“Skidded across the floor on my belly”: The 2000s co-star Betty White “walloped” all the way to a chiropractor
The late Betty White would risk danger for the act of comedy.
White was on the cutting edge of the early comedy television shows in the 1950s that would define what contemporary sitcoms would look like for the next several decades, and although she had notable guest parts on everything from Saturday Night Live to The Marty Tyler Moore Show, her career reached a new level of success thanks to The Golden Girls, which became a phenomenon in its own right when it began in the 1980s.
She never backed down from opportunities, as she was working on new comedy projects up until the last decade of her life, proving her longevity in the game.
Even though The Golden Girls’ set was infamously riddled with feuds, White was generally remembered as being an agreeable collaborator and certainly a committed one. Her dedication to the art of comedy became somewhat notorious during the filming of an episode of Boston Legal, in which her co-star Leslie Jordan remembered being surprisingly intense.
“I did a TV series with her where she had to hit me with a skillet, a frying pan,” Jordan recalled, “She said to me, ‘I don’t wanna hit you with this’. I said, ‘Look Miss White, it’s just a trick skillet, it’s made out of rubber’, which must have given her permission to really go for it. Honest to God, she walloped me so hard I fell down and skidded across the floor on my belly! I had to go to a chiropractor for adjustments!”
While an amusing anecdote, it’s one of the innumerable strange occurrences on the set of Boston Legal, which is a show that had an interesting development history. The series was conceived as an offshoot of The Practice, the highly popular legal procedural series from creator David E Kelly, who discovered that the character of Alan Shore, played by James Spader, was popular enough that he could helm a spinoff show set in a different state.
Boston Legal brought over many cast members from The Practice, including William Shatner and Lake Bell, but it also developed a revolving ensemble of different actors who would appear for a few seasons, such as Taraji P Henson, Monica Potter, and Candice Bergen. Fans eventually agreed that this was the more entertaining, well-written counterpart, and it became one of the most reliable programmes in the history of ABC.
Additionally, for its stars, such as Spader, whose big-screen career hadn’t really taken off, despite his strong work in films like Bad Influence and Pretty in Pink, Boston Legal offered a consistent job that led him to many other television roles, and Shatner, who had often been lampooned for his over-the-top acting in the Star Trek franchise, used the same to fit right into his performance as the eccentric genius Denny Crane, which earned him several Emmy Awards.
White might have already been an icon way prior to the series, but funny incidents like that involving Jordan and the rubber skillet, as well as the fact that the show was airing at the same time as The Golden Girls reruns, helped connect her with younger audiences and became a comedy figure beloved by multiple generations.
