Many people know Kathie Lee Gifford as a former host of Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee and NBC’s Today, but back in the day she had wanted to try her hand at acting on television. In an interview with People, she remembered one instance where she was insulted by a casting agent for Charlie’s Angels. If you can believe it, they told her she wasn’t pretty enough.
Gifford heard about the casting
Charlie’s Angels ran on television from 1976 until 1981 with Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith as the stars of the show. This trio fought crime while maintaining sex appeal, and audiences absolutely loved it. However, over the course of the show, some casting changes were made that caught the attention of other actors.
Gifford remembers being sick with the flu when she first found out that the studio was on the search for a new ‘Angel.’ Fawcett had left after the first season, so Gifford believes that the role had opened after Kate Jackson’s departure from the show in 1979. Unfortunately, when she arrived at the casting office to try her hand at getting the part, she was met with some pretty harsh criticism.
The agent was extremely cruel
Gifford didn’t even really have a chance to audition. As soon as she walked in, Gifford recalled, “She goes, ‘Let me tell you right now, you’re not right for Charlie’s Angels.'” Unsure why she was so abruptly rejected, she asked the agent why she wasn’t right for the part. The cruel agent spat back, “Because we’re looking for a pretty girl. You know, like Jaclyn Smith: pretty, gorgeous, gorgeous.”
Gifford was stunned by the response. “It was like kicking me to the gut. I started to think it was funny. I really did,” she explained. “And as I’m walking out, I looked at her and I said, ‘Okay, well, thank you so much.'” She was going to just leave it at that, but then she turned around and “I said, ‘When you’re casting a cartoon,’ and I threw up my leg. ‘When you’re casting a cartoon, let me know.’ I left, thanking God that I could laugh about it.”
She is all about forgiveness
While it was a horrible experience, Gifford has been able to look back on it with some perspective for a while. ” She didn’t say ‘Sorry, honey, have a nice life. You’re not what we’re looking for.’ She had to be cruel. She had to be the exact opposite of what my dad taught me to be. The fact that I remember her name to this day is because she was so cruel,” she said.
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Gifford has long been an advocate of the power of forgiveness, something she discusses at length in her book, I Want to Matter: Your Life Is Too Short and Too Precious to Waste. This instance is one of those times where she exercised that forgiveness in order to move on.