These TV Friendships Were Iconic – But Hugs Turned To Hate When The Cameras Were Off

Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey and Isaiah Washington were absolutely, positively not friends off camera. In fact, in 2006 media outlets reported that the two had gotten into a literal brawl on the set. Yes, really! Allegedly, Washington had grabbed Dempsey by the throat over the issue of people being late for work.

And things only got worse the following year. In 2007 it emerged that Washington had allegedly used a homophobic slur while fighting with Dempsey, and their fellow star T.R. Knight believed that it had been directed at him. The upshot of all this? Washington was fired from the show and blamed Dempsey for the whole crisis. It was a very messy, very public fallout.

Nope, Kate Jackson didn’t get along at all with her Charlie’s Angels co-star Cheryl Ladd. And it seems that the age-old problem of television casting reared its head, as one believed the other was upstaging her. Basically, Jackson thought that she was the star of Charlie’s Angels and didn’t want Ladd angling for that position. Her husband confirmed as much to People in 1979.

Ladd, for her part, seems to have adopted an “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” attitude. You see, while she’s remained good friends with Jaclyn Smith, she’s been remarkably schtum about Jackson. And even when Ladd was asked about her rival, she was brief with her response. “Kate’s complex – let’s leave it at that,” she told the Daily Express in 2017.

David and Maddie – played, of course, by Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd – captivated audiences with their will-they-won’t-they romance. But off screen, it was definitely a “won’t.” The two actors loathed each other and could barely even stand to be in the same room. Shepherd admitted that in a 2005 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Shepherd said, “It’s hard to do a show and keep your relationships with everybody. I remember at one point in the show, it had gotten to where we just hated each other.” Why did Willis and Shepherd fall out in the first place? Well, rumor has it that they had an affair that went sour.

They may have been members of the same (A) team, but George Peppard and Mr. T weren’t remotely friends. The Breakfast at Tiffany’s actor was particularly disgruntled that his badass co-star was getting a bigger paycheck. And Peppard made no secret about his dislike of Mr. T. In 1987 he spilled the beans on a British chat show.

During that interview, Peppard claimed that Mr. T had tried to get some of the crew members fired. He added, “It did irritate me. I didn’t speak to [Mr. T] for 16 weeks.” But the beef was quickly squashed – according to Peppard, anyway. “We got over that, and we went about the show. The show comes first,” the star said. Spoken like a true professional.

Gossip Girl’s Blair and Serena were always good friends – no matter what obstacles life threw at them. The actresses who played the pair, though? They couldn’t have been less close. There wasn’t any outright hostility between Blake Lively and Leighton Meester – well, at least none that anyone knows of. Basically, they were just such different personalities that they never saw eye to eye.

That’s according to a so-called “insider” who dished the dirt to the National Enquirer. Speaking about the two actresses, the source said, “They don’t even acknowledge each other when they’re not in a scene together. Leighton thinks Blake is an egomaniac who views her time on the TV set as slumming.” Lively’s publicist contributed to the story, too, saying, “Blake and Leighton have never been best friends and never professed to be.” Well, that about sums it up.

Didn’t you just love the chemistry between Kate Beckett and Rick Castle? That on-screen bond is even more incredible when you consider that Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion didn’t like each other at all. In 2016 an insider told Us Weekly, “Katic and Fillion completely despise each other. They will not speak when they are off set, and this has been going on for seasons now.” Yikes!

And Katic was devastated when she was fired from her role – not long before the show itself was axed. In 2018 the actress told Entertainment Weekly, “I’m actually still not clear on the thought process behind the way that it went down. It hurt, and it was a harsh ending.” Was Fillion part of it? We’ll probably never know.

When Shannen Doherty left Charmed, rumors spread that it was all down to Alyssa Milano. And without naming names, Doherty implied in the media that that was exactly the reason. She even said that she would miss her other co-star Holly Marie Combs – but suspiciously failed to mention Milano whatsoever.

