Sally Struthers still treasures a piece of guidance she received from her former All in the Family co-star Rob Reiner — one that’s stayed with her for more than four decades.
“Rob Reiner saw me deflate one time at the Monday morning table read,” Struthers, 78, told The Post while discussing the 25th anniversary of Gilmore Girls.
Each week, the cast gathered with the director, Norman Lear, and the writers to read the latest script aloud. A “script girl” would time the read-through and announce whether the episode ran long — often by a couple of minutes. When they needed to trim, Reiner would spring into action.
“We nicknamed him ‘The Sultan of Slice,’” Struthers said. “He always knew exactly which line could go without hurting the joke or the story.” His instincts, she added, were so quick that the others could “hardly keep up.”
For Struthers — whose role as Gloria often came with very few lines — the cuts could feel personal. The writers, she explained, were older men who didn’t quite know how to write for her character, leaving Gloria mostly to react with lines like, “I’ll help you set the table, Mom,” or “Oh, Daddy! Stop it!” When she only had a handful of lines, losing even one felt crushing.
“If one of my three lines was cut, I’d physically sink in my chair,” she recalled. “I was spending all this time at CBS rehearsing, and I always had the least to say.”
Eventually, Reiner pulled her aside.
“Rob told me, ‘I know we’re the same age, and I have no business instructing you. But I can see how disappointed you get when you lose a line. If you could shift your mindset — make the show more important than your part — you wouldn’t just be okay with a line being cut; you might even offer one up yourself. I hope you can try that.’”
From that point on, Struthers said, she focused on the episode as a whole rather than the size of her role. It was a simple piece of advice — and one that reshaped the way she approached her work.
