Inside the wild Married With Children set: Gun-waving Sam Kinison once had strippers serve lunch
In 1989, Sam Kinison was a guest star on the fourth season of “Married … with Children.” Years before, he had been offered the role of Al Bundy on the sitcom, and it soon became apparent that the show’s producers were very lucky he’d turned the lead role down.On his first day on set, Kinison mooned the cast and crew, a move so poorly received that he invited everyone to his birthday dinner at Spago to make amends.
The following day, Kinison was late to the set and apologized by having strippers serve lunch to the cast.One night, he also waved a gun and threatened to shoot director Gerry Cohen after he went to Kinison’s house at a late hour looking for his girlfriend, who was friendly with the erratic comedian.“His attention-getting antics on the stage made working with him a challenge and provided some eye-opening examples of what he would have been like to work with on a regular basis,” writes Richard Gurman in his new book, “Married … with Children vs.
The World: The Inside Story of the Shock-Com that Launched Fox and Changed TV Comedy Forever” (Permuted Press, out April 23).Gurman, who served as a writer and producer on the long-running series, shares how creators Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye initially pitched the show as “Imagine if Roseanne Barr married Sam Kinison and they had kids.” But, the duo didn’t actually want to work with either volatile star, and they were horrified when the show’s production studio unsuccessfully offered them the Al and Peg Bundy roles.
“We never liked working with comedians, because they come in with their character already.What were we going to do, tell Roseanne how to do her ‘domestic goddess’ thing? We were gonna tell Sam Kinison how to do his thing? There’d be fighting all the time,” Moye says in the book. Casting director Marc Hirschfeld auditioned many actors for Al Bundy, including comedian Michael Richards.
Hirschfeld describes his audition as “very odd,” though it was Hirsch...