‘Golden Girls’ Writer Got Death Threats for This Controversial Episode

While most fans remember The Golden Girls as sitcom comfort food, the show never shied away from controversial topics. Over the course of its seven-season run, the show tackled interracial relationships, sexual harassment, menopause, Alzheimer’s, physical and emotional abuse, artificial insemination and assisted suicide — all in the name of comedy. 

In fact, one of the show’s writers recently discussed an episode that was so sensitive, at least to some viewers, that it earned him death threats. 

The writer in question is Marc Cherry, who’d go on to create Desperate Housewives. As a sitcom writer, he hoped to occasionally move viewers “into reflections upon their own life,” he said recently on the Soapy podcast, per People. As an example, he pointed to “Sisters of the Bride,” a Season Six episode of Golden Girls. 

The episode featured Clayton, the brother of Rue McClanahan’s Blanche. Two seasons earlier, Clayton divorced his wife and confided to Betty White’s character Rose that he was gay. In a panic, Clayton lies to Blanche that he slept with Rose before eventually coming clean and coming out. Blanche doesn’t take the news well, telling her brother she doesn’t know him anymore. 

“We came up with the idea, let’s bring him back,” Cherry said. “She thinks it was a phase, and he’s probably over it. But he comes back with a guy.” To take things up a notch, Clayton tells Blanche he’s marrying his partner. 

Cherry, who’s gay, revealed that in the 1980s, many queer couples would have ceremonies declaring their commitment, even if the rituals weren’t legally binding. “So we do our episode and, if we weren’t the first, we were only the second show to do something about gay marriage,” the writer explained. 

Blanche tried to stand in the way. “What did you mean when you told me you could accept my being gay?” Clayton asks her. “Did you mean it was okay as long as I was celibate? Okay as long as I don’t fall in love?” 

Eventually, she does her best to overcome her prejudices, even if she hasn’t entirely worked through them.

The response to the episode, at least from some corners, was alarming. Producers called Cherry to let him know, “So you guys are getting death threats.” There were also ugly letters addressed to those “(f-slur) Jew producers of the Golden Girls.”

“That’s weird,” Cherry joked. “I’m not Jewish.”

The show’s writers hadn’t thought to unlist their phone numbers, but producers insisted that they do so for their own protection. After the episode aired, Cherry’s Golden Girls writing partner, Jamie Wooten, got calls at home “from someone who said horrible things to him.”

That’s the price of pushing forward on social issues, Cherry said. “Sometimes the progress comes at a little bit of a cost to those who do it.”