Bette Midler Shares Her Biggest Regret About Her “Chaotic” Failed Sitcom ‘Bette’ 

Bette Midler recently reflected on one of the biggest regrets of her career: Her short-lived family sitcom Bette, which only lasted a single season on CBS.

The sitcom starred Midler as a successful singer and mother to 13-year-old Rose, played by a young Lindsay Lohan who was fresh off The Parent Trap.

Midler revealed during a recent episode of David Duchovny‘s Fail Better podcast that she first began to notice red flags when Lohan suddenly dropped out of the show after filming the pilot.

“After the pilot, Lindsay Lohan decided she didn’t want to do it, or she had other fish to fry,” Midler recalled. “So Lindsay Lohan left the building and I said, well, now what do you do? And the studio didn’t help me. It was extremely chaotic.”

It remains unclear why Lohan exited the series. That same year, she starred in an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney. Her next project wasn’t until 2002 when she led the TV movie Get a Clue.

She continued, “If I had been in my right mind, or if I had known that my part of my duties were to stand up and say, ‘This absolutely will not do, I’m going to sue,’ then I would have done that. But I seem to have been cosseted in some way that I couldn’t get to the writer’s room. I couldn’t speak to the showrunner. I couldn’t make myself clear.”

Lohan’s reps did not return Decider’s request for comment by time of publication.

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Midler complained that “no one bothered” to guide her through starring and making a sitcom.

“I had made theatrical live events. I had made films. I had made variety television shows. I had been on talk shows. But I had never done a situation comedy. I didn’t realize what the pace was. And I didn’t understand what the hierarchy was. And no one bothered to tell me,” she said.

She felt like she had been “kicked to the curb immediately.”

“Because I was so green, I didn’t understand what my options were, what choices I could have made to improve my situation. I didn’t know that I could have taken charge,” she added.

She later admitted that she was “thrilled” when Bette was canceled after just one season in 2001. Per Variety, the show consisted of 18 episodes, two of which did not air on CBS.

Filming Bette was a “big, big, big mistake,” she said, “for several reasons. It was the wrong motivation. It was a part of the media I simply did not understand. I watched it. I appreciated it. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know what it meant to make it.”