The Team Behind ‘Golden Girls’ Recall Bea Arthur’s NSFW Nickname for Betty White

Betty White may have been a national treasure, but to her Golden Girls costar Bea Arthur, she was anything but.

The team behind the hit series — which starred Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, White as Rose Nylund, Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux and Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo — reunited for a panel to celebrate the 40th anniversary on Wednesday, June 18. (The series aired from 1985 to 1992.)

According to The Hollywood Reporter, co-producer Marsha Posner Williams touched on the long-standing rift between Arthur and White.

“When that red light was on [and the show was filming], there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together,” Williams shared during the event, held at NeueHouse Hollywood.

Explaining that the Maude star, who died following a battle with cancer at the age of 86 in 2009, would call her at home “and say, ‘I just ran into that [c-word]” in reference to White “at the grocery store” and inform her, “I’m gonna write her a letter.”

“I said, ‘Bea, just get over it for crying out loud,” Williams continued. “’Just get past it’.”

That wasn’t the only time Williams witnessed Arthur calling White, who died at the age of 99 in 2021, the four-letter-word. “I remember, my husband and I went over to Bea’s house a couple of times for dinner,” Williams added. “Within 30 seconds of walking in the door, the c-word came out.”

The outlet also reported that casting director Joel Thurm shared that he heard Arthur call White that c-word during a flight.

Thurm had previously touched on the actress’ long-standing rift in his 2022 book Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director, telling Fox News Digital in 2023, “It was well known that Bea didn’t like Betty. She felt Betty wasn’t ‘a real actress.’”

That same sentiment was shared by Arthur’s son Matthew Saks. “My mom was the real deal. I think she felt she was more of an actress than Betty,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “Mom came from Broadway. Betty starred on a game show at one point.”

In a 2011 interview with Village Voice, White herself admitted that there was tension between the two.  “She found me a pain in the neck sometimes,” the Hot in Cleveland alum shared at the time. “It was my positive attitude — and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she’d be furious!”