Creation Ideas for a comedy series about older women emerged during the filming of a television special at
NBC Studios in
Burbank, California, in August 1984. NBC senior vice president
Warren Littlefield was among the executive producers in the audience who were amused by their performance, and he envisioned a series based on the geriatric humor the two were portraying. She found the concept interesting, as "it was a demographic that had never been addressed," and she soon began work on it. Littlefield was impressed when he received her pilot script and subsequently approved production of it. The pilot included a gay house attendant, Coco (
Charles Levin), who lived with the girls. Levin had been suggested by then-NBC president
Brandon Tartikoff based on Levin's groundbreaking portrayal of a recurring gay character, Eddie Gregg, on NBC's Emmy-winning drama
Hill Street Blues. After the pilot, the character of Coco was eliminated from the series. The Walt Disney Company, NBC Studios and the creators were named in a federal copyright infringement suit filed by Nancy Bretzfield claiming the show was based on a script rejected by NBC in 1980. The suit was later settled. According to the actor
Mark Feuerstein, Susan Harris has stated that she intended
The Golden Girls to be a show about four Jewish women. Feuerstein said that "She wrote it about four old Jewish women living in Florida. They shot a pilot, it was great and everyone was excited, but the network told her 'Rewrite it. Nobody is interested in watching four old Jewish women.'"
Casting in 2007 The part of Sophia Petrillo was the first of the four roles to be cast. Estelle Getty auditioned and won the role as the feisty mother of character Dorothy Zbornak, due, in part, to the rave reviews she garnered in her off-Broadway role reprisal for the 1984 Los Angeles run of
Torch Song Trilogy. Afterwards, Getty returned to New York, but her manager sent her back to California in early 1985. Getty figured it would be her last chance to find television or film work, and she would return home to New York if she were unsuccessful. Casting director Judith Weiner had seen
Torch Song Trilogy, and thought Getty was terrific in it. She was also impressed by Getty's audition for the role of the mother of Steven Keaton (played by actor
Michael Gross), for a guest episode of
Family Ties. Although Getty was impressive, the show's producers went with another actress. Getty came to Weiner's mind soon after, when it became time to begin casting of
The Golden Girls. Getty, who went through a three-hour transformation to become Sophia, wore heavy make-up, thick glasses, and a white wig to look the part. The character of Sophia was thought by the creators to enhance the idea that three retirement-aged women could be young. Disney's
Michael Eisner explains, "Estelle Getty made our three women into girls. And that was, to me, what made it seem like it could be a contemporary, young show." Getty continuously battled stage fright during her tenure on the show. In a 1988 interview, Getty commented on her phobia and expressed how working with major stars, such as Arthur and White, made her even more nervous. At times, she even froze on camera while filming. Hired to shoot the pilot, director Jay Sandrich also became instrumental in helping to cast the roles of Blanche Devereaux and Rose Nylund. Both Rue McClanahan and Betty White came into consideration, as the series ''
Mama's Family, in which the two co-starred, had been cancelled by NBC. Producers wanted to cast McClanahan as Rose and White as Blanche based on roles they had previously played; White portrayed the man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, while McClanahan co-starred as the sweet but scatterbrained Vivian Harmon in Maude''. Eager not to be
typecast, they took the suggestion of Sandrich and switched roles at the last minute. Once the show was picked up for a first season, new director
Paul Bogart felt exactly the opposite, insisting that McClanahan use a Southern accent. McClanahan deliberately exaggerated her accent, stating, "I played Blanche the way I felt Blanche. She thought an accentuated Southern accent... would be sexy and strong and attractive to men. She wanted to be a Southern heroine, like
Vivien Leigh. In fact, that's who I think she thought she was." Though Harris had created the character of Dorothy with a "Bea Arthur type" in mind, Littlefield and the producers initially envisioned actress
Elaine Stritch for the part. Both actresses had dramatically different training and acting backgrounds; Saks commented on White's habit of
breaking the fourth wall to engage and joke with the studio audience during breaks between filming, which Arthur found unprofessional. "Those two couldn't warm up to each other if they were cremated together," co-producer Marsha Posner Williams recalled during a celebration of the series' 40th anniversary in 2025. Williams added that Arthur referred to White as a "
cunt" on more than one occasion. In 2011, White stated that she believed it was her "positive attitude" and perky demeanor that got on Arthur's nerves. However, Arthur preferred that all four castmates break together for workday lunch.
