A question about Julie

I strongly suspect she was intended to replace Herve, and lower the talent payroll.
That show, and THE LOVE BOAT, were great opportunities for many of the older SAG members that hadn't worked in a while. Evidently a SAG 'card' does not get renewed if the holder has not worked in some fixed period of time, and even the health insurance benefit would be lost. By making an appearance in an episode, that reset the time period before their SAG 'card' expired. That said, it was well in the interest of many actors to have FI continue, even if it was at the expense of booting off (I mean, not renewing the contract of) Herve V..

I am not sure how strong the Screen Actor's Guild union was back then, but there are presently standard wage increases for actors named in the credits as the years of the series progresses. When you see "Special Guest Star" as part of the credits, that/those actor(s) is not covered by the automatic wage hikes with the series longevity. If I remember correctly, Heather Locklear was a Special Guest Star for a couple seasons of MELROSE PLACE...

My guess is Herve's agent and/or Herve had a highly inflated idea of his value to the series, and that was becoming a pain. Much later than this series, a similar thing to limit the talent's wages was attempted with the FRIENDS show. Since it was such a popular show, the showrunners had more available for payroll, and rewarded their talent by paying over the SAG scale. At some point, that became 'a problem' or 'an opportunity' to cut production costs, and the attempt was made to lower the pay for the less central/popular characters. The actors all agreed to stick together, and demanded they all were paid the same... (Tell me, do you feel lucky today? Well, do you?)

In that case, there must have (still) been enough money to pay them all, and for the next few seasons. But, that could have ended the series...


IMHO, that wage scale business is responsible for the cancellation of many fairly popular and well written shows, (not being wildly popular is actually their doom...).


And off we go now...

At least we can understand what she says, unlike Tattoo, who mumbles half of the time. As I said months ago, she was pretty good in the "Devil" episode.