Another rare venture into the TNG forum for nostalgia's sake on the part of one of this board's "older" posters Anyhow, I was a bit surprised to hear a certain GHSS person reveal that she actually quit on the second season on the issue of mother-child relationships. Whatever happened to all the previous talk of her getting fired for not acquiescing to a particular writer's (Hurley, I believe) potential sexual advances on her or something?
Well, obviously there are several versions of what happened. Choose the one you're comfortable with, since you won't find one you can prove is the real story.
Also, it could be that Gates was using a more diplomatic/neutral way of describing what happened, after all in front of hundreds at a convo is not necessarily the best time to discuss details of a harassment situation.
The actors on five-year contracts (ie. everyone except Diana Muldaur) weren't at liberty to "quit" even if they wanted to. They had to seek early release from their contract, as per Denise Crosby and Wil Wheaton. Those releases were very public knowledge. McFadden's was a very public "not being renewed". If she'd tried to quit, she'd have been taken to court, such as happened to Farrah Fawcett-Majors on "Charlie's Angels". Farrah was ordered, by the court, to return for a number of guest spots to make up for her absence in Season Two. Thus, Gates McFadden was fired from TNG. The quote says, "as being the result of a disagreement with one particular writer, whose departure paved the way for her return". In other words, McFadden's constant complaining that the writers were not serving her character's needs, as she perceived them, plus the hair debacles (that was solved in Season Three by a set of very expensive wigs) led to complaints that she was "difficult", and her contract not being renewed. Renewal was always from Paramount's end, not McFadden's. To not be invited back is to be fired. (She's simply found a polite way of wording it at conventions so it doesn't sound bad; it's hardly helpful to her career to keep talking about being fired from a show she happily went back to after certain staff had left.) Sure, there may have also been some sexual tension in the workplace - who knows? it's Hollywood - but no one has ever come out and pointed the finger officially, IIRC. It was known that McFadden and Hurley did not like each other. And also that, when any of the main actors had a complaint on set in Season Two, they would all recite in unison, "Remember Gates!" (This was widely reported at conventions of the day.)
^^^ So, did Hurley "resign" from his position "effective at noon" as of such and such date? What hair debacles? She used her real hair in Season 7.
Red hair is really fine and light and dosen't hold up well under intense studio lights for several hours a day.
Exactly. In Season One, Gates McFadden was being blamed (rather unfairly) for production delays. Under the hot lights in Season One, her hair very quickly lost the style it had been set in, and she often had to be whisked away to have her hair rewashed and reset so that her hair wasn't a source of continuity problems. On a set already plagued with a revolving door of writing and production staff, tight schedules, and several of the actors complaining that their characters didn't have enough to do, or the right things to say, it would have been an added budgetry problem that saw the blame shift to the actress herself. When she returned in Season Three, a series of very expensive red wigs were supplied, to reassure her that that particular problem was resolved. If McFadden used her own hair in Season Seven, then she found some new solutions. Note that she went shorter and blonder for the movies.