While millions of fans have thanked Bea Arthur and Betty White — and the rest of their Golden Girls costars — for being their friend, the actresses weren’t always close.
“It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about at work,” Arthur’s eldest son, Matthew Saks, told Closer in August 2017 of his mom’s ongoing feud with White.
Arthur and White played roommates and best friends Dorothy Zbornak and Rose Nylund, respectively, on The Golden Girls from 1985 to 1992. Their third roommate (and owner of the Florida home) Blanche Devereaux was played by Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty rounded out the cast as Dorothy’s mom, Sophia Petrillo.
While the comedy is still one of the most watched series, bringing laughs and good vibes, Golden Girls writer and producer Stan Zimmerman told Closer that Arthur and White’s tension was evident by series’ end.
Things weren’t always so golden between Betty White and Bea Arthur on the set of The Golden Girls. While the late actresses seemed like best friends on screen for seven seasons of the hit sitcom, which aired from 1985 to 1992, co-producer Marsha Posner Williams is lifting the lid on their behind-the-scenes feud. “When that […]
“They worked long hours, tempers flare, and you have disagreements over the years,” he claimed.
McClanahan, however, said that wasn’t always the case, revealing that White never had any big problems with Arthur. “Betty was a big fan of Bea,” McClanahan told TV Guide in April 2009. “Bea’s feelings about Betty were not mutual. She really did love Bea.”
Scroll down to learn more about Arthur and White’s ups and downs:
Neighborly Connection
When the series first began, Arthur and White reportedly carpooled to set together and sat together during their lunch breaks. “Bea and I didn’t have a lot of relationship going on. Bea is a very, very eccentric woman. She wouldn’t go to lunch [with me] unless Betty [White] would go with her,” McClanahan recalled in an archived interview from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences via Parade. “She was very dependent on keeping everything as it always had been, and I was anything but that.”
The actress claimed that even if White was late for lunch, Arthur waited for her and the pair always sat next to each other during Friday night dinner shoots. White confirmed in her 1987 memoir, Betty White in Person, that she and Arthur ate together every day.
Personality Conflicts
Despite being lunchtime pals, White told The Village Voice in May 2011 that Arthur just didn’t vibe with her or her personality.
“I don’t know what I ever did, but she was not that thrilled with me,” the Hot in Cleveland star said of Arthur. “She found me a pain in the neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude — and that made Bea mad. Sometimes if I was happy, she’d be furious.”
Golden Girls coproducer Marsha Posner Williams told Broadcast Beat in 2022 that Arthur and White were polar opposites.
“The thing is Bea was exactly who she was. She hated to wear makeup. She hated to wear shoes. She hated to wash her hair. She didn’t like to be touched. She drank a lot of vodka. That’s who she was,” Williams recalled. “But when you’re on a hit show and you want it to keep going, you better make nice and they did.”
McClanahan noted in her 2009 TV Guide interview that despite White asking her why Arthur didn’t like her, she never had an answer.
“I’d always say, ‘You know how Bea is, Betty. Bea gets a bee in her bonnet and just doesn’t like certain things … and I don’t know why,’” McClanahan said. “Bea, for instance, didn’t like people who wore their baseball caps backwards. That really got to her. We were interviewing directors one time and if someone came in with a baseball cap worn backwards, he didn’t stand a chance.”
Two Different Approaches
The actress’ personality differences spilled over to their work as well, mainly because they came from such different acting background.
“[Bea] came from the old school of [television writer] Norman Lear where sitcoms were filmed like stage plays and done with up-close reactions,” Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Biography author Jim Colucci told Closer in 2017. “[Betty, on the other hand], was from the Mary Tyler Moore school where everything is a very subtle character moment. The jokes are more gentle.”
Colucci remembered, “Bea would hold the script in her hand until the very last minute. Betty, almost at the table read, would be off-book. She could incorporate new lines just by hearing them, so she was able to clown around with the audience.”
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McClanahan recalled to TV Guide in 2009 that Arthur came from a “New York stage point of view. She always had what we call the fourth wall. And Betty came from a television point of view. She would flirt with the audience, and pull her skirt up and say, ‘Hi sailor.’”
Arthur, for her part, would “never acknowledged the audience,” McClanahan said, explaining, “I always thought that was maybe part of it. But Bea never confided in me why she felt the way she did about Betty.”
