Christine Baranski admits there were ‘issues’ with former co-star Cybill Shepherd: ‘It did get difficult’

Christine Baranski has reflected on starring with Cybill Shepherd in the Nineties sitcom Cybill.

The show, which ran for four seasons from 1995 to 1998, starred Shepherd as a struggling middle-aged actor who attempts to make a career for herself, all the while surrounded by her hard-drinking best friend Maryann (Baranski), her two ex-husbands, and her two daughters.

In Shepherd’s 2000 memoir, Cybill Disobedience, she claimed that she and Baranski didn’t get on because Baranski was unfriendly.

Alicia Witt, who played Shepherd’s daughter in the series, later said that Shepherd “kinda said some pretty mean things about pretty much everyone she worked with, as I understand”.

When asked about the tensions in a new interview with The Guardian, Baranski said: “I have never publicly gone into that. Yes, there were issues, but I prefer to take the higher ground and say, look, that show gave me so much.”

She added: “I was fine working with her. Politically, it did get difficult, but I wish her well.”

Eleven years after Cybill ended, the show’s writer Chuck Lorre gave Baranski a part in the hugely successful sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

She has also starred in The Good Fight, its spin-off The Good Wife and Mamma Mia!

Baranski will next be seen in Julian Fellowes’ new period drama The Gilded Age, which has been dubbed the “American Downton Abbey”.

The Gilded Age is out on Sky Atlantic on 25 January.