Ed O’Neill has new bombshells about his longtime bitter feud with his “Married…With Children” co-star Amanda Bearse.
The sitcom ran for 11 seasons on Fox, from 1987 to 1997, starring O’Neill, Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate.
O’Neill, 77 starred as family patriarch Al Bundy, married to Peg (Sagal), while Bearse, 65, played Marcy, their neighbor and Peg’s friend.
During a recent appearance on the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast of his former “Modern Family” co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, O’Neill shared that he had some “regrets” about his relationship with Bearse.
He also told Ferguson that if he didn’t become an actor, “The only thing that I could have done — and thank God I didn’t — was organized crime. Because I had friends in organized crime.”
In a 2013 interview with the Television Academy, O’Neill revealed that he and David Faustino were the only cast members who were excluded from the invite list when Bearse married her wife, businesswoman Carrie Schenken, in 2010.
When O’Neill confronted Bearse about being excluded from her wedding, according to him, “[She said]: ‘This was a very tough call, but I just feel that you would find it amusing that me and Becky would come in tuxedos in a church and walk down the aisle, and you and David would be snickering and finding it funny,’ ” he said, incorrectly recalling her wife’s name.
“I said, ‘Amanda, what is funny about two women in tuxedos, walking down to church?’ ” he continued.
“I started laughing and she said, ‘See!’ And I said, ‘Well, you know why? Because it is f–king funny, and I’m not going to be the only one that doesn’t think so.’ But it was funny. She had a little white tux and, to me, it was funny. But in other words, she may not have been wrong in excluding me.”
In that same interview, he also said that he felt that Bearse, who was one of the first openly gay actors in Hollywood, “changed” when she became “more masculine.”
“When she started out she was gay — she was gay a long time — she was more or less the female in the couple,” O’Neill said. “She was very, very feminine and cute… The change took place where she was the more masculine of the two… As she became more masculine, she became a little more snarky. She could grow a tooth, as we used to say.”
Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
During his podcast interview with Ferguson, he further revealed the origins of his feud with Bearse.
”I did a thing on the show that involved Amanda Bearse that I regretted,” he explained.
“We didn’t get along, but we did for a long time. We were great friends. And I could guess, I don’t want to speak for her, but it started when we got the cover of TV Guide.”
When the show was selected to be on the TV Guide cover, Bearse and David Garrison were left out, because they “were the neighbors” on the show, he said.
“We were lucky to get it. It was like the sixth year in or something, and we were thrilled to get the cover of TV Guide. It was big. And Amanda and David came out in unison from their dressing room,” he recalled.
“We were on the soundstage, and she said, ‘We expect you to go to [co-creator] Ron Leavitt and tell him this doesn’t work. We’re all on the cover.’”
He didn’t do that, however, for fear that the opportunity would be taken away.
Ferguson asked O’Neill if he wishes he could go back in time and advocate for her. “Yeah, I would have,” he said.
“And that’s my regret.”
