Designing Women creator Linda Bloodworth Thomason: Les Moonves sabotaged my career

The Hollywood Reporter

Thanks to her CBS hits Designing Women and Evening Shade, Bloodworth Thomason says she received a $50 million deal in the early 1990s to write five new series with hefty penalties for each pilot not picked up. It was the largest writing contract in CBS history. Yet when Moonves arrived at CBS in 1995, she became sidelined. "During that period, because my contract was so valuable, I continued trying to win over Moonves," she writes in The Hollywood Reporter. "And he continued turning down every pilot I wrote. Often, if he would catch me in the parking lot, he would make sure to tell me that my script was one of the best he’d read but that he had decided, in the end, not to do it. It always seemed that he enjoyed telling me this. Just enough to keep me in the game. I was told he refused to give my scripts to any of the stars he had under contract. Then, I began to hear from female CBS employees about his mercurial, misogynist behavior, with actresses being ushered in and out of his office. His mantra, I was told, was, “Why would I wanna cast ’em if I don’t wanna f*ck ’em?' And he was an angry bully who enjoyed telling people, 'I will tear off the top of your head and piss on your brain!'"