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People Magazine (June
4, 1979) |
Charlie Drops His 'Difficult' Angel, but Kate Jackson's
New Husband Keeps Her on a Cloud
For three years Kate Jackson was the most bedeviling of
Charlie's Angels. She balked at a scene requiring a
braless run in a cross-country race. She refused, unlike
chesty Cheryl Ladd and beauteous Jaclyn Smith, to
wriggle into a bikini that would hardly cover a cherub.
And she publicly bemoaned the show as a bit of fluff,
"so light it would take a week to get to the floor if
you dropped it from the ceiling."
Still, while the show may have proved that the number of
angels who can dance—or jiggle—on a pinhead is an
irrevocable three, their identities are certainly not
immune to change. Six weeks ago, while vacationing in
Hawaii with new husband Andrew (The Rebels) Stevens, 23,
Kate was let go. The reason: too much needling.
"I guess I did cause a few problems," Kate now admits.
"What it comes down to is I got tired of them and they
got tired of me. I'm glad I've finally been able to hang
up the halo." So were producers Leonard Goldberg and
Aaron Spelling. "Due to problems on the set," intoned
Spelling, "Kate's being dropped for the good of the
show."
Would Charlie's Angels sag in its fourth season, without
Kate's attempt to make the characters more than
interchangeable cardboard cutouts? Though fortified by
Cheryl Ladd after the clamorous 1977 shearing of Farrah
Fawcett-Majors (which may have emboldened the producers
to release Kate), the show this year slipped to seventh
place. Even Freddie Silverman of desperate NBC has
publicly targeted the Angels as vulnerable.
ABC's hope is that the ballyhooed search for Kate's
replacement ("Oh, the unpleasantness of having to look
at 15,000 beautiful girls," Spelling said, tongue in
cheek) will firm up the show's ratings. As a "joke," the
producers now say, they had suggested Margaret Trudeau.
Then they were disappointed by Barbara (The Spy Who
Loved Me) Bach's test ("I was too sophisticated," Bach
sniffed). Finally, Charlie's Angels decided they needed
Revlon's Charlie girl—model Shelley Hack, 31, who
starred in last year's film flop If Ever I See You
Again. Hack will change the show down to its
roots—instead of two brunettes flanking blond Cheryl,
now Jackie will be the brunette between two blondes.
As producer Goldberg noted with relief, "Kate's
departure may be a blessing in disguise," and, speaking
for herself, Jackson heartily agrees. The show's
unrelenting 14-hour days had brought her "total
confusion." "I had lost my sense of self, lost track of
who I was," she admits. "I had everything in the world
and I just wasn't happy." Reports appeared in print that
she had become a pill-popping "first-class bitch" who
purposely slowed the production schedule. "I won't
dignify such lies by refuting them," says Kate. "I
didn't do anything like going out of control or drinking
and abusing myself." Instead, she became one Angel who
looked homeward longingly.
For the first two years of the show, Kate complained,
"My life was all geared to work. Even though those
millions of people around the country know me and like
me, they aren't in my living room at the end of the day
when I'm lonely and hassled." Then last August she
surprised the world by eloping with Stevens. They were
married at the Martha's Vineyard home of
husband-and-wife singers James Taylor and Carly Simon.
"Suddenly there was this adorable man really caring
about me, even when I was crying and my hair was all
weird," Kate recalls. "Before we knew what hit us, we
were madly, passionately in love." Andrew, son of
actress Stella Stevens, adds, "The mutual support we
gave each other was like a gift for both of us."
The match made in heaven, though, only made Kate even
more restive on the set. "Andrew would get up with me at
5 in the morning and I'd see him for a cup of coffee and
then I'd come home late for dinner and fall asleep
during dessert," she recalls. "It's one thing to be
miserable when you're by yourself. But when you feel
committed to another person, there's a responsibility
not to let yourself be drained by something that could
end up destroying the rest of your life. I finally had
to say, 'Wait a minute, there's my life and there's the
show and one is killing the other, so something has to
go.' And I sure as hell wasn't about to sacrifice my
life for a television show."
