Why Farrah Fawcett Left Charlie’s Angels After One Season

The 1976 action series “Charlie’s Angels” was a massive success for a very simple reason: the lead actresses were dazzling. Yes, the premise was fun, but most of the show’s fans will sooner talk about how the original Angels — Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett — were objects of their crushes. The makers of “Charlie’s Angels” seemingly spent just as much time filming the Angels running in slow-motion as they did setting up plots or working on character development.

The series followed three recent graduates of the LAPD’s police academy who, despite their excellent fighting and crime-stopping skills, are given menial, sexist jobs that do not challenge them. Instead, they pursue a job with a secretive private investigation company, run by a wealthy, off-screen benefactor named Charlie Townsend (John Forsythe). He gives them assignments in secret (Charlie has a lot of enemies) and nicknames them his “Angels.”

The series progressed for five seasons, although not always with the same cast. Smith remained throughout, but Fawcett was replaced by Cheryl Ladd at the end of season one. Jackson only stayed for the first three years, replaced by Shelley Hack in season four, and Hack was replaced by Tanya Roberts in season five. Fawcett would reappear occasionally later in the series.

Fawcett became the breakaway star of “Charlie’s Angels,” but she bailed in 1977. She never went on record as to why. “Charlie’s Angels” was a hit, and massively so, so it was a bit of a mystery. Fawcett’s former assistant, a man named Mike Pingel, spoke to Fox News in 2019and he explained that her Fawcett wanted to do different roles but, moreso, was butting heads with the studio over how much back pay she should receive for merchandise sales. Fawcett, also a model, knew the value of her image, and, hence, refused to sign a long-term contract that didn’t pay her enough.

Right before “Charlie’s Angels” was set to debut, Fawcett famously posed for a 1976 pinup poster released by a company called Pro Arts. The “red swimsuit” poster was a huge seller, festooning bedrooms and dorm rooms all over the country. The poster became so widely consumed that it became a central piece of the era’s iconography. Fawcett’s swimsuit is now part of the Smithsonian collection. Perhaps because of the poster, Fawcett became very aware of how other companies marketed her image. “Charlie’s Angels” had a lot of tie-in products, and Fawcett’s face was on a lot of them.

Apparently, Fawcett was offered a long-term contract with ABC, and began acting on “Charlie’s Angels” under its stipulations … but she never actually signed it. It seems that she was always in the midst of negotiating her likeness rights. ABC offered her a very small percentage for merch sales, and she was never happy with it. As Pingel put it:

“Even in ’77 she knew the power of her imagery and what money can come with that, and what she’s worth as far as that’s concerned. (…) They were only offering her 2.5 percent of the merchandise. At that point, she already had her own poster coming out; she knew she wanted much more than that for her image and her rights. And that’s why she didn’t sign the contract. She kept saying to them, ‘Can we renegotiate this?'”

Evidently not. Fawcett quit, able to skip out on four years of “Charlie’s Angels” she had presumably agreed to. As a make-good maneuver, she did agree to return to “Charlie’s Angels” for six episodes. That part of the contract, she fulfilled. It might have been worse than Pingel even remembered. An article in Vanity Fair put her merch earnings at only 2%.

Also, Fawcett seemingly didn’t want to be stuck playing Jill Monroe forever. The actress wasn’t feeling very challenged on a show like “Charlie’s Angels,” and wanted to expand her range. Fawcett already had a thriving TV career before “Charlie’s Angels,” appearing in episodes of “Mayberry, RFD,” “The Flying Nun,” “The Partridge Family,” and many others. Fawcett seems to have sensed that Jill wasn’t a very interesting character. Or, as Pingel put it:

“At that point, I think she was like: ‘I’m pretty good at doing something like this,’ (…) Farrah was wanting to expand her acting. The progression came and at the end of the first season, she wanted more as an actress. People are going to hate me for saying this, but she was done with the ‘cookie-cutter’ Jill Munroe, the beautiful girl that episode after episode did the same thing.”

Fawcett began appearing in movies after “Charlie’s Angels,” although to only mixed success. Still, Fawcett seemed to take roles that interested her. She was quite good in “The Burning Bed,” and received a Golden Globe nomination for playing a vengeful assault victim in “Extremities.” The Razzies picked on her unduly (they seem to hate actresses who are also models; see also: Megan Fox), nominating her for her performances in “Saturn 3” and “The Cannonball Run.” She was almost in “Star Wars.”

It’s also been theorized that Fawcett wanted to step away from “Charlie’s Angels” to spend more time with her then-new-husband, Lee Majors. Majors, who was starring in “The Six Million Dollar Man” at the same time Fawcett was on “Angels,” hardly saw his wife, and it’s likely that they just wanted to hang out more. Fawcett and Majors separated in 1979 and officially divorced in 1981.

Fawcett passed in 2009. She remains one of the most recognizable faces of 1970s pop culture.