In 2001 Milano herself admitted to Entertainment Weekly that she and Doherty hadn’t gotten along. She explained, “I think it’s hard when you put… two very different people together.” But they actually made up in the end. When Doherty was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, the actresses put the past behind them.

Star Trek may have preached messages of unity and compassion, but its actors didn’t always practice this off set. And the biggest frenemies of the lot? William Shatner and George Takei. In 2008 Shatner even posted a bizarre rant against Takei on his YouTube channel. Apparently, it was because he hadn’t been invited to the other man’s wedding.

The feud continues to this day. In 2020 Takei slammed Shatner on David Tennant’s podcast and said that Star Trek had sometimes felt like “William Shatner against the world.” He added, “Some actors seem to feel that it’s a one-man show.” But Shatner didn’t take this lying down. He turned to Twitter and angrily posted, “George needs a new hobby. Now he’s making things up.”

To the horror of Vampire Diaries fans everywhere, Nina Dobrev admitted in 2019 that she wasn’t actually friends with her on-screen lover Paul Wesley. Or, rather, she hadn’t been at first. Yes, while the pair are actually good buddies now, there was a time when they most definitely weren’t.

Dobrev said on the Directionally Challenged podcast, “Paul and I didn’t get along at the beginning of the show. I respected Paul Wesley, I didn’t like Paul Wesley.” People would ask her if the two of them were dating in real life, she said, because they “despised each other so much that it read as love.”

You probably wouldn’t have guessed by looking at Lorelai and Luke, but Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson didn’t much like each other during Gilmore Girls’ run. Graham pretty much confirmed this during a 2005 interview with TV Guide – even though she remained professional about it.

When pressed about her relationship with her co-star, Graham said, “It’s fine. I think these characters have a great chemistry, and that does mirror our chemistry as people. We’re not intimates. We talk kind of how we talk [on the show]. We work well together.” Then, after being asked “But you’re not best friends?” Graham said “No” and paused before adding, “It’s a very happy set.”

Their Doctor Who characters were friends – and shared the first ever same-sex kiss on the show – but there’s no love lost between Christopher Eccleston and John Barrowman. In 2008 Barrowman told the Daily Record, “Chris was always grumpy. You don’t always have to be intense. There comes a point when intensity makes you miserable. I think that was the case with Chris.” Ouch.

Although Eccleston never responded to Barrowman’s claims, perhaps he had his reasons for being grumpy during filming. He’s been pretty open, you see, about falling out with management on the Doctor Who set. In 2018 Eccleston told the Radio Times, “My relationship with my three immediate superiors – the showrunner, the producer and co-producer – broke down irreparably during the first block of filming, and it never recovered.”

Everyone on the Star Trek: Voyager set knew that there was tension between Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan. Allegedly, there was an occasion when Mulgrew even objected to Ryan using the bathroom, claiming that her Seven of Nine make-up took too long to remove. But come 2018, Mulgrew admitted to bad behavior herself.

Mulgrew said to Women’s World magazine about the feud, “Let’s be very straight about something. This is on me, not Jeri. She came in and did what she was asked to do. No question about that, and she did it very well. It’s on me, because I’d hoped against hope that Janeway would be sufficient. That we didn’t have to bring a beautiful, sexy girl in.” She added, “I probably should have comported myself better.” At least she was gracious about it.

Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth are friends now, which is surprising when you consider that they almost fought each other on the set of Beverly Hills, 90210. And Garth spilled the beans on a 2019 episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. Apparently, it all started when Doherty “pulled [Garth’s] skirt up,” Luckily, though, a security guard got in between the women before they came to blows.

Garth remembered, “We were young and so stupid… I’m a midwestern girl, and I spent some time in Glendale, Arizona, and that makes me tough.” But it’s over and done with now. When Doherty was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Garth wrote to her former co-star on Instagram, “I used to be threatened by your spirit. Now, I’m in awe of it.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had some great female friendships. Who can forget BFFs Buffy and Willow? But Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan were never close off set. They didn’t even invite each other to their respective weddings. In Hannigan’s case, that may have been a bigger snub, as she married an actor she had actually met on Buffy.

