For all the compromisesMarried… with Childrenforced upon me with regard to my self-image, it was still my home away from home.
Creating a show took a week; we’d rehearse Monday through Thursday and then tape in front of a live audience each Friday. Most days I didn’t have to be at work until 10 a.m., so my mom would bring my breakfast up to my room on a tray. She would make tofu scramble and a piece of toast and pour me a glass of pineapple juice. My mom would hand me the juice and say, “Let’s wake up your mouth, Tini,” and once my eyes had adjusted to the day, we’d sit on my bed and watchThe Brady Bunchwhile I ate—we did that every morning for years, until I moved out.
Years we did that.
Years.
My mouth suitably energized, I’d head to rehearsal to join my other family. I was with that cast all week, and in effect I was raised by my mother, Ed O’Neill, Katey Sagal, and the rest of the adults on that cast and crew. In recent years, I’ve said about both Ed and Katey, “If people don’t like me, you can blame them. And if people like me, you can blame them, too.”
Ed was somewhat rough around the edges but incredibly funny. He’s from Youngstown, Ohio, blue-collar, but he wasn’t the hand-down-the-pants, Al Bundy kind of person. He was classy, not to mention a very smart, well-trained actor. He’s still my dear friend, and I know that if I want to spend a couple of hours on the phone silently listening to a lovely human wax lyrical about every single thing under the sun, all I have to do is take his call, which of course I always do.
As for Katey Sagal, I’ll never forget walking into the rehearsal studio for the first time. At the time, there were multiple spaces in one building where Columbia Pictures Television had all their rehearsal studios, for shows likeWho’s the Boss?andDiff’rent StrokesandMarried…and many others.
I was fifteen years old and Katey was thirty, and I thought she was so hot. There she was, wearing the perfect pair of jeans, and there I was, a weird hippie girl with bells on my ankles. I wanted to look like Katey—tall with long thin legs and what I considered to be perfect boobs. I was enamored with her coolness. She’d put on those little heels, and she’d shimmy and do a Bette Midler walk across the stage and thereby create an indelible character—in fact, the show had four iconic characters (Al, Peggy, Bud, and Kelly) by the time it came to an end.
Offstage, Katey chain-smoked, and she originally smoked in the show, too, although that was eventually banned. The rehearsal studios were all jammed together in one building, and when we’d take our breaks, we’d head out to the hallway to throw a football around. Katey would light up, projecting an effortless cool. One day we were throwing the ball back and forth and the iconic Cloris Leachman came striding down the hallway—she was rehearsing a differentshow down the way. Cloris was a teeny, tiny little thing with a gorgeous ballet chest, shoulders back, poised. She walked with authority.
She took one look at me and announced, “You need to stop playing football and you need to stop smoking!”
In my head I thought,Whatever.But what I said out loud was, “I’m not smoking. Tell Katey. Don’t talk to me about it.”
Katey looked at Cloris and brushed her off.
“Yeah, yeah, okay…”
And that was that. Cloris left, and Katey kept smoking. Katey was a very tough, beautiful earth mother who had lived through so much stuff, and was just grateful to be alive. She wasn’t about to have anyone tell her what to do, not even a legend like Cloris Leachman.
Our set had a wonderful atmosphere. It was fun; it was funny. These were the people I spent all day with every day. We were a bunch of broken people—beautiful, broken people, raising each other, regardless of our different ages. We were doing something no one had done sinceAll in the Family,a show that had been centered on antiheroes, just as ours was.
Sarcastic was our “love language.” We didn’t have deep conversations about life outright, but wegoteach other. Katey knew what I was going through outside the set. She didn’t have to talk to me about it; she was just there. Ed would kick anyone’s ass to protect me. I knew that they had my back. I didn’t tell them very much about what I was going through—I didn’t really tell anyone; I never have, until now, in these pages—but my family atMarried… with Childrenjust knew, in the way that families know. They knew to protect me without me even seeing it at the time.
I always remember this exchange from the show: Peggy asks Al, “What are you thinking?” Al says, “If I wanted you to know, I’d betalking.” That sums up the show and the people and, honestly, my life.
But for a while I did feel a bit left out by everybody onMarried…Back then, I didn’t like snark, if you can believe it. I didn’t cuss, except to myself in my diary. I didn’t like bad things being said about other people, and I didn’t like negative talk. Just as in any workplace, there would be gossip and people talking behind others’ backs, but I would walk away when it started, like I was somehow above it. I was trying to uphold some kind of decorum, to eradicate the mess I felt inside. I think inadvertently I made them feel bad. (These days, I’m Mistress Snark.)
The truth was, I was in my own space, in my own head. I would write,
Wednesday, May 31, 1989
Can’t really tell how I’m feeling at this moment. A bit paranoid, a bit down, a bit giddy. But for some strange reason it all doesn’t seem real. I’m alive, but right now I don’t feel real. For the last 3 hours I’ve been fading into oblivion.
Madness
Pounding in my brain
Why, I don’t know
Will you please hold me
Because I’m insane.
And I don’t know what to do.
How can I be happy one moment
And feel like dying in the other?
I’m sure everyone on set knew something was wrong.
