Bette Midler Wishes She Had Sued 14-Year-Old Lindsay Lohan
Bette Midler still holds a grudge against Lindsay Lohan for the demise of her 2000 sitcom Bette.
The show ran for one season on CBS, and Lohan was originally playing Midler's daughter in the pilot episode.
"Lindsay Lohan was cast as my daughter in the pilot. 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?" Midler said on David Duchovny's Fail Better podcast.
Though Midler was a producer on the show at the time, she wasn't confident enough to take further action against Lohan for leaving the show.
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"I didn’t realize what the pace was, and I didn’t understand what the hierarchy was, and no one bothered to tell me. Well, I was kicked to the curb immediately and I didn’t know what to do about it…" the actor said.
"I didn’t know that I could have taken charge, that I could have asserted, because I think because I was so terrified of being branded a grandstander," Midler explained, insinuating that she could have sued Lohan for leaving the show and causing it to tank.
At the time, Lohan was 14 years old and had just made her debut in The Parent Trap in 1998 before starring in the TV movie Life-Size with Tyra Banks.
After she left Bette, she went on to star in the Disney Channel Original Movie Get a Clue and later Freaky Friday and Mean Girls.
Midler also noted that, in general, the sitcom was, "a big, big mistake. I think for several reasons."
"It was a part of the media I simply did not understand. I watched it. I appreciated it. it, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know what it meant to make [a TV series]," Midler continued.
She added, "I had made theatrical live events, I had made films, I had made variety television shows, I had been on talk shows, but I had never done a situation comedy."
Meanwhile, it seems like there's no bad blood on Lohan's end, as she shared a throwback photo with Midler on Instagram on May 2.
"Had such a blast filming with the incredible @bettemidler," she wrote in the caption.
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Gallery Credit: Jessica Norton