And while the pair aren’t at each other’s throats, they’re definitely distant. During a 2013 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Hannigan was asked, “Who was the most annoyed to be on Buffy the Vampire Slayer by the end of the show’s run?” Hannigan duly responded “Sarah” – and apparently she’d been “annoyed” since season three. Later on, the Willow actress said that she and Gellar were barely in contact.

Sadly, Teri Hatcher was not super popular on the Desperate Housewives set. There were claims of diva-like behavior, for instance, as Hatcher allegedly considered herself the lead of the show. Unsurprisingly, Eva Longoria, Felicity Huffman, Nicolette Sheridan and Marcia Cross all disagreed.

Cross is even said to have stormed off set after Hatcher decided that she would be picking her wardrobe first. Longoria, meanwhile, has claimed that Huffman protected her from a bully on the set, although she won’t say who. Then there’s the unconfirmed story, reported by Vulture, about none of the Housewives leaving Hatcher a present at the end of filming. Nasty!

Charmed was a pretty troubled production all round, it seems. And things seemed to get worse after Rose McGowan was brought in to replace Shannen Doherty. Her character Paige and Alyssa Milano’s Phoebe were supposed to be siblings, but apparently there was nothing sisterly about the relationship off screen. McGowan even raged about Milano on Twitter in 2020 – so, years after Charmed had ended.

In an expletive-laden post, McGowan claimed that Milano exhibited “appalling behavior on the daily” and added, “I cried every time we got renewed because you made that set toxic AF.” Milano later left a tweet reading only, “Hurt people hurt people. Empowered people empower people. Loved people love people.” Miaow.

Remember when Dorothy would snap “Oh, shut up Rose!” on The Golden Girls? Well, Bea Arthur may have been just as brusque with Betty White in real life. That’s according to Arthur’s son Matthew Saks, who in 2017 told Closer that his mom had never gotten along with her co-star.

Saks said to the magazine, “My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. I think she felt she was more of an actress than Betty. Mom came from Broadway. Betty starred on a game show at one point.” White was well aware, too, that her co-star didn’t like her. Oh well.

Back in the day, if co-stars were at war, they’d just have to grit their teeth and go on set together anyway. But that’s not always the case now. Yep, after Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi fell out during The Good Wife, the SFX people simply used split screens to make it look like they were in the same room. Usually, you see, they weren’t.

To their credit, Panjabi and Margulies have kept quiet about what exactly caused their feud. Their co-star Alan Cumming, on the other hand? He’s quipped about the situation. In 2019 Us Weekly mentioned to him that fans would love to see Kalinda and Alicia reunite. To this, Cumming simply laughed and said, “Good luck with that.”

One of our favorite ever TV couples didn’t get along? ’Fraid so. In 2008 David Duchovny told Metro that he and Gillian Anderson were more like enemies behind the scenes. “Familiarity breeds contempt. It’s nothing to do with the other person. We used to argue about nothing. We couldn’t stand the sight of each other,” Duchovny said of the relationship.

Gillian Anderson feels – or felt – the same way. In 2018 she told the media at a Fox Studios event, “I don’t know much about David Duchovny. If you asked me ten things about him, I’d probably get nine of them wrong… We were never close.” At least she said that the two “appreciate and respect each other” – which has to count for something.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall’s feud has been going on for a long time now. A long, long time! And, apparently, time hasn’t mellowed the rift, either. In 2017 Cattrall told Piers Morgan that Parker “could have been nicer” and that she’d “never been friends” with her.

Then in 2018 Cattrall wrote a biting Instagram post to Parker, saying, “Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now…You are not my family. You are not my friend.” Oof. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cattrall won’t be a part of the cast for the upcoming Sex and the City revival.

