Sally Struthers had some harsh words about late icon Betty White, claiming the beloved actress “fat-shamed” her.
The All in the Family alum, 77, made the revelation about the Hot in Cleveland star on the Monday, January 13, episode of the “Let’s Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellott” podcast. Betty died on December 21, 2021, at the age of 99, just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday.
Sally explained, “now that she’s gone,” she was OK with sharing her story about Betty. She went on to reveal how she went to Betty’s house to work on a pilot for a new game show, and the Mary Tyler Moore show alum asked her housekeeper to bring her guests something to eat.
After the food arrived, “The plate was set in the middle and it was cookies, I think. So I reached for a cookie and she said in front of everyone, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you dear, you don’t need a cookie.’”
“Totally fat-shamed me in front of the rest of the people in the room,” Sally continued to the hosts’ disbelief. “And I thought, ‘Gosh, that’s not nice.’”
Sally recalled how the world loved Betty, but she saw her differently.
“I know everybody loves her. They loved her so much,” she shared. “They signed petitions to get her to guest host Saturday Night Live. I know all that. I didn’t have such a great experience with her.” Sally went on to call Betty a “very passive-aggressive woman.”
Sally had more positive things to say about Betty’s Golden Girls costar Bea Arthur. They lived in the same neighborhood in Brentwood, California, and would cross paths. Bea passed away in April 2009 following a battle with lung cancer.
“I would run into her at the supermarket, and she would trash everyone we ever knew,” Sally recalled, which left the pair laughing in the aisles. “I loved how filthy she was.”
“She was a big deal. I loved her,” she added about the late actress.
Sally most recently appeared in Ted Danson‘s 2024 Netflix series A Man on the Inside. She’s become known and loved by different generations of fans throughout her five-decade acting career.
She played Archie and Edith Bunker’s daughter Gloria Bunker Stivic on All in the Family in 184 episodes of the groundbreaking Norman Lear sitcom between 1971 and 1978. Sally went on to appear on the spinoff Archie Bunker’s Place and got her own spinoff, Gloria, which ran for one season starting in 1982.
Sally gained a new audience of fans starring in Gilmore Girls as Lorelei Gilmore’s neighbor Babette Dell. She appeared in 52 episodes of the CW dramedy between 2000 and 2007, as well as the 2016 Netflix miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
“It’s funny. Quite often I will get stopped by a family. The mother will say, ‘Oh, we love you on All in the Family,’” Sally exclusively told Closer in August 2021. “Then the daughter will say, ‘No, she’s Babette!’ It’s so funny to see the generational thing happen.”