How Y&R's Melody Thomas Scott Got Involved In Suzanne Somers' Three's Company Drama
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"The Young and the Restless" star Melody Thomas Scott has played Nikki Newman since 1979, and while the character has had several ups and downs over the years, she's evolved into a powerful woman.
When she was promoting her tell-all memoir, "Always Young and Restless," Scott told TV Insider in 2020 that when she first started dating Carlos Yeaggy, a makeup artist on "Y&R," they kept their work romance a secret. If she mentioned her boyfriend to someone else, she would call him Richard. At the time, the classic sitcom "Three's Company" was also in production on the same lot, and for some reason, people assumed she was dating Richard Kline, who played the inept womanizer, Larry Dallas.
But that's not the only connection she had to the show and its late star, Suzanne Somers, who played Chrissy Snow. When the comedy was being produced, stars John Ritter (Jack Tripper) and Joyce DeWitt (Janet Wood) were in the midst of a famous feud with Chrissy's portrayer. As a result, Ritter had a complicated relationship with Somers until just before he died on September 11, 2003, and DeWitt didn't speak to her for 30 years. Scott explained she'd never actually met Kline, then went on to describe how she ended up entangled in the feud.
Scott really didn't know about the feud
Soap star Melody Thomas Scott explained to TV Insider that during the feud between the "Three's Company" stars, both John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt would go to great lengths to avoid Suzanne Somers. "I had both John and Joyce at separate times frantically knock on my dressing room door, which was in the main hallway," Scott said. "I opened my door once and John Ritter was there and he said, 'Hi, I'm so sorry. I'm John Ritter. Can I come in here for a minute?' I said, 'Sure, okay!' Initially, I had no idea what was going on."
The disagreement between the actors started when Somers asked to have the same pay as Ritter and was unceremoniously fired. Thankfully, in February 2012, DeWitt appeared on Somers' talk show, "Breaking Through," and the two buried the hatchet. Fox News reported in December 2017 that Somers recalled Ritter had phoned her about a month before he died, and the two also patched things up.
Scott was not without her own on-set issues but on a lesser scale. In 2020, Smashing Interviews posted a discussion with Scott who explained that because she dated and married Edward J. Scott, who was the executive producer of "The Young and the Restless" in 1985, some of her co-workers became resentful, including Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor. In the end, they thankfully fixed their friendship and remained friendly until Cooper's death on May 8, 2013.