TV Shows' Behind-the-Scenes Drama: Cast Feuds, Quotes, More

It’s called acting, people. Some of our favorite television shows have put us through many emotional roller coasters over the years, and it turns out their emotions were also running high … behind the scenes. Shows like Glee and Sex and the City not only gave viewers drama on screen but also provided it years after their time on television.

Fans practically rejoiced after Sex and the City announced they were reviving the steamy series in 2021, but someone major seemed to be missing when And Just Like That as the costars promoted the show. That’s right, the one and only Samantha Jones — played by Kim Cattrall — did not return for the HBO Max series. Considering she was that girl in SATC (sorry, Carrie), fans wondered why she was not a part of the updated version of the show.

“We’ve never been friends,” Kim revealed about her Sex and the City costars during a 2017 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “We’ve been colleagues, and in some ways, it’s a very healthy place to be.”

Grey’s Anatomy may have experienced more drama behind the scenes than its ongoing curveballs since premiering in 2005. Patrick Dempsey was the original star of the show, but his character, Derek Shepherd a.k.a. McDreamy, was written out of the show after 11 seasons.

“There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set,” executive produces James D. Parriott said in How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy.

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“Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him,” he continued. “He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people. The network and studio came down, and we had sessions with them,” he continued. “I think he was just done with the show. He didn’t like the inconvenience of coming in every day and working.”

Patrick even admitted that he was starting to get over the grueling hours on set during the end of his time on the show. “[Doing the show for] eleven years is challenging. But you have to be grateful, because you’re well compensated, so you can’t really complain because you don’t really have a right,” he said.

Keep scrolling to see what television shows had major behind-the-scenes drama!

‘Euphoria’

Barbie Ferreira, who played Kat Hernandez, and the show’s director, Sam Levinson, reportedly had beef after an anonymous online posted a tip in January 2022. The post claimed that Barbie left the set after an argument with Sam and also had lines cut out of season 2.

Although Barbie said the rumors were “untrue” during a March 2022 interview with Insider, she announced her exit from the show five months later.

“After four years of getting to embody the most special and enigmatic character Kat, I’m having to say a very teary-eyed goodbye,” she wrote via Instagram Stories on August 24, 2022. “I hope many of you could see yourself in her like I did and that she brought you joy to see her journey into the character she is today.”

‘One Tree Hill’

Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray, who played Brooke Davis and Lucas Scott, got married in 2005 but went through a nasty divorce less than a year later. The John Tucker Must Die actress revealed that production homed in on their drama for ratings, creating a toxic work environment.

“They ran, like, TV ads about it, it was really ugly,” she said during a 2018 appearance on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast. “They made practice of taking advantage of people’s personal lives and not just for me and for my ex, for other actors on the show who would share as you do when you get close to people,” she continued. “Deeply personal things that were happening in their lives and they would wind up in storylines. It wasn’t OK.”

‘Charmed’

Fight like sisters. The storyline of the TNT series about three witch sisters changed during the show’s entirety. When the show premiered in 1998, Alyssa Milano and Shannen Doherty were the main sisters. However, Shannen ended up hating Alyssa so much that she was dropped from the cast after the third season.

‘Grey’s Anatomy’

On top of the McDreamy drama, other costars have been accused of inappropriate behavior. Isaiah Washington got fired in 2007 after he called Patrick a “f–got” in front of costar T.R. Knight, who later came out as gay. Ellen Pompeo weighed in on the drama during an interview with the New York Post in 2013, saying things spun “out of control.”

“Hurt feelings, combined with instant success and huge paychecks started things spinning out of control,” she said at the time. “The crazier things got, as I watched all the tumult with Isaiah and then the Katie thing, I started to focus on the work. Maybe it’s my Boston, blue-collar upbringing … I just tried to not pay attention to all the noise around me.”

‘Sex and the City’

Sarah Jessica Parker also shared her side on working with Kim, calling her statements “painful” to hear. “I’ve spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody on the set, to take care of people, to be responsible to and for people, both my employers and the people that I feel I’m responsible for as a producer of the show,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2022. “And there just isn’t anyone else who’s ever talked about me this way.”

‘Glee’

Time for the dramatics! Well, they were theater teens after all. Many costars from the hit FOX show shared their negative experiences acting with Lea Michele. The late Naya Rivera touched on the topic in her memoir, Sorry Not Sorry, claiming that she thought the Funny Girl star “didn’t like sharing the spotlight.”

“On top of that, she had a hard time separating work from our outside friendship. It seemed like she blamed me for anything and everything that went wrong,” she said. “If I’d complained about anyone or anything, she assumed I was bitching about her. Soon she started to ignore me, and eventually it got to the point where she didn’t say a word to me for all of season 6.”