Ed O’Neill has recent bombshells about his longtime bitter feud along with his “Married…With Children” co-star Amanda Bearse.
The sitcom ran for 11 seasons on Fox, from 1987 to 1997, starring O’Neill, Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate.
O’Neill, 77 starred as family patriarch Al Bundy, married to Peg (Sagal), while Bearse, 65, played Marcy, their neighbor and Peg’s friend.
During a recent appearance on the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast of his former “Modern Family” co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, O’Neill shared that he had some “regrets” about his relationship with Bearse.
He also told Ferguson that if he didn’t develop into an actor, “The one thing that I could have done — and thank God I didn’t — was organized crime. Because I had friends in organized crime.”
In a 2013 interview with the Television Academy, O’Neill revealed that he and David Faustino were the one forged members who were excluded from the invite list when Bearse married her wife, businesswoman Carrie Schenken, in 2010.
When O’Neill confronted Bearse about being excluded from her wedding, in line with him, “[She said]: ‘This was a really tough call, but I just feel that you simply would find it amusing that me and Becky would are available tuxedos in a church and walk down the aisle, and also you and David could be snickering and finding it funny,’ ” he said, incorrectly recalling her wife’s name.
“I said, ‘Amanda, what’s funny about two women in tuxedos, walking right down to church?’ ” he continued.
“I began laughing and he or she said, ‘See!’ And I said, ‘Well, you realize why? Since it is f–king funny, and I’m not going to be the one one which doesn’t think so.’ However it was funny. She had a bit white tux and, to me, it was funny. But in other words, she may not have been improper in excluding me.”
In that same interview, he also said that he felt that Bearse, who was certainly one of the primary openly gay actors in Hollywood, “modified” when she became “more masculine.”
“When she started off she was gay — she was gay a protracted time — she was roughly the feminine within the couple,” O’Neill said. “She was very, very feminine and cute… The change took place where she was the more masculine of the 2… As she became more masculine, she became a bit more snarky. She could grow a tooth, as we used to say.”
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During his podcast interview with Ferguson, he further revealed the origins of his feud with Bearse.
”I did a thing on the show that involved Amanda Bearse that I regretted,” he explained.
“We didn’t get along, but we did for a very long time. We were great friends. And I could guess, I don’t wish to speak for her, but it surely began after we got the duvet of TV Guide.”
When the show was chosen to be on the TV Guide cover, Bearse and David Garrison were ignored, because they “were the neighbors” on the show, he said.
“We were lucky to get it. It was just like the sixth yr in or something, and we were thrilled to get the duvet of TV Guide. It was big. And Amanda and David got here out in unison from their dressing room,” he recalled.
“We were on the soundstage, and he or she said, ‘We expect you to go to [co-creator] Ron Leavitt and tell him this doesn’t work. We’re all on the duvet.’”
He didn’t try this, nonetheless, for fear that the chance could be taken away.
Ferguson asked O’Neill if he wishes he could return in time and advocate for her. “Yeah, I’d have,” he said.
“And that’s my regret.”