10 Actors Who Now Hate Their Own TV Shows
6. Denise Crosby - Star Trek: The Next Generation
Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) was the Enterprise's Chief of Security in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was generally well-received by fans.
Disappointed they were, then, when the character was suddenly killed off at the end of the season, as a result of Crosby being dissatisfied with her role on the show. Crosby said:
"I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn't want to spend the next six years going 'Aye, aye, captain,' and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years.
I think you have to take your chances. I was really young. I didn’t have to make house payments or put kids through private school or support people. I was free to make those kinds of decisions. I'd been in acting school really dreaming of playing all kinds of different things. Whether it'll happen or not, you don’t know, but you’ve got to give yourself a chance. God forbid you go through your life thinking, 'What if?'"
Ultimately Crosby's movie career never took off and she did eventually return for a handful of appearances throughout TNG's tenure, though Crosby was also fortunate enough to be the granddaughter of American singer Bing Crosby, and therefore didn't need the role to support herself.
Crosby has insisted that there was no animosity between her and the show's cast or crew, but simply that she was frustrated with Tasha Yar's creative direction. Considering how rough the first season of TNG was, it's actually pretty hard to blame her.