But if you’re looking for a lot more love, then you can find it with some of these iconic LGBTQ TV couples. It wasn’t so long ago that it was a painful, even dangerous process presenting characters as gay. Now, though, there have been enough TV same-sex couples over the years that fans can tell you which were good representations – and which were lacking. Are your faves on the list?

Schitt’s Creek was a comedy, but it was the warm and nice kind of comedy. And the kings of the heartwarming moments were David and Patrick, played by Dan Levy and Noah Reid respectively. By the end of the show, they were married. The finale episode was called “Happy Ending” – it was a double entendre, but it was still sweet.

One scene in the show, where David sings “The Best” to Patrick, even brought the cast to tears. Levy told magazine Entertainment Weekly in March 2020, “I had always pictured that moment to be quite funny. The rest of our team behind the cameras were crying. I thought I had done it wrong.”

Andre Braugher’s Holt was not a demonstrative person at the beginning of Brooklyn 99. When the show first got started, fans were intrigued by Holt’s references to his husband. Speaking for the audience, Jake declared, “I can’t wait to meet Kevin. I assume he’s the fun one in the relationship.” He was not.

Holt and Kevin were almost exactly alike in personality and it made them the perfect couple. The chemistry between Braugher and Marc Evan Jackson only made that aspect of the show even funnier. Many of the characters on the show have admitted they want Kevin and Holt to be their dads, and fans may well agree.

Modern Family’s Cameron and Mitchell, played by Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, quickly became an extremely popular television couple. But just because they were in a sitcom it didn’t mean real-world issues didn’t affect them. They couldn’t marry until same-sex marriage became legal in their state – just like countless real couples.

Though Modern Family is over now, Cameron and Mitchell are still considered groundbreaking for their era. In 2020 the website IndieWire said, “Seeing a loving (and bickering) gay couple on primetime was a revelation… Modern Family was the first time a major network had shown a long-term, committed queer relationship.”

Ellen’s coming out on her self-titled sitcom was extremely difficult for her. Famous people such as televangelist Pat Robertson cruelly nicknamed her “Ellen DeGenerate,” ABC insisted on putting a parent advisory rating on every episode of the show from then on, and at one stage an irate telephone caller even threatened to detonate a bomb inside the studio.

But both Ellen the character and Ellen the person got the last laugh. Ellen the character began dating a woman called Laurie, played by Lisa Darr, and eventually grew comfortable enough to propose to her. And Ellen the human being now controls a vast entertainment empire, and is happily married to actress Portia De Rossi.

Callie Torres and Arizona Robbins, played by Sara Ramirez and Jessica Capshaw, were absolutely beloved by fans of Grey’s Anatomy. The duo had the nickname “Calzona” and they went through a lot – a lot. Plane crashes, car crashes, affairs, amputations and more all featured in their extremely dramatic up-and-down relationship.

Alas, the relationship didn’t last in the end: Callie and Arizona divorced. Fans hoped that Callie might show up for Arizona’s last episode on the show, but despite the best efforts of show creator Shonda Rhimes it transpired Sara Ramirez just wouldn’t be available. But who knows? Maybe one day the actresses will team up again and Calzona will be back on.

HBO’s Euphoria presented a relationship between two teenage girls. These were Rue, played by Zendaya, and Jules, played by Hunter Schafer. Schafer talked to website The Wrap about the coupling, saying, “I think Jules, from the first episode, knows Rue is there for her and would do just about anything for her.”

Schafer went on, “And [Jules] finds something really beautiful and meaningful and intimate, and somewhat physical, with one of the people she feels closest to in life, who happens to be a femme person. And I think that’s really exciting for how it might affect her vantage point on her own sexuality and sense of romance.” One to keep an eye on.

The adorable children’s cartoon show Arthur featured a same-sex wedding in its 2019 season 22 premiere. The episode saw Arthur’s rodent teacher Mr. Ratburn get married to his aardvark boyfriend Patrick. Despite the characters being talking animals and nothing NSFW going on, Alabama Public Television still ended up banning the episode.

