In TV series and movies, characters often die, and we are actually used to it thanks to Game of Thrones. However, it is not always the scriptwriters’ fault, but we always blame them in cases like this. Behind-the-scenes scandals, low viewer ratings, and even the death of the actors themselves are often the reasons why our favorite characters leave the screens.
We at Bright Side have done investigations of 10 character murders and found that behind the deaths of some of them, there is something deeper than we initially thought. So, if you find some of the actors absolutely unbearable while reading the article, don’t jump to conclusions: the bonus part may change your opinion.
Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), Sex and the City
The fans of Sex and the City were really happy when they heard the news that a new season will be released soon: in 2020. However, we knew that it was all too good to be true. And the producers disappointed the viewers with some terrible news: Samantha Jones would no longer be on the show.
Kim Cattrall, who played Samantha, is 62 years old now and she explained why she left the show. She said that it was time to put the work behind her. This story seems very simple: the actress just wants to be retired, but there are some people that think she has a difficult relationship with Sarah Jessica Parker.
The new season has not been released yet, but we already know that Samantha Jones will be dead in it and we’ll have to wait until 2020 to find out how it happens.
Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan), Desperate Housewives
Initially, Edie Britt was supposed to be a supporting character but the critics like her so much that the show creators decided to give Edie more screen time. Nicollette Sheridan was a desperate housewife for 5 years before she said she was leaving the show and Edie Britt was killed.
The creator of the show Marc Cherry said that the actress had to leave because the show didn’t have enough money and Nicollette was not happy with her salary that was lower than the other “housewives.” But the actress claims that the true reason for her departure was her complaint about Cherry who allegedly hit her during the shooting process.
Martin Riggs (Clayne Crawford), Lethal Weapon
The star of Lethal Weapon was fired because of his regular arguments and conflicts with colleagues. And the producing company did this on Crawford’s day off, so he found out he was fired from the media.
After this happened, Crawford apologized on his Instagram page and described the incidents that got him fired. Later, the actor admitted that he didn’t think he could be fired because of his behavior on set.
Clayne Crawford’s character’s path didn’t end well, either: while Martin Riggs was visiting his wife’s grave, he was shot in the chest.
Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy), Hannibal
The last scene gave us the goosebumps: was the fight between these 2 completely different people truly over? The viewers didn’t want to believe that they were dead and after the scene, everyone still hoped that Graham and Lecter would be back in the next season.
And all of their hopes were destroyed when the studio announced that filming of the show had been stopped because of low ratings on network television. In fact, Hannibal had had trouble with ratings ever since the first season started, but the fans asked for a new season.
The Hollywood Reporter claims that the producers had planned to introduce Clarice Starling in season 4, who you might remember from The Silence of the Lambs. Does this mean that Hannibal managed to survive because he and Clarice are somehow connected? Unless the show is renewed, we will never know the answer.
Aaron Hotch (Thomas Gibson), Criminal Minds
Thomas Gibson was able to get away with his aggressive behavior on set for a long time because he was the star of Criminal Minds. Apparently, Gibson, just like Crawford didn’t believe he could be fired for a bad attitude.
In the beginning, he was given a few second chances and he was sent to an anger management course without being suspended from work. But the last straw happened when Thomas Gibson allegedly hit scriptwriter Virgil Macey Williams.
Obviously, there are lines that nobody has the right to cross. Gibson crossed the line and after an internal investigation, he was fired and the character left the show.
Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand), The Sopranos
Some characters leave shows for far more serious reasons than scandals and bad behavior. Nancy Marchand played the mother of Tony Soprano from 2000 until she died from cancer and panlobular emphysema. She died just one day before she turned 72 years old.
Marchand managed to create an example of a terrible mother on TV. She was so good at playing a bad mother that Livia Soprano actually became the 3rd best TV-villain of all time, according to Rolling Stone.
When Nancy Marchand died, the producers didn’t expect it and there were still a lot of episodes that had been planned with her in them, but it was impossible to shoot them. For the last scene where Livia talks to Tony, they had to hire a different actress and create a computer generated face for her. Not everyone liked this decision, but the death of such an important character had to be shown on screen.
Maude Flanders (Maggie Roswell), The Simpsons
The death of Maude Flanders was a shock for everyone because she had been the Simpsons’ neighbor for so many years. Nobody expected that Maude could just disappear so suddenly.
