The actress chats with ET about reuniting with her former 'Married With Children' co-star after all these years.
Katey Sagal couldn't have been more excited to reunite with her "daughter" Christina Applegate on Dead to Me.
The 67-year-old actress made a brief cameo during the second season of the Netflix show, portraying Judy's (Linda Cardellini) incarcerated mother. In the upcoming third and final season, Sagal tells ET's Matt Cohen that she and her former Married… With Children co-star, Applegate, will get to share the screen together.
"This season, I actually work with Christina. When I was on last season, I was Linda Cardellini's mom and you just saw me in prison," she shares while giving ET an exclusive tour of her home. "In fact, Christina called me up, I was just over at her house a couple of weeks ago, and we were so excited."
"We have a couple of big scenes together, so that will be really fun," she continues. "She is truly like my daughter. Like for real. So this will be really lovely to be with her."
Applegate played Kelly Bundy on Married… With Children, with Sagal as her screen mom, Peggy Bundy.
After the second season of Dead to Me dropped, Sagal tweeted, "Thanks you for all the messages about my appearance on @deadtome. Here is a shot from the episode."
The '80s sitcom will be celebrating its 35th anniversary next year, and Sagal recalls the cast's amazing chemistry.
"We just got on great, so that was fantastic," she said of co-starring with Applegate, on-screen husband Ed O'Neill and on-screen son David Faustino. "The original pilot had two different kids. Then when we got picked up, they replaced them with Chris and David and that was instant chemistry. The whole thing clicked. We were all kinda a bunch of little outcasts."
Among her favorite memories on the set was while filming season 2 episode 13, "You Better Watch Out."
"I always remember the one where Santa Claus fell through the roof and we were all sitting on the couch," Sagal, who admits that she kept her wig from the show, recalls. "And if you ever watch it, you'll see us all on the couch trying not to laugh. It's that whole Carol Burnett thing where you're trying not to laugh. We could barely get through it."
Another great cast she worked with was her Rebel ensemble. Co-starring alongside Andy Garcia, John Corbett and Abigail Spencer, Sagal starred as Annie "Rebel" Bello in the ABC series, inspired by the life and work of Erin Brockovich. The show was abruptly canceled after just five episodes. A fan made a petition to #SaveRebel, which has over 89,000 signatures at press time.
Rebel's cancellation was "completely shocking," Sagal says, adding that they didn't get a warning from the network. "No, there was nothing. I mean, it's not completely shocking to me because I've done this for a very long time, so I understand that decisions are made behind the scenes that I will never be totally privy to."
"For whatever reason, coupled with the fact that we aired not at the regular television time, we aired later, I think it was when the world started to open up, maybe people weren't watching television as much," she expresses. "And for whatever reason that decision was made. But we were as a cast really surprised. We thought that for sure this was gonna continue on to a second season."
Sagal, meanwhile, has had many wonderful acting opportunities over the years and connections that helped her land her roles. She reveals that she almost didn't get the 8 Simple Rules gig, but thanks to the late John Ritter, it all worked out.
"8 Simple Rules was at a place in my career when I was really struggling to get a job because everybody knew me as Peg Bundy for so long. So it was very hard," she reflects. "And I have to say, if it wasn't for John Ritter, when I walked in the room and John and I had done a movie years earlier, and he just looked at them all and he kept saying, 'She's the one, she's the one.' Because I had to go read for it. I had to do a chemistry read with John and do all that...When they presented that to me, I wanted to work with John and the network was nervous that it was going to be [Ritter's Three's Company and Three's a Crowd character] Jack Tripper and Peg Bundy. So they were nervous."
Thankfully, Ritter pushed for her and she "was just grateful to get the job." Sagal credits a handful of close friends for helping her along the way, including Futurama co-creator Matt Groening, who called her and asked if she wanted to voice Leela.
"That was amazing and I was just sitting there with all these voice actors that are incredible," she notes. "So sometimes it's a choice. I mean, definitely Rebel was a choice. Sons of Anarchy was not so much a choice as it was my husband who's an amazing writer and wrote this part that was designed to be kind of a smaller role and then he wrote her so well that it grew into what it grew into."
Up next for Sagal is the thriller Tattered Hearts. "This is super exciting," she says of the role. "I am going to do a horror movie. I have never done a horror movie. I am going to be in New Orleans and I am going to play a country star."
The film follows "a country duo who seek out the private mansion of their idol and end up in a twisted series of horrors that force them to confront the limits they'd go for their dreams," per IMDB.
"You just never know where they come from. But a lot of times I'm just grateful to get the job," Sagal says of her roles and lasting career choices, before adding, "As long as they keep wanting to see me in different roles, [I'll] do that. You have to stay interesting."
See more of Sagal and her home tour in the video above.
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