41 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets From 'The Golden Girls'

When The Golden Girls debuted in 1985, Betty White (who played Rose Nylund) was 63 years old. Today, she's 98 years old.

Bea Arthur, who played Dorothy Zbornak on the show, was 63 when The Golden Girls premiered in 1985.

Estelle Getty (who played Sophia Petrillo) was 62 years old when the show premiered — that means Estelle was actually a year younger than Bea Arthur, who played her daughter.

Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche Devereaux, was the youngest member of the main cast when the show began. She was born in 1934, making her 51 when the show started in 1985.

They were both on Mama's Family, a sitcom based on a sketch from The Carol Burnett Show, which debuted a couple of years before The Golden Girls. When the show went on hiatus after two seasons, Betty and Rue booked their roles on The Golden Girls.

Bea was the lead on Maude, while Rue played her next-door neighbor. It was actually Rue who convinced Bea to take the role on The Golden Girls. "I called her and said, 'Why are you going to turn down the best script that’s ever going to come across your desk as long as you live?'" Rue told the Archive of American Television.

Initially, producers wanted to use Bette Midler's song, "Friends," but it was too expensive. Instead, they went with Andrew Gold’s "Thank You for Being a Friend,” recorded by a singer named Cynthia Fee.

In 2011, Betty spoke candidly about her tense relationship with Bea. "She was not that fond of me," White said at a 2011 talk, according to the Village Voice. "She found me a pain in the neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude — and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious!"

Bea apparently hated wearing shoes so much, she had it written into her contract that she could walk around set barefoot, as long as she promised not to sue the producers if she was injured as a result. She also reportedly hated chewing gum and birds.

Speaking of crazy contracts, Rue reportedly had a clause in her contract that said she got to keep all of the fabulous outfits she wore as Blanche. Consider us jealous.

Bea Arthur's son, Matthew Saks, recalled that Betty used to come and chat with the audience — much to Bea's annoyance. "When they shot the sitcom, sometimes they had to stop," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "My mom would stay concentrated, maybe stay backstage, stand in her place there. And sometimes Betty would go out and smile and chat with the audience and literally go and make friends with the audience. Which is a nice thing — a lot of them have come from all over the country and are fans. I think my mom didn't dig that."

The actress reportedly didn't get the job. because one of the show's writers didn't like her. And, to hear her tell it, she also might have dropped an F-bomb during the audition.

Not Rose. Shocking, we know. She had just wrapped up playing "neighborhood nyphomaniac" Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The director worried that the Blanche role was too similar to the Sue Ann role, and decided to cast Betty as Rose instead.

Dorothy's mother, Sophia, wasn't meant to be part of the primary cast, but when Estelle Getty tested extraordinarily well with preview audiences, producers decided to make Sophia a series regular.

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Rue McClanahan said that Estelle would regularly be so nervous she would forget her lines. "She'd panic," Rue said. "By tape day, she was unreachable. She was just as uptight as a human being could get. When your brain is frozen like that, you can't remember lines."

They passed time with word games. It's no secret that Betty loved games. After all, she appeared on and hosted several game shows beginning in the 1960s.

Fans of The Golden Girls are well-acquainted with the straw purse Sophia carries throughout the series. Estelle reportedly found the purse while shopping in Los Angeles' Fairfax District for props before her audition.

She requested that the cast and crew put on a live version as part of the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in 1988. And they did! In a Reddit AMA, Betty White wrote that, "It was very exciting. The Queen was lovely. We were told not to address her unless we were addressed. She was up in a box and she came down on stage after with Princess Anne."

Princess Diana reportedly spent an afternoon with Freddy Mercury, "drinking champagne in front of reruns of The Golden Girls with the sound turned down" and improvising show dialogue with "a much naughtier storyline," according to a book written by British comedy actress Cleo Rocos.

That's how she spent her time during the show's summer hiatus. The makeup team wasn't thrilled — they already had to spend about an hour a day working to make Estelle look old enough to play Sophia.