Maria Vera Whelan, the senior director of PBS’s children’s media department, ended up releasing a statement which read “PBS Kids programs are designed to reflect the diversity of communities across the nation. We believe it is important to represent the wide array of adults in the lives of children who look to PBS Kids every day.” And there didn’t seem to be any complaints from actual kids.

The show Atypical presented an enemies-to-lovers relationship in the form of teenagers Casey and Izzie. The girls started off as supporting characters, but before long they gained a fandom of their very own. They even gained their own portmanteau relationship name, Cizzie. That’s how you know a TV coupling has made it.

Casey and Izzie are played by Brigette Lundy-Paine and Fivel Stewart, both of whom were interviewed by Pride magazine in 2019. Stewart said of Atypical, “It’s just a very real take on emotions. The confusion, the reality of what you’re already in and something else happens, and you have to be uncomfortable with these feelings. And I feel like that’s what’s so amazing about this show.”

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer was at its height, creator Joss Whedon decided one of the cast should come out as gay. This ended up being Alyson Hannigan’s Willow, Buffy’s magic-using friend. Gradually the show began using “magic” as a metaphor for Willow’s self-discovery. Then she met Tara, played by Amber Benson, and fell in love with her.

The pairing of Willow and Tara was beloved by fans. But sadly, happiness never lasts in the Buffy world. Tara was killed and Willow temporarily turned into a world-destroyer in her grief. But, many years on, the show’s producer Marti Noxon admitted that perhaps it had been a big mistake letting Tara die.

Killing Eve presents a relationship between an assassin called Villanelle and an MI6 agent called Eve. It’s not a healthy relationship by any stretch of the imagination. The characters, played by Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, never kiss (so far) or send each other Valentines – but there’s intense sexual tension between them.

The 2020 season 3 finale sees the pair trying to get away from each other – but they probably won’t succeed. The show’s executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle told Entertainment Weekly, “I think that what was really appealing was for both of them to have an honest conversation… They both did it together, and in a way that’s a good jumping-off point for a discussion about where they are.”

Friends was quite progressive for its time in presenting a lesbian couple. During the show’s run, it even achieved three GLAAD Media Award Outstanding Comedy Series nominations, one of which resulted in a win. But Carol and Susan, the couple in question, aren’t really considered to have stood the test of time.

In September 2019 Entertainment Weekly published an article by Lacey Vorrasi-Banis titled, “The one where Friends helped keep me in the closet.” The writer said, “The landmark representation didn’t come without a price… the lesbian stereotype was a seemingly bottomless well drawn from time and time again.” She cited several Friends jokes in which Carol and Susan’s sexuality was the punchline.

Lesbian drama show The L Word was generally considered to be pretty groundbreaking when it first aired in 2004. But alas, the writing stopped being fresh after a while, and then there was the trouble with one of the central relationships, Tina and Bette, played by Laurel Holloman and Jennifer Beals.

In 2016 Buzzfeed published a take-down of The L Word with the words, “What does Bette actually see in Tina? Tina is always in a mood, even when Bette isn’t cheating on her with carpenters. Ninety percent of Tina’s character is sighing and the other 10 percent is talking about home renovations. Oh Bette, you flashdancing goddess, you could have done better.”

Adam, alas, was a character who only seemed to distract from the couple the fans really wanted to see – Kurt and Blaine. But the two of them broke up and then Kurt ran into Adam, played by Oliver Kieran-Jones. And wouldn’t you know it, he ran his own glee club. But audiences just didn’t like this new direction much.

In 2018 the website Screen Rant wrote, “It makes [for] a fun, flirty sort of thing for Kurt to have after ending a serious relationship. Yet, Adam did not have an interesting personality. Honestly, it just made us wish that Adam Lambert’s character Elliott came in a season earlier. He and Kurt definitely had a lot more chemistry.”

