Sanford wasn’t interested in letting go of a good thing.
Fear of change is totally normal. However, if you give into those fears too frequently, you might find that you’re missing out on some wonderful opportunities.
Actor Isabel Sanford is best known for playing Louise Jefferson on The Jeffersons, a spinoff of All in the Family, where the character originated. But as Sanford told the Chicago Tribune, she had no interest in leaving All in the Family to join a new show, even if that new show gave her a leading role.
“I kept telling them I didn’t want to go,” she said. “My agent told the casting director, James Murray, that I didn’t, so he called. He said, ‘Isabel, I understand you don’t want to do The Jeffersons’, and I said, ‘No, I don’t. I want to stay on All in the Family.’ I’m a Virgo, see. I’m very practical. I don’t want to leave a winning thing. I had no idea about television and its works. I only knew I wanted to stay there. The show had been tried and proven and I didn’t know what The Jeffersons would turn out to be.”
At first, Murray tried to convince Sanford with the promise of fame before getting blunt. “He said, ‘Isabel, you’ll be a star.’ Well, that didn’t move me any because I’ve been called a star all my life by my friends and family. I said I still wanted to stay on All in the Family. Then he said, ‘Well, you know we’ll have to write out Louise Jefferson in All in the Family. We’ll have to get someone else to play Louise Jefferson in The Jeffersons.’ I said, ‘Oh. Well my dear, that helps me make up my mind.’ I had no idea they would write out Louise Jefferson. I just figured they’d get another one and let me stay on All in the Family, but it didn’t work that way.”
All the fear aside, Sanford resolutely believed that the move to The Jeffersons was the right choice, one that she celebrated years later. “So I went for it, and thank God I did.”
