After 10 years of playing Al Bundy Married… with childrenEd O’Neill found out the show was being canceled the same way most viewers did: from a stranger on the street.
In the last episode of the podcast MeSsy with Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn SiglerO’Neill, 78, sat down with the co-hosts to discuss his time playing Applegate’s father on the show and how he learned it was coming to an end.
“I went back to my hometown, and I was in this little bed and breakfast… and it was a beautiful day. It was spring and I went out[side] …and they had gardens, you know, and it was such a beautiful day,” O’Neill recalled to Applegate, 52, and Sigler, 43, setting the scene.
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Christina Applegate and Ed O’Neill in 2012.
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“A car pulled up with ‘Just Married’ things hanging off the back of, you know, cans… and I thought, ‘Oh, they, you know, just got married.’ So I was standing there and they got out of the car and it was a husband and wife,” he said Modern family the star recalled.
He continued: “She was in a dress and he was in a tuxedo. And he said, ‘Oh my God. It’s Al Bundy, in Ohio.’ And I said, ‘Yes. congratulations You got married.’ ”
It didn’t take long for the joy to turn into an awkward moment. “The woman said, ‘We’re so sorry about your show,'” O’Neill said. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And the guy said, ‘Oh my God, he doesn’t know.’
Despite the shocking moment, O’Neill said he still joined the happy couple for some champagne to celebrate their marriage. “They said, ‘Oh, we’re so sorry,’ and I said, ‘I’d rather hear it from you.’ so yes. I went inside. I love champagne.”
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Christina Applegate and Ed O’Neill on ‘Married… with Children’ in the 1990s.
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Married… with children followed the working-class, marital, and growing-up struggles of a suburban Chicago family that included Al Bundy (O’Neill), his wife Peggy (Katey Sagal), their daughter Kelly (Applegate), and their son Bud (David Faustino). .
Applegate also remembers being blindsided by the news. “I found out from a guy who knew a guy who was working for my assistant at the time. That’s how I found out. They never called us – she interjected.
Adding to his disappointment, O’Neill said he never received his “last show gift” from the network. “I said, ‘I thought Golden girls they got Mercedes-Benzes when they did their last show,’ which they did,” the actor said. “I never received a gift.”
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