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It’s hard to imagine Golden Girls without Bea Arthur. The talented actress played Dorothy Zbornak on the hit NBC sitcom, and it feels like the role was written for her. However, if NBC had their way, Arthur wouldn’t have been part of the cast.

“There was one big problem with casting. My boss [NBC executive] Brandon Tardikov did not want Bea Arthur, which created a big problem,” casting director Joel Thurm during a Golden Girls spotlight panel for Prive LIVE. “I never knew how dug in [creator Susan Harris] was. I wasn’t in the room where those kind of discussions happened, So, my job according to Brandon was to find someone that Susan would be happy with instead of Bea Arthur.”

In 1987, the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon debuted - and all our lives were changed. Watch this reunion of the original voice actors:

“I should have realized that she wouldn’t have been happy with anybody besides Bea Arthur, but I was too naive and I thought, ‘Oh, I have someone. Her name is Elaine Stritch. She has the same acidic quality. She could stare at you and give you the same thing Bea does.’ I thought it was a good idea.”

“Stritch came in for her audition, and she talks about this in her show. I set her up in her office, and you know whatever was there, she said she was going to the restroom to freshen up a little bit, which I didn’t know meant taking a couple hits of vodka. So, when she came in to read, none of the people associated with Golden Girls wanted her. So, this woman had to walk into a freezer of an office and make it funny.”

Arthur got the role in the end, but Thurm still feels bad for sending Strich in for what turned out to be an impossible audition.

“I felt so sorry for poor Stritch, because it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything. Had I known that Susan was immovable on this, I wouldn’t have done what I did and tried to find somebody else.”

Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:

• Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
• The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
• How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
• How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
• How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
• The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
• How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s