Ed O’Neill Says Fox Blindsided Him When Canceling ‘Married… With Children’

Despite Married… with Children, it had a sudden and surprise cancellation. The Fox sitcom ran for 11 seasons from 1987 to 1997 and is one of the longest-running sitcoms in American television history. It likely would have run longer if the network didn’t pull the plug. Star Ed O’Neill, who portrayed former high school football player-turned-women’s shoe salesman Al Bundy, appeared on Sony Music Entertainment’s Dinner’s On Me Podcast with Modern Family co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson and spilled the tea on Married… with Children’s unfortunate end.

The two got to talking about Married… with Children, and O’Neill recalled how Fox executives had come to set while they were filming the last episode of Season 11. “So they came over and they said, ‘They’re so good, we love this show, and is there any way we could make this like, if maybe like a last episode, just in case it is, because we’re going on hiatus,’” O’Neill shared. “And I said, ‘No, no, we can’t make this over now. We’re shooting the f—ing thing on Friday.’ They wanted an alternate ending? You know, it probably wouldn’t have taken too much, and it wouldn’t have been very good.”

“So I said, ‘No, guys, gotta live with this one. We just shot that show,’” O’Neill continued. “And then we went back, and it’s so funny.” The actor went on to explain how he ran into two fans who had just gotten married. He congratulated them on their wedding, and they told him they were sorry about his show, as they heard on the radio that it was canceled. While O’Neill mentioned it was better to hear from them about the cancellation, it definitely could have gone a lot better.

That’s not even the worst of it. O’Neill admitted that months went by until he got a call from Fox president Peter Roth, who confessed that “there were so many regrets” with the way that the cancellation happened. O’Neill told him that it was the first time he’d talked to anybody about the news, and they never got any sort of goodbye gift. Roth told him that there was something, but unfortunately, nothing ever came about.

Considering how long Married… with Children was on the air and how popular it was, it’s definitely disappointing how Fox handled the cancellation; the least the network could have done was tell the cast instead of having them hear it from fans. Almost 27 years have passed and even though nothing can be done, maybe a reunion of some sort is long overdue. There have been discussions of a , but nothing concrete as of yet. At the very least, all 11 seasons are streaming on Hulu, which is better than nothing.