How ‘Mid-Century Modern’ Killed off Sybil After Linda Lavin’s Death

Hulu’s newest comedy included the late Linda Lavin, and the show wrote her character off in an emotional way.

Lavin, who passed away in December from lung cancer, starred on Mid-Century Modern as Sybil Schneiderman, the mother of Nathan Lane’s Bunny.

In Episode 9, “Here’s to You, Mrs. Schneiderman,” Bunny picked his mom up from the airport, but when he gets back home, he tells Jerry (Matt Bomer) and Arthur (Nathan Lee Graham) that Sybil died. He explained that when he picked her up, she was saying she wasn’t feeling well and he told her she could lay down when they get home. However, she kept getting worse, and she told Bunny she needed to go to the hospital.

Bunny said that he sped up and was waiting for his mom to tell him that she loves him and to not get a ticket but she never did. The doctors at the hospital explained that she had a heart attack, it was very sudden, and she didn’t feel it. It was an emotional scene just from Bunny retelling the story. Co-creator Max Mutchnick told Entertainment Weekly that he had conversations with his producing partner, David Kohan, and Lavin in her final week about what to do.

“She was very clear with us about making sure that we wrote everything that was going on with her into the show,” Mutchnick said. “It gave us a freedom that we never thought we were going to have to use in the way that we wrote that final episode.”

“It gave us a directive,” Kohan added, explaining Lavin’s wishes. “‘What happens to me should happen to the character.’” Lavin died just three episodes away from wrapping, and although she only filmed seven episodes, they took scenes from Episode 4 and put them in Episode 8. Additionally, after filming started back up again “a couple of weeks after Lavn’s death,” they filmed Episode 9 first rather than 8. Lane recalled, “We were still kind of reeling just from hearing that she had died. So we were still processing that and grieving that.”

Lavin’s Sybil brought a lot of laughs and sass in her eight episodes, and as one of her final roles, it’s certainly a memorable one. All 10 episodes of Mid-Century Modern are streaming now on Hulu.