Sally Struthers Says ‘Passive-Aggressive’ Betty White Was A Bully
America’s Senior Sweetheart wasn’t as nice as everyone thought, according to All in the Family and Man on the Inside star Sally Struthers. At least Struthers waited until Betty White passed away before she put the Golden Girls star on blast.
“I have to say, now that she’s gone, I want to talk about Betty White for just a moment,” Struthers said on the Let's Talk About That! podcast. “I know everybody loves her. They loved her so much they signed petitions to get her to guest-host Saturday Night Live. I know all that. I didn’t have such a great experience with her.”
What happened? Years ago, Struthers was invited to White’s home to discuss a pilot for a new game show. A group working on the show discussed what was working and what wasn’t when White asked her housekeeper to bring in a plate of cookies for her guests. Struthers reached for one of the treats before White shut her down. “She said in front of everyone, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You don’t need a cookie.’”
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“Totally fat-shamed me in front of the rest of the people in the room and I thought, Gosh, that’s not nice,” Struthers said. “Very passive-aggressive woman.”
Fat-shaming wasn’t isolated to White. Struthers remembered how much she was hurt when All in the Family producer Norman Lear told her she wasn’t the funniest actress to audition for Gloria. He was more interested in casting a “Daddy’s girl” type to make the Archie Bunker character more sympathetic. Struthers remembers Lear telling her, “We hired you because just like Carroll O’Connor, you have blue eyes and a fat face.”
Was anyone nice to Struthers? The actress had hilarious memories of White’s Golden Girls costar Bea Arthur, herself no fan of White. “I would run into (Arthur) at the supermarket and she would trash everyone we ever knew,” Struthers laughed. “We would stand in the aisle, and she’d say, ‘What do you think about so and so?’”
When Struthers replied that so-and-so was a friend, Arthur would exclaim, “She can’t be a friend! She’s a fucking asshole!”
Everyone in the grocery store wondered what was going on in aisle five, Struthers said. “I loved how filthy she was. She was a big deal. I loved her.”
But again, Betty White? Not so much.
