It's all about the Benjamins, baby! After learning what her co-star John Ritter was making — along with other male actors from similar, albeit less successful sitcoms — Suzanne Somers requested a lofty raise that would make her salary more comparable to that of her peers. During negotiations in 1980 ahead of Three's Company's fifth season, Somers asked that her pay be increased from $30,000 per episode to a staggering $150,000 per episode, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Now that's a raise!
Unfortunately for the actress, the powers that be didn't exactly agree with Somers' idea regarding equal pay and instead "compromised" by offering her an extra $5,000 per episode. As one can imagine, Somers was none too pleased with her "raise," which gave way to an awkward game of chicken in which neither party was willing to budge.
In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Somers' husband and manager, Alan Hamel, recalled the exact moment things got really ugly between Somers and her employers. "The night before we went in to renegotiate, I got a call from a friend who had connections high up at ABC and he said, 'They're going to hang a nun in the marketplace and the nun is Suzanne," Hamel revealed. And that they did.
After realizing that the show could continue to receive the same ratings with Chrissy Snow's character appearing much less, the big wigs finally did away with her character completely, replacing her with her cousin, Cindy Snow, played by Jenilee Harrison.
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