Beloved Three’s Company star Suzanne Somers passed away following decades long canc3r battle.
The relationship between Suzanne and fellow co-star Joyce DeWitt was a rocky one and the two turned into enemies. Sadly, they didn’t manage to make things right for a very long time.
Eventually, they reunited, but it took them years to do so. Before her passing, Suzanne opened up about her relationship with Joyce.
“It’s not easy growing up with an alcoholic,” she shared.
“We all have moments where your life can fall apart, or you can use it like judo — using forward energy to win, making the negative work for you,” she said.
Her life took a different turn when she started college, Lone Mountain College, which today is the University of San Francisco.
During that time, she was forced to drop out of university because she learned she was pregnant.
Suzanne and the father of her child married and welcomed son Bruce Jr. At one point, they almost lost Bruce Jr. in a car cra:sh.
Suzanne’s life continued to change when she got a small role in George Lucas’ film American Graffiti. “This is a life-changing moment. Five seconds on film that will never be forgotten,” she said, adding that Lucas told her, “Everybody will always remember the mysterious blonde in the Thunderbird.”
She was offered the role in Three’s Company after she got a gig at The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where she began reading poetry in front of a national audience every month.
Instead of meeting her demands, Suzanne Somers was fired.
“When I got fired, I thought, ‘I should never have asked. Why did I ask? Why did I think I could get paid what men are being paid? Who did I think I was?”‘ she recalled in 2015.
“Rather than thinking, ‘Hey, c’mon. I have the highest demographics of any woman on television. I’m on the No. 1 show. I’m doing the heavy lifting, too,’ I went right into low self-esteem. I hid in my house for a year in absolute grief.”
The two co-stars reunited after 30 long years on Suzanne’s talk show Breaking Through and got to discuss their different paths in life. “I have relentlessly said that it is my opinion that the only reason Three’s Company is worth remembering is that it created an opportunity for all of us to laugh together, to celebrate joy. It’s a profound gift,” Joyce said on the show.
Following Suzanne’s passing, Joyce DeWitt expressed her grief and paid tribute to her friend.
“My heart goes out to Suzanne’s family,” she told People. “They are a very close family — deeply connected and caring one to the other. I can only imagine how difficult this time is for all of them.”