Breaking Character & Pulling Focus
Williams claimed to Broadcast Beat in 2022 that Arthur “despised” White, much of it stemming from her on-set interaction with the audience.
“As the cameras moved to the next set, Betty would break character and talk to the audience. Bea hated that,” Williams recalled, joking, “Those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together! But when that red light went on, it was like they were best friends in the world.”
Saks remembered a similar thing about his mom’s feelings toward White and her on-set demeanor. “It would make my mom unhappy that in-between takes Betty would go and talk to the audience. It wasn’t jealousy. It was a focus thing,” he told Closer. “My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at.”
Award-Winning Drama
McClanahan hinted in her 2007 memoir, My First Five Husbands … And the Ones Who Got Away, that Arthur’s issues with White could’ve begun when White won an Emmy for the series before her. She noted in the book that it was “awkward” to be pitted against each other year after year in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category, and sense that Arthur wasn’t happy that White was the first to win the category — especially since Arthur was paid more because of her past on Maude.
White recalled in her 1995 memoir, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, that the atmosphere was icy after her Emmys win in 1986. “Estelle gave me a big hug and kiss — but she did it outside, before we got into the studio,” White recalled.
She wrote, “The crew couldn’t have been warmer or sweeter, but the congratulations were all whispered.” Once the rest of the cast started to win their own Emmys, White wrote, “The first year’s coolness was never allowed again. We celebrated!”
The C-Word
Williams alleged during an event celebration the show’s 40th anniversary in June 2025 that Arthur “used to call me at home and say, ‘I just ran into that [C-word] at the grocery store. I’m gonna write her a letter,’” speaking about White, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And I said, ‘Bea, just get over it for crying out loud. Just get past it.’”
“I remember, my husband and I went over to Bea’s house a couple of times for dinner. Within 30 seconds of walking in the door, the C-word came out,” Williams claimed, and casting director Joel Thurm noted that he heard Arthur call White that word as well while sitting next to her on a flight.
Rocky Goodbye
Williams claimed during the June 2025 anniversary event that Arthur was the reason The Golden Girls ended. “The show would have continued after seven years,” she said. “Their contracts were up and … the executives went to the ladies, and Estelle said, ‘Yes, let’s keep going,’ and Rue said, ‘Yes let’s keep going,’ and Betty said, ‘Yes, let’s keep going.’ And Bea said, ‘no f***ing way,’ and that’s why that show didn’t continue.”
White, Getty and McClanahan continued the series without Arthur with The Golden Palace spinoff which lasted just one season.
Thank You for Being a Friend, Sort Of
Even with all the stories about Arthur not gelling with White off camera, the pair had nothing but good things to say about each other as costars. Both Arthur and White also thanked each other in their respective Emmys acceptance speeches.
“It was a brilliant working relationship, everybody,” Arthur told E! News in 2002. “There wasn’t a weak link in the whole thing.”
White, meanwhile, claimed there was never any issue on set between anyone. “I don’t even want to contemplate what the set of The Golden Girls would be like if we didn’t all support and respect one another,” White wrote in her Betty White in Person memoir. “The fact that we also happen to be nuts about each other was an added starter which could not have been foreseen when the show was first put together.”
The Proposal actress continued, “From the very beginning, we were each thrilled by the professionalism of the other three. No one had to be carried. Whatever one of us served up was returned in kind … or better.”
Betty White’s castmates on The Golden Girls used to tease her constantly about her love of animals — and one time they even convinced her that a stray cat had gotten trapped in the wall. “They had a crew member put a tape recorder in a wall on the set,” one of Betty’s pals recalls. […]
McClanahan backed up White’s claims in her book, writing, “What mattered most to each of us individually and all of us as a group: the chemistry worked. We were damn funny. And we did it together. That’s what counts at the end of the day.”
“I love both Bea and Betty and got a huge kick out of each of them,” McClanahan added. “Their relationship with each other wasn’t all I wished it could be, but it never interfered with their work.”
White was five months older than Arthur and the oldest of The Golden Girls cast, however, she outlived them all. Getty died in July 2008 at age 84. Arthur passed away in April 2009 at 86 and the youngest of the cast, McClanahan, died in June 2010 at age 76. White died in December 2021, just 17 days shy of her 100th birthday.