Creator Glenn Gordon Caron saw Cybill's role as a villainess.
“I had to have somebody the public was fundamentally rooting against because the show was about the thawing out of this beautiful ice queen,” he said. “And I knew the public saw Cybill as spoiled and bratty.”
Cybill and Willis constantly battled each other during the filming of “Moonlighting,” both actors reportedly tossing frequent tantrums on the set.
On screen, the two jabbed at each other like heavyweights.
“You are one cold, icy broad,” Addison told Maddie in the pilot. “You've got your nose so high up it's snowing on your brain.”
Maddie to Addison: “You have the morals of a rabbit, the character of a slug, and the brain of a platypus.”
Classic TV Beauties 1980s Countdown
CYBILL SHEPHERD as Maddie Hayes in "Moonlighting"
Cybill's chemistry with newcomer Bruce Willis created magic on “Moonlighting,” one of TV's first “dramedy” shows. Cybill atoned for her failure on previous film projects and won critical acclaim playing Maddie, the chic fashion model who clashed with detective David Addison (Willis) after she was forced to work for a living..
“Moonlighting” featured sharp, witty dialogue and sexual tension between the two characters. Cybill's Maddie was often compared to glamorous comedienne roles played by film legend Carole Lombard.
The storyline was that Maddie was a model who'd been bilked out of her life savings by her business manager so she joined Addison and became a partner at the Blue Moon Detective Agency, a business she had previously bought for a tax write-off.
Time magazine listed “Moonlighting” as one of the “100 Best TV Shows of All Time” and AOL TV named David & Maddie as the No. 3 All Time Best TV Couple.
TV Guide wrote, “We're not sure we'd ever want to hire them as private detectives, but we couldn't get enough of watching them banter and bicker.”
The series, which ran from March 1985 to May 1989, was known for breaking the “fourth wall,” with references to the audience, the scriptwriters and the network.
“Moonlighting” won 16 Emmys, yet Cybill, who was nominated three times, never won. She later admitted she was jealous of co-stars Willis and Christine Baranski winning Emmys.
The website www.davidandmaddie.com, a site dedicated to the show, describes the heroine as “a tall, cool, blonde...poised, charming and socially savvy. She prefers the finer things in life and is quite used to getting her own way.”
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“It was like the best of times and the worst of times,” Cybill said in an interview with Dougie Thompson. “We used to have fights before we had fights on screen, and that went for a year and a half before we realized that was our method of acting.”
Cybill explained the show's premise to www.bullz-eye.com:
"It started out with the premise of a jerk that was very attractive, and then my character, Maddie Hayes, was sympathetic. But then as Bruce got more popular, he didn’t want to play the jerk anymore. And then the producers decided to take my character and make me do stupid things like marry a wimpy guy I met on a train.
“Caron has now said that that was the worst decision he ever made. This was before email, and they had so many sacks of mail, like thousands and thousands and thousands, with people asking, 'Why would you do this?' And at the time I said to him, 'My character wouldn’t do this.' And he said, 'Well, you know what, you’re not a producer.'”
“Jacy is the height of narcissism, just destroying men right and left with no concern, other than how bad it makes her feel,” she told Larry King. “And I hated it at the time, because I thought everybody always thought I was like that...and I am not like that. I am the sweet girl next door.”
Cybill told Simon that, “Peter was my first acting teacher, and I was surrounded by this extraordinary cast. I was completely unencumbered by acting lessons. Every model in New York wanted to be an actor, except for me. I came to Peter completely un-messed with and un-self-conscious and he was brilliant.”
Cybill and Bogdanovich started an affair on the “Last Picture Show” set that broke up his marriage, and she starred in several other Bogdanovich films – “Daisy Miller” and “At Long Last Love” – and both flopped.
She got good reviews in “The Heartbreak Kid,” which co-starred Charles Grodin, then followed that up with the classic “Taxi Driver,” released in 1976, starring Robert DeNiro.
"I'll never forget the scene riding around New York in one of those old-style, big New York taxis, with Scorsese in the front seat and sound man in the trunk and the photographer,” she said in the Simon interview. “It was just magic, like we were stealing it. I had the same feeling on "Picture Show," too. When they were both over, I just wept."
Cybill produced and starred in another groundbreaking series, “Cybill.” Airing from 1995-98, “Cybill” was a semi-autobiographical comedy based on her own life. The series centered around Cybill Sheridan, a 40ish struggling actress raising two daughters alone. "Cybill" pre-dated “Sex and the City” by three years and covered topics previously taboo subjects like female sexuality and menopause.
“I wanted to deal honestly with a woman character who is in her prime – sexually and in every other way.” Cybill said.
Not a woman to shy away from controversial topics, Cybill's autobiography “Cybill Disobedience” was a tell-all that named names from her past.
Born in Memphis, Cybill was named after her grandfather (Cy) and her father (Bill). She won “Miss Teenage Memphis” at age 16 and “Model of the Year” at 18. Cybill briefly dated Elvis Presley and moved to New York to model, and although she didn't care for modeling, she realized it was way out of Memphis.
“I hated being a model,” she told interviewer Alex Simon. “I felt that people treated me like an object. They'd be really nice at the beginning of the photo shoot, and afterward it was like I didn't exist...I wanted to study. So when I was modeling full time, I also went to college.”
Director Peter Bogdanovich discovered Cybill the actress.
Cybill writes in her autobiography that Bogdanovich first noticed her when he saw her face on the cover of a 1970 Glamour magazine. He offered her the role of Jacy, the manipulative, self-absorbed daughter of a rich oilman in the 1971 film classic “The Last Picture Show.”
Bogdanovich said that she was more interested in attending college than acting in movies, but he convinced her to take the role. She accepted the part but disliked the character.
