Bette Midler jokes that Lindsay Lohan may have caused the failure of her show ‘Bette’

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Bette Middler has had a lot of hits, but she is talking about one of her professional misses.

During an episode of David Duchovny’s podcast “Fail Better with David Duchovny,”Middler spoke about her failed 2000 CBS sitcom, “Bette.”

She called the show “a big, big mistake” and admitted that “it was the wrong motivation.”

“It was a part of the media I simply did not understand,” she told Duchovny of television. “I watched it, I appreciated it, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know what it meant to make it.”

Not only was she not prepared for the pacing and hierarchy, but the show changed from its initial pilot, which had included a then teen Lindsay Lohan.

“I didn’t know those things could happen. For instance, Lindsay Lohan was cast as my daughter in the pilot,” Middler said. “Well, after the pilot, Lindsay Lohan decided she didn’t want to do it. Or she had other fish to fry. So Lindsay Lohan left the building. and I said, well, now what do you do?”

What followed was “extremely chaotic,” Middler recalled. Duchovny pointed out that there’s such a thing as contracts and “you’re not supposed to be able to leave a show.”

“I know and if I had been in my right mind or if I had known that part of my duties was to stand up and say, ‘This absolutely will not do, I’m gonna sue,’ then I would have done that,” she said.

Middler added that she found the speed of making the show to be “taxing.”

She described an appearance on David Letterman’s late night talk show at the time when she was asked about how filming was going.

“It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life,” she recalled responding.

That didn’t go over well.

“Of course the next day I was fired,” she said. “My lawyer called me, like nine o’clock in the morning and said, ‘You’re fired.’ I said, ‘Oh isn’t that fantastic!’ I mean, we were on the 18th episode out of 22 and I was so thrilled to not have to continue.”

CNN has reached out to representatives for Lohan for comment.

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