Sitcom Star Killed Off Because He Dissed His TV Wife
Long before social media was a thing, you still had to watch what you said. Longtime character actor Jay Thomas learned this all the way back in 1989 when he lost his high profile recurring gig on the hit sitcom Cheers. Thomas made the mistake of insulting his co-star and TV wife Rhea Perlman on the radio, and even without the existence of social media, Perlman found out.
Eddie LeBec
Jay Thomas began his time on Cheers as Boston Bruins player Eddie LeBec in the Season 5 two-parter “Never Love a Goalie.” Eddie was love interest to Rhea Perlman’s no-nonsense waitress Carla Tortelli and by the next season—in the two-parter “Little Carla, Happy at Last”—they tied the knot.
For Cheers to introduce Eddie LeBec was a big deal. The only steady romantic figure in Carla’s life before the hockey player was her pathetic ex Nick (Dan Hedaya) who was about as trustworthy as a werewolf in a henhouse.
Unfortunately, thanks to something Jay Thomas said on the radio, he made his last Cheers appearance in Season 7’s fittingly named “Call Me Irresponsible.”
The Brutality
Along with being a professional actor, when he was appearing on Cheers as Eddie LeBec, Jay Thomas had his own successful morning radio show in Los Angeles. According to Cheers writer Ken Levine, it was Thomas’s radio show that ended his Cheers career.
One morning in 1989, a caller asked Jay Thomas what it was like to appear on Cheers as Eddie LeBec. According to Levine, Thomas answered something along the lines of, “It’s brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.”
What Jay Thomas presumably did not know was that Perlman was one of his listeners.
And so ended the story of Eddie LeBec.
Actually, there was still a bit more to his story, but Jay Thomas no longer had any part in telling it.
Eddie Was Filled With Big Love
Cheers unveiled the news of Eddie LeBec’s unexpected death in Season 8’s “Death Takes A Holiday On Ice,” and when choosing how to kill Eddie, Levine and the other writers didn’t spare us the funny.
No longer a hockey player and forced to go on tour in an ice show dressed as a penguin, Eddie is killed in a Zamboni accident.
To add yet more insult to injury, in true Big Love style, Eddie was revealed to be a polygamist. The Cheers writers decided that while Eddie Lebec was married to Carla, he was also married to a woman named Gloria who happened to look a whole lot like Carla.
An Unexpected Landmark Episode
“Death Takes a Holiday on Ice” wound up as an historic episode of Cheers, and not just for killing off Eddie LeBec. First of all, the series earned an Emmy nomination for the episode.
Second, “Death Takes a Holiday on Ice” wound up being the second television appearance ever of a young Thomas Haden Church, who Marvel fans know better as the Spider-Man villain Sandman.
Church booked the small role of the man who delivers a letter to Carla from Eddie LeBec, in which her late husband confesses his betrayal. A number of Cheers producers were so impressed with Church, they cast him as one of the regulars on the sitcom that put him on the map, Wings.
Jay Thomas
Sadly, the Cheers actor who played Eddie LeBec is no longer with us. Jay Thomas continued to work in TV and movies until the mid-2010s. He died from throat cancer in 2017 at the age of 69.
Source: By Ken Levine
