As a sex symbol, Jenilee Harrison wasn’t comfortable taking off her clothes.
The actress, who stepped in for Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company, appeared in the June 1987 issue of Playboy. While she agreed to the shoot, Harrison insisted on participating strictly on her own terms.
“It was in my contract that, yes, I’ll do [Playboy], but I have to keep my clothes on,” Harrison told Fox News Digital.
“So I show up for this photo shoot in the Playboy building in Beverly Hills, and I go into the changing room to do my makeup and all that,” Harrison recalled. “And the photographer — a very famous photographer — comes in. He goes, ‘You’re all ready to go?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, where’s my wardrobe?’ And he looked shocked. He’s like, ‘Your wardrobe? No, we’re doing Playboy.’ And I said, ‘No, my contract says I’m wearing clothes.’ He was just stunned.”
“So everything stopped,” Harrison continued. “He had to get back on the phone. They had to regroup and bring in wardrobe… He didn’t even know. But I had to fight for that.”
Harrison became one of the few pin-up personalities to appear in Playboy without going nude — a select group that includes the likes of Dolly Parton and Barbra Streisand.
She candidly admitted that she found being portrayed as a sex symbol uncomfortable. She wanted the industry to recognize her for her hard work and talent, not just her appearance.
“I looked at being a sex symbol as just a wardrobe I had to put on to go into Hollywood and do this job,” she explained.
“Your wardrobe is your outside, but it’s not who your core person is, your soul. But I had a large wardrobe because your wardrobe is the tool of the trade. At 10 o’clock I had to be a nurse. At 12 o’clock, I had to be a secretary. At 3 o’clock, I had to be a Sports Illustrated model. At 5 o’clock, I had to be a hooker. And at 8 o’clock I had to be a nun. I had to be all those things. Was I uncomfortable? Absolutely, many times I was.”
Harrison said she felt “blessed” that she managed to appear in Playboy without baring it all. It was just one of many surprising highlights in her career.
She recalled, “When I was very young — like 19 years old… my agent called me and said, ‘They want to see you — they’re replacing Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company.’ I thought, ‘Oh geez, why am I even going to the interview? I’m not going to get a role like that.’”
In 1980, after four seasons on the hit sitcom, Somers demanded a raise—reportedly matching what her co-star John Ritter earned. She was swiftly phased out and then fired.
By that time, Harrison, a former Rams cheerleader, had already done commercials and a guest spot on CHiPs. Only one audition later, she landed the role of Somers’ on-screen cousin, Cindy Snow.
“When I showed up for the audition… I tripped when I was walking in,” Harrison recalled. “I fell over things and grabbed something or whatever. They instantly thought, ‘Oh, here’s our klutzy cousin girl’… How lucky I was.”
She insisted she wasn’t intimidated by filling big shoes.
“I just live very much in the present,” she said. “Luckily, I’m extremely disciplined… And whatever job I had, I looked at it in front of me and just did the work… When I got on Three’s Company, I was welcomed with open arms. They treated me lovely. They treated me like a little sister… And the girls on set—we protected one another, and we supported one another.”
Although Harrison was eventually written out of the sitcom, her fortunes didn’t stop there. She went on to join the hit soap opera Dallas.
“‘Dallas’ was and is still such a joy,” she beamed. “And I worked with some of the people there… I remember visiting the set and Patrick [Duffy] was there with his boys. His kids started grabbing his shirt, saying, ‘Dad, dad, that’s Jack Tripper’s maid!’ And Patrick’s going, ‘What are you talking about?’ The boys had been watching Three’s Company and were so excited. That broke the ice.”
Harrison recalled that the Dallas cast quickly welcomed her into their group. Larry Hagman—who famously played the ruthless oil baron J.R. Ewing—immediately embraced her with humor and warmth.
She also revealed a different, more human side to the iconic TV villain.
“Harrison, 67, is the co-host of a new podcast, ‘Stall Talk,’ where women of various ages, from the boomer to Gen Z, share unfiltered stories and wisdom from personal experiences.”
“He would not go out in public unless he had his hat on,” she said, referring to Hagman’s signature cowboy look. “He had to have that hat because he said, ‘When I go out there, the people want to see J.R.’ He loved that character. And that hat was J.R. I remember once we were all crammed in a limousine heading to some event. He left his hat or something, and he freaked out. We had to stop the car and everything. He said, ‘I need my hat!’”
“One of my favorite memories of Hagman was that, even though he was the star of the show, he stayed on set as long as needed to allow the other actors to film their scenes without pressure.”
“Larry would not go home if his lines were needed,” she said. “Larry knew that the show’s success was not just about him. The success was because of all the characters and how they interacted.”
“He had every right to be the number-one star, leave the set and act like he was above it all,” she continued. “But he didn’t. He was very down-to-earth, and he worked hard with all of us. And he continued to work. His whole life… he’d still do autograph shows and be out in public. He never took the popularity of Dallas for granted… He taught us not to take it for granted. It could be gone tomorrow.”
Today, Harrison is “living the dream,” running a sprawling ranch. When she’s not caring for her animals, she’s hosting “Stall Talk.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a boomer or Gen Z—we share the most intimate, honest, relationship issues with each other, and we’re giggling, or we’re crying,” she said. “But we’re sharing those stories… All of our guests just share real and honest questions about what women talk about when they go to the bathroom together.”
“The advice I always give [on the podcast] is: go for your dreams, go for the opportunities,” Harrison reflected. “You have to persevere and remember that if you persevere, anything can happen. Anything is possible.”
