Actors Who Got Their Co-Stars Fired

Although the TV world has certainly changed its tune about actress Shannen Doherty as a result of her brave public battle with breast cancer, the actress has made more than her fair share of enemies around Hollywood over the years. One such foe is Tori Spelling, daughter of the legendary '90s television executive Aaron Spelling, who allegedly had her fired from the set of Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990-2000) after a particularly brutal day of feuding between Doherty and co-star Jennie Garth.

Tori admitted during Tori Spelling: Celebrity Lie Detector (via Entertainment Tonight) that she was responsible for having Doherty fired after Season 4, saying, "I remember I could hear the door fly open and everyone screaming and crying. That's when I was told the boys just had to break up Jennie [Garth] and Shannen. It was like a fist fight." Tori reportedly turned her to powerful dad and told him to put an end to the madness, saying,  "I felt like I was a part of something, a movement, that cost someone their livelihood. Was she a horrible person? No. She was one of the best friends I ever had." Even so, Spelling said she felt her decision to have Doherty canned from the show was the right one, and she wasn't the last of Doherty's fellow actors to wield an ax.

Although Stacey Dash may be forever known to '90s film lovers as the sweet and stylish Dionne Davenport in Clueless (1995), she's since made a few enemies in showbiz. 

Dash's alleged aggression on set apparently rubbed her Single Ladies co-star LisaRaye McCoy the wrong way. As McCoy would tell it, "In Hollywood, I learned to be a boss. I had to say to Stacey Dash, 'If you don't get your motherf**king finger out of my face...' So for our second season of Single Ladies, there was a replacement for Stacey Dash." McCoy claimed the final straw occurred when Dash caused a scene during production over a line in the script.

Kirk Cameron might've grown up under Hollywood lights, but he has since focused most of his professional and personal attention on his religious beliefs. While for some that might seem like a relatively recent development connected to his Revelations-centric Left Behind series in 2000, Cameron has apparently espoused strict Christian sensibilities for years, dating back to his days on the set of the hit family sitcom Growing Pains (1985-92).

Co-star Julie McCullough, who starred in the series' fourth and fifth seasons, told Howard Stern that it was Cameron's personal tenets that ultimately got in the way of her continued presence on the show, particularly since she'd posed for Playboy in 1986. However, the abruptness with which she was written out reportedly affected fans enough that she was written back in for one more goodbye episode near the end of Season 5.

Although The Lords of Flatbush (1974) was not one of Sylvester Stallone's most memorable movies, it did have an indelible impact on the history of Hollywood and his relationship with another icon of the same generation. Stone was originally supposed to share the screen with Richard Gere, but admitted he pulled some strings to have Gere replaced.

Stallone told Ain't it Cool News, "We never hit it off. He would strut around in his oversized motorcycle jacket like he was the baddest knight at the round table. One day, during an improv, he grabbed me (we were simulating a fight scene) and got a little carried away. I told him in a gentle fashion to lighten up, but he was completely in character and impossible to deal with." 

Things only got worse from there. "Then we were rehearsing at Coney Island and it was lunchtime, so we decided to take a break, and the only place that was warm was in the backseat of a Toyota," he said. "I was eating a hotdog and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper. I said, 'That thing is going to drip all over the place.' He said, 'Don't worry about it.' I said, 'If it gets on my pants you're gonna know about it.' He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car. The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay. Richard was given his walking papers and to this day seriously dislikes me." 

If the casting switcheroo of the leading male character between Charlie's Angels (2000) and its sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) seemed a bit out of left field, that's because it was largely unplanned. Bill Murray plays John Bosley in the first film, but he was not asked to return for its follow-up and was replaced by Bernie Mac, who was dubbed Jimmy Bosley, John's brother, and also referred to as simply Bosley throughout the film.

Though Murray moved on to bigger and better things after the sequel snub, his departure was linked to some behind-the-scenes drama with actress Lucy Liu, who played Alex Munday in both installments. The two reportedly did not get along during production, and Murray even went as far as to tell Liu she "can't act." The tension escalated into near-violence when Liu allegedly took some swings at Murray before the two were separated. 

Murray justified his behavior, telling the Times of London (via Entertainment Weekly), "Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me..." Unfortunately for him, he was the one dismissed in the deal.

Nowadays, Bill Cosby's reputation has been totally tarnished following a bevy of sexual assault allegations levied against him by multiple women. In 2018, he was found guilty on three counts of sexual assault stemming from an incident in his home in 2004 and sentenced to three to ten years in prison. But in the '80s and '90s, Cosby was virtually untouchable, thanks to the popularity of his family-friendly stand-up routines, his cheeky Jell-O commercials, his chuckle-inducing reality-comedy series Kids Say the Darndest Things, and, of course, his title role in The Cosby Show sitcom.

Lisa Bonet, who plays eldest daughter Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show, was given her own spin-off series called A Different World, but when her personal life changed, Cosby supposedly had her fired. According to director Debbie Allen in an interview for the Archive of American Television, shortly after Bonet married musician Lenny Kravitz and revealed she was expecting a baby, Cosby nixed her role on the show. 

"I explained to [Cosby] how I wanted to use [the pregnancy] on the show because that would be a great thing. To see a girl who's [this] upper-class kid, having a baby, not married because she didn't want to be married...and the girls could root for her." Allen says that a few weeks later, Cosby told her, "'Denise Huxtable' is not pregnant, Lisa Bonet is pregnant not Denise. So no...no you can't have it, no we're not gonna do it, no." 

Bonet was brought back to The Cosby Show for a brief time, but she was ultimately let go from that series for "creative differences."

Will Smith has made a name for himself in movies, but his original breakthrough role was undoubtedly his eponymous turn as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the hit '90s sitcom. The series lasted six seasons, but there was one castmate who didn't make it to the finish: Janet Hubert. The actress who played Aunt Viv has been more than willing to spill the tea about why she was shown the door and replaced by actress Daphne Reid after the show's third season.

In 2013, Hubert told Yahoo, "[Smith] said 'we're just gonna replace her and act like nothing happened. Well honey, that is not what happened, is it? The world has let me know that my place on that show was very, very, very loved... I felt demonized and beaten up and crucified for many many years, no one came forward in my defense."

To be fair to Smith, he wasn't the only one may have been happy to see her go. Co-star Alfonso Ribeiro, who plays Carlton Banks on the show, admitted in a comedic stand-up set that, "Long story short...there were days when we were all on the set and she would literally go off on people." 

Some feuds die hard, and Hubert has continued to lash out at her former co-stars about the tiff that cost her a job so many years ago.

After working with Leah Remini for nearly a decade on The King of Queens (1998-2007), actor Kevin James established quite a kinship with his on-screen wife, so it was hardly a surprise when he invited her to guest star on his new program, Kevin Can Wait (2016-). What did come as a surprise was what that meant for his latest on-screen leading lady, Erinn Hayes.

Hayes and James shared the screen for the new show's inaugural season, but she was unceremoniously kicked off the series before Season 2 because, according to sources, he had better chemistry with Remini. Hayes didn't betray much in the way of gory details when she tweeted, "True, I've been let go from the show. Very sad, I had a great experience season 1. Thank you for all the support from our wonderful fans." Even so, it certainly has to sting her departure was probably prompted by her co-star's interest in working with someone else instead of her. Ouch.