Interestingly, many actors try their hardest to forget about the roles that brought them so much success. Whether it’s sheer exhaustion from being identified with the same person over and over, or a desire to leave the past where it belongs, some stars just can’t shake the roles that made them famous.
In Carroll O’Connor’s case, it wasn’t that he wanted to forget about the time he spent playing Archie Bunker in All in the Family. Bunker had been a longtime companion to O’Connor, and brought him success on at least two series. Moreover, playing someone like Archie Bunker wasn’t something that the actor took lightly.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Bud Yorkin, an executive producer for All in the Family, said, “Carroll was a man who took everything very seriously. He wouldn’t accept everything. Some people might have found that difficult, but he was just trying to make it better. I thought he was a terrific performer. And I can’t imagine anyone else doing that role.”
So above all else, more than he was Archie Bunker or any other one of his roles, O’Connor was an actor. To do the best job possible, he had to put the role first, before everything else, in order to be fully immersed in the character, and hopefully, produce the best television content possible.
This is most likely why, according to The Los Angeles Times, O’Connor refused to speak about All in the Family during his time on the set of his new series, In the Heat of the Night. Anne-Marie Johnson, who worked with O’Connor on In the Heat of the Night, said, “When he was working on the show, he never mentioned Archie Bunker.” Johnson, who played Althea Tibbs, stated of her costar, “Carroll was a character actor, and he looked upon this as an amazing acting challenge.”
Indeed, a character like Chief Gillespie was about as far from Archie Bunker as someone could get, so O’Connor was smart to keep the two separate.
