Ally McBeal" to The Guardian: "It was my lowest point in terms of addictions. At that stage, I didn't give a f*** whether I ever acted again."

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the show's creator, David E. Kelley, described Downey Jr.'s departure as a major blow. "Season five was arced out as their married life," he recalled. "It was disappointing not to get to do that ending. He'd been so good; he left a huge void, and there was a concern that we'd never rise to the same level again."

It seemed impossible for Valerie Harper to be fired from her hit TV show; the title was her name, after all. But after a successful first two seasons, Harper asked for a salary increase that the show's studio refused. As a negotiating tactic, Harper refused to return to set; this strategy had worked for her on her CBS sitcom "Rhoda" a few years earlier, but NBC didn't play ball. The network fired Harper, killed her character off-screen, and had her character's sister-in-law step in to take her place in the family.

For Season 3, "Valerie" was retitled to "Valerie's Family: The Hogans," and for the final two seasons, it was simply titled "The Hogan Family." Harper sued the network for wrongful termination and won her case in 1988. She was awarded over $1.4 million in compensation and would soon star in another sitcom on CBS ("City") that aired in the same time slot as the show that fired her.

Despite how poorly things ended, Harper never expressed any ill will toward the cast and crew, and she said she was still rooting for the show's success even if she was no longer on it. "I have emotional investment," she told David Letterman in 1990. "Jason [Bateman] — I'm glad he's been able to work all this time in that show." 

"Two and a Half Men" was a massive ratings hit, but by Season 7, the addiction struggles of lead actor Charlie Sheen were taking a toll. Sheen's multiple rehab stints, combined with his demand to make an unprecedented $3 million per episode and his string of public comments insulting the show's creator and network, led to CBS and Warner Bros. Television cutting his contract short, with "moral turpitude" cited as the main cause (per TMZ).

Sheen's final season, Season 8, was cut short by eight episodes, and when the show returned for Season 9, it was for an episode about his character's funeral. The Season 9 premiere is famous for its complete and utter contempt for Charlie Harper; none of the characters at his funeral seem particularly sad that he's gone, and Charlie's cause of death (shoved in front of a train by his stalker and lover, Rose, after he cheated on her) is not particularly dignified.

Sheen's character was immediately replaced by tech billionaire Walden Schmidt, played by Ashton Kutcher. "I can't replace Charlie Sheen," Kutcher said in a statement when his casting was announced, "but I'm going to work my ass off to entertain the hell out of people!" Kutcher stayed on as a lead throughout the last four seasons, which were critically panned and saw declining ratings. Sheen may have been a mess behind the scenes, but fans and critics agreed the show didn't quite work without him. 

There is no shortage of anecdotes about actor-comedian Chevy Chase behaving like a jerk behind the scenes, and a lot of them come from "Community." Chase once halted production after he said the N-word on set, and creator Dan Harmon later told The New Yorker that Chase would frequently make racial comments toward Donald Glover. "Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off," Harmon said. 

For his part, Chase said "Community" "wasn't funny enough" for him, and he would frequently argue with Dan Harmon about the way his character was written. In a 2012 Reddit Ask Me Anything, Harmon revealed he'd been particularly angry when Chase refused to film a scene at the end of Season 3's "Digital Estate Planning." Harmon described the scene as "possibly one of the most important moments of the season," adding, "I was very upset to hear that it wasn't shot because someone didn't feel like shooting it, especially since it was literally the last day of shooting, which meant we'd never be able to pick it up."

Chase officially left the show in the middle of Season 4, but it wasn't until early Season 5 that "Community" killed his character, Pierce Hawthorne, off-screen. Pierce's cause of death? Dehydration from masturbating too much. Between Chase and the writers, it seemed clear there was little love lost.