"Conflicts arose in various areas with each girl,"
Andrew adds loyally. "It just depended on priorities.
Jackie Smith's priorities were material comfort,
Cheryl's were more toward trying to become a star, and
Kate's always had to do with trying to elevate the
quality of the show and not just mark time in
mediocrity." Kate agrees. "They promised to make the
schedule easier if we would do our part in return, which
was to shut up. They told us to quit complaining so they
could get four years in the can and make a lot of money
in syndication and everybody would live happily ever
after. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I was never
content just to take the money and run."
Which implies that the other Angels were. If, as rumor
has it, Cheryl and Jackie are happy to be rid of their
scrappy co-star, they aren't saying so. "I wish Kate the
best of luck in whatever she does next," coos Jackie, a
true pal, who with husband Dennis Cole will be next-door
neighbors this summer when Kate and Andrew move their
Siberian huskies into a new four-bedroom Coldwater
Canyon mini-mansion ("so homey it's perfect").
Smith-Cole and Jackson-Stevens plan a local baby boom.
"It'll be lovely when we both have kids about the same
time," says the Alabama-born Kate, now 29. "Then they
can grow up as neighbors just like kids in the South."
Meanwhile, Katie (as he calls her) and Andrew are
gestating Topper, a remake of the 1937 Cary
Grant-Constance Bennett classic, as the first project in
her new $6 million ABC development deal. "We really
mesh," exults Kate of plans to co-star with her husband.
"Even our disagreements are healthy." The pace is a
welcome break after eight frenetic TV years—and
consolation for having to give up the lead to Meryl
Streep in the upcoming Kramer vs. Kramer opposite Dustin
Hoffman. Schooled at New York's American Academy of
Dramatic Arts, Kate first won a year-long Dark Shadows
soap role, then spent four years on The Rookies before
her three-year Angels sojourn. "I don't want to sound
artsy, but an actor needs time to sit back and let a
little life filter in," she says. "When you're running
on empty, you can't go very far. Maybe I can regain some
credibility as an actress."
A lower profile, she notes, also won't hurt her
marriage. At first the fans' fervor was "a nice ego
stroke," but now "Sometimes it's a little heavy, just
because I was really very visible and the show got so
much hype." Their six-year age difference doesn't bother
them (Andrew once lived with actress Kim Darby, eight
years his senior). "I never think about it," says Kate.
"There are more important things—like he squeezes the
toothpaste from the middle and I can't stand it."
Likewise, neither fears Andrew will become "Mr. Kate
Jackson." "I've conquered the son-of-Stella-Stevens
syndrome—she's now Andrew Stevens' mother or Kate
Jackson's mother-in-law—so I'm way past such problems,"
he says. "And I'm much too strong to ever let that
happen anyway." Kate, who once lived with Edward Albert
Jr. and dated such stars as Nick Nolte and Warren
Beatty, adds, "I really believe in Andrew's future and
talent. He's going to have a big, successful career."
The perils of too much togetherness so far are
inconsequential. They touch and nuzzle constantly, and
are seldom apart. Kate still roller-skates with Cher,
hangs out with Marcia (Welcome Back, Kotter) Strassman,
her Angels wardrobe woman Erica Phillips and activist
pals Jane Fonda and Mario Thomas, but marriage has
brought "lots of new friends," says Jackson, who claims
basically to be a homebody. "I never really thought that
I was part of the Hollywood syndrome. I don't go out a
lot and I'm not seen in all the right places."
One of the places she apparently won't be seen is
Charlie's Angels—unlike Farrah, she'll have no return
guest shots. Muses Kate, "Maybe I'll kick myself and
say, 'You should have stayed on the series, it was
wonderful.' It wasn't easy to look a million dollars in
the face and kiss it goodbye, but I believe enough in
myself to say, 'I'll take that risk.' I think everything
is going to be fine. Andrew is the only person I picked
out of the whole world that I've ever truly loved. He's
changing too. We're growing, together."
-By David Sheehan |
