The Laverne & Shirley Behind-The-Scenes Feud Story You Have All Wrong

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Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams' chemistry on "Laverne & Shirley" was contagious. It helped shoot the '70s sitcom and its main stars to the top of the charts, where they stayed until it all came crashing down with Williams' abrupt exit in 1982. Soon enough, the sudden end of the popular show was attributed to tension behind the scenes. But the truth about Marshall and Williams' relationship was more nuanced than that, and both dismissed talks of a feud. "That was rumors. Any show you work on for eight years, you're gonna argue at some point. Way overblown," Marshall told Fox News in 2013.

Williams agreed, though not as emphatically. "Yes, it was a bit overblown," she said, adding that she and her co-star had "very different personalities." A couple of years later, Williams once again pointed to some on-set disagreement but also emphasized that it wasn't as big of a deal as the public made it out to be. "It's like an Italian family at a dinner table on Sunday, and somebody doesn't pass the celery properly. There's always going to be arguments," she told Entertainment Tonight in 2015.

Clearly, there was tension. But it wasn't personal. "There was a lot of pressure on us. Did tempers flare? Yeah, from every direction. But it was a show about happiness, and in the end, that was everyone's goal," Williams said. While the late comedians agreed that it was blown way out of proportion, Williams' exit caused a rift in their real-life friendship. However, they both also denied that their behind-the-scenes dynamics had anything to do with the reason "Laverne & Shirley" ended. 

Cindy Williams' exit caused Penny Marshall to grow distant after the end of "Laverne & Shirley." But the issues that led to her departure were more complex than a clash of personalities. For starters, Williams had shown discontentment with the show's creative process from the beginning, with one complaint being that her material wasn't funny enough. In fact, she walked away in 1976, agreeing to return only after a different writer was brought in. "Laverne, the cynic, was easier to write for than Shirley, the idealist. That's when I really started to get unhappy," she told TV Guide in 1977.

Her feelings about Shirley never fully resolved and played a role in her decision to walk away in 1982. But it wasn't the sole reason. Williams also got married to Bill Hudson (yes, Kate Hudson's estranged father) and got pregnant that same year. The latter apparently caused issues with producers. "When it came time for me to sign my contract for that season, they had me working on my due date to have my baby and I said, 'I can't sign this,'" Williams said in a 2015 "Today" interview (via People).

Amid all this, Hudson reportedly became increasingly involved in the show, taking over Williams' communication channels with her castmates, including Marshall. "It wasn't Cindy," Marshall said in an Archive of American Television interview. But she felt blindsided and betrayed when Williams walked away. However, they reconciled in the late '90s, with Marshall putting it all down to miscommunication. "We got together at my house and had the conversation I wished I'd been able to have fifteen years earlier," she wrote in her 2012 memoir, "My Mother Was Nuts" (via MeTV).