8 Actors Who Scared Other Actors So Much They Forgot Their Lines
4. Bea Arthur Scared Estelle Getty - The Golden Girls
Much has been written about the various feuds which unfolded among the central acting quartet on the classic NBC sitcom The Golden Girls, but one of the more fascinating allusions involves Estelle Getty's apparent fear of co-star Bea Arthur.
In a 2007 interview with one of the show's stars, Rue McClanahan, she suggested that Getty's infamy for forgetting her lines while shooting the show - enough that they often had to reshoot her scenes once the studio audience left - was due to her being "unconsciously intimidated" by Bea Arthur. McClanahan said:
"We stayed after the audience left and reshot all of her scenes. It was grinding. It was hard. Poor little thing - Estelle was so humiliated and embarrassed. And then when we went on to do [spin-off] Golden Palace, she didn't have that problem anymore. And I began to think perhaps it was Bea Arthur's influence because she wasn't on Golden Palace. I think she was somehow unconsciously intimidated by Bea... Once Bea was out of the picture, Estelle wasn't scared anymore."
McClanahan did admit it could've been entirely coincidental that Getty could remember her lines when Arthur wasn't there, but as she notes that Getty similarly had no problem with her lines in the subsequent sitcom Empty Nest, it doesn't take much reading between the, uh, lines, to see what was giving her mental block.