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Home / Entertainment

Revealed: Golden Girls co-star's vicious insult to Betty White

NZ Herald
10 Feb, 2022 08:37 PM2 mins to read

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Beloved actress Betty White died on Friday night. She was weeks away from her 100th birthday. Video / NZ Herald

Only a month after her death, Hollywood gossips are already digging up dirt on legendary actress Betty White and revealing the frosty relationship she had with her co-stars.

Golden Girls casting director Joel Thurm spoke to The Originals podcast about his experience of working with White, revealing that her main co-stars Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan did not think much of her and described her with very colourful language.

Thurm shocked the podcast hosts as he recalled the venom with which White was described.

"Literally Bea Arthur, who I cast in something else later on, just said, 'Oh, she's a f***ing c***,' using that word," Thurm said.

"She called her the C-word. I mean, I heard that with my own ears.

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"And by the way, so did Rue McClanahan. Rue McClanahan said it to me in Joe Allen's (restaurant); Bea Arthur on the set of Beggars And Choosers."

Betty White with Bea Arthur on the set of Golden Girls. Photo / Getty Images
Betty White with Bea Arthur on the set of Golden Girls. Photo / Getty Images

Thurm said that White infuriated her co-stars when she mocked fellow Golden Girls actress Estelle Getty in front of a live audience when she began to forget her lines.

Getty later died in 2008 from Lewy body dementia.

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"That may seem like a minor transgression, but it really does get to you … I have no idea how Estelle Getty felt, but I know the other two did not like (White) at all," Thurm said.

White's rocky relationship with Bea Arthur has been reported before, with White herself addressing the topic in a 2011 interview with Village Voice.

"Bea had a reserve. She was not that fond of me. She found me a pain in the neck sometimes," White said.

"It was my positive attitude — and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious!"

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