TC Carson recently sat down with Comedy Hype and revealed that he was fired from the show “Living Single.”
Carson played Kyle Barker on the series, and his final episode was in 1997, before the show ended one year later. On the show, his character was to have taken a job in London.
At around the 6:22 mark, the actor said he was terminated because there were problems between him and those who ran the show.
“There were times where we had issues on the show. We would come to them as a cast, but I would be the spokesperson for it,” said Carson in the interview, which was published on March 30. “And so that last season before I left, they called me in and they basically said, ‘Well, all these problems that we’ve been having, they listen to you. You’re the person they listen to. So if you said something else, then they would do that.’
“I looked at them and said, ‘Well, first of all, we’re dealing with five grown people, and they have their own mindset and own ideas about what we’re doing, and everything we come to you with is a group decision, not my decision,’ ” he added. “‘But if you think I have that much power, then I need to have a different job.’ And I don’t think they liked that.”
Carson then talked about some of the issues the cast brought up, which included how they were treated, as well as problems with the script.
In fact, earlier in the interview, Carson said that he and his former “Living Single” co-star John Henton, who played Overton Wakefield Jones, took issue with how their characters were portrayed in the beginning.
“They wanted us to be Lenny and Squiggy,” Carson explained, mentioning the characters from the ’70s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley.” “At one point, I forgot what we were doing, but we just both looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t do this like this.’
“And we basically went to them and said, ‘Look, we know what you’re trying to do,’ ” he continued. ” ‘But you cannot put two baffoonsish men against four strong women. You got to think about it differently’ and to their credit they did.”
Toward the end of the interview, Carson said that it usually becomes problematic when a black actor brings up an issue on-set, which was the case when he was on “Living Single” and still happens today.
Carson also revealed that once it was written that his character was going to London, he asked the show’s decision makers if he was being let go and they denied it.
“I think part of it is, even now, if you’re African-American, you shut your mouth and do the job. Don’t ask questions. Be happy that you have a job,” he explained. “My whole time on ‘Living Single’ I was happy I had a job, but I understood the importance of the job I had.
“I understood the importance of what these characters meant to my community,” said Carson. “And so when I come to you with a problem, it’s because of that, not because of ego. They looked at it as ego.”
“Living Single” aired on Fox from 1993 to 1998. After being let go, Carson’s character returned for the series finale.
