“It was a magical time in the television era,” Suzanne Somers said when talking about Three’s Company with host David Yontef on the Behind The Velvet Rope podcast. For five seasons, Suzanne, 74, played Chrissy Snow opposite John Ritter’s Jack Tripper and Joyce DeWitt’s Janet Wood. In the BTVR episode that dropped Tuesday (Apr. 26), Suzanne revealed that she tried to reboot the franchise with John’s son, actor Jason Ritter. “I had suggested a show where you would imagine that Chrissy Snow and Jack Tripper eventually got married, and they had a child,’ she said. “And the child was [played by] Jason Ritter.”
“I had suggested this to Jason’s people and that the show would be me and Jason, but that John would appear as a hologram because it’d be like he was back and alive,” said Suzanne, “but Jason doesn’t want to do anything reminiscent of what his father did. So, that kind of went out of the way. That was the last time I kinda got turned on by thinking about doing a series again.” Suzanne also said that she wouldn’t do it without Jason, 42, because it’s a “marketer’s dream” and that doing the show with any “Joe Schmoe” doesn’t have the same appeal as doing a Three’s Company reboot with John Ritter’s actual son.
John passed away on Sept. 11, 2003, after suffering an aortic dissection while rehearsing for the sitcom 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter. He was 54.
Three’s Company aired from 1977 to 1984, though Suzanne was famously let go from the show after Season 5 when she demanded to be paid the same money that John Ritter was getting. Despite this, Somers still has a fondness for the show in her heart. Plus, the show has endured nearly thirty years after the final episode, and Suzanne reflected on that in this interview.
“I think there was a chemistry between Suzanna Somers and John Ritter that was magical, and Joyce DeWitt – she didn’t enjoy this role, but she was the set-up person for Chrissy and Jack to spar,” said Somers. Later, she said that the show was “easy to understand. It was simple. I was in Israel, and people were saying they learned English from watching Three’s Company. I was with Prime Minister Netyehanu last Spring, and he said, ‘I know all about the books, but I’ve been watching you for twenty-five years.’ He said there was one television station in Israel and one sit-com, and it was Three’s Company.’”
“So, it’s been all over the world, and Chrissy Snow, to me…she’s appealing,” continued Suzanne. “She’s a woman-child. She has a circuitous route to logic. She never tells a lie. She’d never steal your husband or boyfriend or girlfriend or anybody. So, people felt protective of her.” Suzanne said that she regretted getting fired because she “didn’t get to finish the character of Chrissy Snow. I had so much more I was going to do with her.” However, after reflecting on the lasting impact, Suzanne conceded that “maybe, it was enough. They’ll never forget her. Maybe it was enough.”