Heavy "Dancing With the Stars" alum turned down a big offer.
Suzanne Somers is best known for her roles on the ABC sitcoms “Three’s Company” and “Step by Step,” but 25 years ago she turned down the network’s offer for a role on one of the biggest daytime talk shows of all time.
In a May 2023 interview on the “Behind the Velvet Rope With David Yontef” podcast, the 76-year-old “Dancing With the Stars” alum revealed that she was offered a spot on the original lineup of “The View.” But there were two big reasons why Somers turned down the offer to return to ABC.
Suzanne Somers Revealed She Has No Regrets about Saying No to “The View”
GettySuzanne Somers.
Somers was in the middle of her run on “Step by Step, “ one of the hottest shows on ABC’s TGIF lineup, when “The View” premiered in 1997. But she could have been doing double duty with a sitcom and a daytime chatfest.
“I was originally asked to be on the original ‘View’ with Barbara Walters and whoever else, and I turned it down,” Somers told Yontef’s podcast. “And everyone said, ‘Why would you turn it down? It’s a national show.’ I said, ‘First of all, I’d have to live in New York, I don’t really want to live in New York. I like the weather down here. I like the vibe down here.’ …Secondly, I don’t do well vying for time.'”
“There you’ve got to interrupt and butt in and butt out,” she added. “And it’s just not my personality. So, I walked away from that, and I’ve never looked back. … ‘The View’ wasn’t the place for me then it’s not the place for me now.”
The original cast for ‘The View” featured Barbara Walters, Meredith Viera, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos. The show is still on the air more than 25 years later, but the panel has had a big turnover over the years. Somers has been a guest on “The View” three times since 2005, per IMDb.
Somers actually did have some talk show experience before being approached for “The View.” In 1994, she helmed her own self-titled talk show that featured guests such as Brian Austin Green and Marc Klaas, the father of kidnapped murder victim Polly Klaas.
Suzanne Somers Would Consider a “Three’s Company” Reboot
Getty“Three’s Company” stars Joyce DeWitt, John Ritter, and Suzanne Somers in1979/ John Ritter in 2002.
“The View “ isn’t the only show Somers isn’t interested in doing. In a 2022 interview on “Behind the Velvet Rope,” she revealed that she has no interest in ever joining Bravo’s “The Real Housewives” franchise. “It’s not my vibe,” she said at the time. “If I did that, I’d have to work for somebody else. Now we go into that problem, you know.”
But one thing she is interested in is a “Three’s Company” reboot of sorts. In the 2023 interview with Yontef, she confirmed that she’s been floating an idea of a reboot featuring a John Ritter hologram and the late actor’s son, Jason Ritter, playing the son of her character, Chrissy Snow, and John Ritter’s character, Jack Tripper.
“I think I could back like that,” she said. “I didn’t finish that character and it would be very interesting to bring John back as a hologram. But Jason is not interested.”
John Ritter died on September 11, 2003, after falling ill on the set of his ABC sitcom “8 Simple Rules … For Dating My Teenage Daughter.” The actor’s cause of death was later determined to be from an aortic dissection according to Newsweek. He was 54 years old.
READ NEXT: ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Makes Huge Change Ahead of Season 32