Cartoon characters are not played by actual actors since they are animated, but they are voiced. The voice of Maude Flanders was given to her by Maggie Roswell who left The Simpsons because of a salary dispute.
Roswell asked for a raise to be able to afford weekly trips from her house in Denver to the Los-Angeles studio for the recording (the distance is about 1,000 miles). Instead of the money she wanted, she only got $150 from the FOX company, so Roswell left the show and so did Maude Flanders when she fell off the stadium stands.
Kate Wales (Selma Blair), Anger Management
The tension between Charlie Sheen and Selma Blair was so strong that it led to her getting fired in 2013.
Sheen demanded that she be fired because of the complaints that Blair made to the bosses behind Charlie’s back. She didn’t like the fact that the actor was often late for rehearsals and took too much time to learn the script.
But according to Insider the show decided to protect Charlie Sheen, who had to learn more than 40 pages of lines per episode. And Selma, on the other hand, had way less text to learn since she appeared in less than half of the scenes of every episode.
Steve Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada), Breaking Bad
Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez who were on the show from the very first season were killed in the same episode. We really loved the characters and each of them deserved a couple of scenes where the viewers would have enough time to say goodbye to the policemen. Hank did get a chance to do this but Gomez died off-screen.
After the episode was shown, Steven Michael Quezada woke up to hundreds of messages, e-mails, and tweets where people were sorry about his character’s death. But Quezada thinks that his death was the best one in the show because he wasn’t dissolved in acid and his throat wasn’t slit.
The creators had to kill Steve off-screen because the show was coming to the end and there was not enough time to kill his character. They still had to show a lot of plot twists and they had to sacrifice something, so Gomez was one of the sacrifices.
Susan Ross (Heidi Swedberg), Seinfeld
What could be worse than dying by poisoning with the glue from your own wedding invitations? In the comedy show Seinfeld, the unfortunate bride, Susan Ross, was overwhelmed with having to lick the envelopes her wedding invitations would be sent in and she died by adhesive poisoning from the envelopes before her wedding.
The creators had to do this because Heidi Swedberg decided to leave the show. She was “impossible to work with.” Her colleague Jason Alexander felt that he and Heidi were never on the same page.
In the scenes where Swedberg and Alexander were together, they always had trouble, but Jason actually loved Heidi as a person. Of course, it wasn’t just Alexander who had trouble with her. The other actors also didn’t find working with her easy, so nobody was surprised when she was fired.
Chef (Isaac Hayes), South Park
Chef is the charismatic chef from the school cafeteria that gave the children of South Park valuable life advice. The character was voiced by iconic singer Isaac Hayes for 9 years. He was part of the show from the very first episode.
Isaac left South Park soon after the episode was released where Scientology was mocked. This was because he actually supports Scientology. He thought that the regular satire that was always on South Park turned into intolerance in the episode about Scientology.
The creator of the show, Matt Stone, didn’t understand Isaac because during the 10 years and more than 150 episodes, Hayes was totally fine with the show laughing about Christians, Muslims, Jews, and everyone else. We don’t know if the creators and Isaac still have a good relationship but the life of Chef didn’t end well, to say the least.
Bonus: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog are the best enemies.
This is a story where the difficult personality of an actor didn’t stop him from making a movie, but the shooting process for the crew was a true nightmare.
The 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God was shot in the Amazon rainforest. Together with members of the crew, the very toxic actor, Klaus Kinski, was “trapped” there. The film became a true masterpiece, but it could have easily ended up in a disaster because of what the main star did on the set.
The director of the film, Werner Herzog, and Kinski had different opinions about what the main character should be like. After Herzog insisted on his ideas, Kinski started terrorizing the entire crew: he would become irritated because of very small things, he’d yell at the extras, he hit another actor on the head with a sword, he yelled at the director, and he didn’t try to control his emotions.
Aguirre, the Wrath of God was finished despite all the pain, nerves, and blood. And Herzog and Kinski worked together several more times. 8 years after the actor died, Herzog shot a film My Best Friend: Klaus Kinski as a tribute to the talent of Klaus Kinski and their strange chemistry.
Have you ever had such unbearable colleagues? What did you do in order to endure putting up with them?
Preview photo credit Sex and the city / HBO
SOURCE: BRIGHTSIDE
Kayode Emmanuel Ojo is the Co-Founder and Managing Director at SHEFFA Limited. He is presently studying Computer Science at the National Open University, Victoria Island, Lagos.