There was lots to recommend Orange is the New Black, but to many people it seemed like the central couple wasn’t one of them. In 2015 The Daily Dot website wrote, “Piper and Alex’s relationship is not only annoying, it’s the single worst aspect of the third season… Moreover, their relationship is aggressively boring compared to everything else going on in the show.”

But despite all that Alex and Piper, played by Laura Prepon and Taylor Schilling respectively, stayed the course. Both of them remained on the show right up until the very last episode. And then, in the final moments, it was revealed they were still together. But that didn’t stop fans decrying it as a toxic, manipulative relationship.

Annalise and Eve, played by Viola Davis and Famke Janssen, circled around each other for a while on hit show How to Get Away With Murder. But it seemed they were never meant to be. Not only was Eve absent in moments when it would’ve made sense for her to be there, but some fans also took issue with one particular scene.

In January 2019 the website Autostraddle published an article about one particular scene when Eve slams Annalise about her alcoholism. The writer said, “To hear that from Eve, of all people, is really unfathomable. This was just awful, awful writing… It all just begs the question: Why did this show need Eve to come back anyway?”

The pairing of Lexa/Clarke is disliked because of what happened to them rather than the relationship itself. At first, the couple was utterly beloved. The two ladies, played by Eliza Taylor and Alycia Debnam-Carey, gained a large fandom of their very own. And then March 2016 came, and without warning Lexa was violently killed off.

Fans were so angry that they started a fundraising campaign in Lexa’s name. It called the writers of The 100 out for “the mishandling of a beloved fictional character (Lexa) who served as a beacon in the lives of many young LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ persons.” It actually ended up raising over $30,000 for suicide prevention charity The Trevor Project in the end.

In the original book series which formed the basis for Game of Thrones, neither Renly or Loras are ever explicitly stated as being gay. This changed for the TV series, and not everyone was happy. It wasn’t because the two of them were seen sleeping together – it was because of the stereotypical way it was all done.

The series took a lot of liberties almost immediately with Renly and Loras’ relationship. In the book series, each chapter is told from the point of view of a character, and Renly and Loras never have POV chapters. This means their relationship is only ever conveyed through the impressions that main characters have of it. There are no sex scenes between the two, or overt acknowledgments of either character’s sexual orientation made in the books.

After Willow’s beloved girlfriend Tara was killed, fans were furious. So perhaps it was understandable that they reacted to the next woman in Willow’s life, Kennedy, with something less than enthusiasm. The couple frequently tops lists of the worst relationships in the Buffy-verse and even the worst relationships on TV.

In 2016 Digital Spy ranked the Buffy couples and said of Willow/Kennedy, “Objectively, scientifically, the worst. It’s not that we wanted Willow to grieve for Tara forever. But when your girlfriend’s death is so devastating to you that you literally almost destroy the world, maybe it’s okay to take longer than a few months before leaping into a new relationship, y’know?”

Almost everyone on Glee seemed to couple up at some point. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it very much didn’t. Among the relationships considered to mark a low point in the show – there’s rather a lot of them – the coupling of Max Adler’s David Karofsky and Darren Criss’s Blaine Anderson is one of the most disliked.

In 2015 the website TVLine ranked Blaine/Karofsky the worst couple ever on Glee, writing, “Remember when Blaine moved back to Ohio and started dating the guy who made his ex-fiancé’s high school experience a living hell, then flaunted that relationship in Kurt’s face as if anyone would ever be able to handle something like that? Me neither. This never happened.”

Although the pairing of Piper and Alex wasn’t particularly popular, the pairing of Piper and Stella had even fewer fans. The audience of Orange is the New Black didn’t like Piper as a character, and were shocked to see her betray Alex. The Piper/Stella relationship proved completely disastrous, though.

In the end, Stella stole Piper’s money, and Piper took revenge by getting her ex-girlfriend sent down to Maximum Security. And after that, Stella pretty much disappeared from the show entirely. It was a messed-up relationship, no doubt. But on the other hand it did help catapult actress Ruby Rose, who was openly gay herself, into fame.