Bette Midler Calls 'Bette' Sitcom a 'Big Mistake,' Regrets Not Suing Lindsay Lohan for Leaving

justjared.com:

Bette Midler is looking back on her early 2000s sitcom Bette. The 78-year-old actress starred in and executive produced the one season CBS comedy, and in a recent podcast interview, she opened up about her regrets surround the series, including not suing a then 14-year-old Lindsay Lohan. Keep reading to find out more… “I did a television show, Bette.

Does it get any more generic than that?” she joked on David Duchovny‘s Fail Better podcast. “A big, big, big mistake.” While Bette says she was “kicked to the curb” and un-allowed to “take charge” of the series, she believes it “would have worked” if it weren’t for a few factors, like Lindsay‘s exit after the pilot episode.

Reportedly, at the time, Bette wanted the show to film in Los Angeles instead of New York City, where Lindsay lived.

The teen actress did not want to commute to LA from NYC for the length of time the show’s commitment would require. “Lindsay Lohan was cast as my daughter,” Bette shared. “Well, after the pilot, Lindsay Lohan decided she didn’t want to do it, or she had other fish to fry. “So Lindsay Lohan left the building, and I said, ‘Well, now what do you do?’ And the studio didn’t help me,” she continued, adding it “was extremely chaotic.” Bette then added that she regrets not taking legal action against Lindsay for leaving, who would have been under contract to appear in the series. “If I had been in my right mind, or if I had known that my part of my duties were to stand up and say, ‘This absolutely will not do, I’m going to sue,’ then I would have done that,” the Hocus Pocus star said. “But I seem to have been cosseted in some way that I couldn’t get to the writer’s room.