Writing and taping The show was the second television series to be produced by the Walt Disney Company under the
Touchstone Television label (and the first one to be successful), and was subsequently distributed by
Buena Vista International, Inc. (which holds as the ownership stake in
Disney Channel Southeast Asia, now
Disney–ABC Television Group).
The Golden Girls was shot on videotape in front of a
live studio audience. Creator Susan Harris went on to contribute another four episodes to the first season, but became less involved with the sitcom throughout its run; she continued reading all scripts, however, and remained familiar with most of the storylines. Kathy Speer and Terry Grossman were the first head writers of the series, and wrote for the show's first four seasons. As head writers, Speer and Grossman, along with Mort Nathan and Barry Fanaro, who won an Emmy Award for outstanding writing for the first season, gave general ideas to lower staff writers, and personally wrote a handful of scripts each season. In 1989, Marc Sotkin, previously a writer on
Laverne & Shirley and a producer on another Witt/Thomas series, ''
It's a Living, assumed head writing responsibilities, and guided the show (to varying degrees) during what were its final three seasons. Richard Vaczy and Tracy Gamble, previously writers on 227 and My Two Dads, also assumed the roles of producers and head writers. Beginning in 1990, Marc Cherry served as writer and producer, years before creating Desperate Housewives'', which ran on ABC from 2004 to 2012. Writer
Christopher Lloyd explained that the usual situation was for all of the more junior writers to be assigned the same scene to write, with the one judged the best version becoming the one chosen. This "created a great deal of stress and competitiveness amongst those of us who weren't in that inner sanctum." Estelle Getty's
stage fright, which affected her from the beginning of the show, grew worse as the show went on. According to McClanahan, by the end of season three, Getty had significant problems remembering her lines, which was attributed to anxiety. The cast often had to stay behind after the audience had departed to redo scenes where Getty had flubbed her lines, and although this was at first met with resistance from the producers, cue cards were eventually introduced to help her. Rue McClanahan, who shared a dressing room with Getty, described the severity of Getty's stage fright: "She'd panic. She would start getting under a dark cloud the day before tape day... You could see a big difference in her that day. She'd be walking around like
Pig-Pen, under a black cloud. By tape day, she was unreachable. She was just as uptight as a human being could get. When your brain is frozen like that, you can't remember lines." Getty died in 2008, the result of
dementia with Lewy bodies. Her co-stars, in an interview, said that her disease had progressed to the point that she was not able to hold conversations with them or recognize them. Her difficulties remembering lines were later thought to be early signs of her dementia. (Getty did not have as many difficulties with this during her subsequent appearances as Sophia on
The Golden Palace and
Empty Nest.) During season six, some uncertainty arose over whether Bea Arthur would commit to future seasons, or leave the show once her contract expired, to pursue other projects. Arthur felt the characters had been in every possible scenario, and wanted to end the series while it was still successful.
Debbie Reynolds was brought on as a guest star in the season six episode "There Goes the Bride: Part 2" to test her chemistry with the other actresses as a possible replacement for Arthur, but Arthur chose to commit to a seventh and final season.
Exterior and interior sets Blanche Devereaux's address was at 6151 Richmond Street in
Miami, Florida. In reality, the exterior used for the first three and a half seasons of
The Golden Girls was a residence at 245 North Saltair Avenue in
Brentwood, California. In 1987, a front exterior replica was built in
Bay Lake, Florida to be used for filming exterior shots for mid season three and onward. It was part of the backstage studio tour ride at
Disney's Hollywood Studios. The structure was identical to the front of the North Saltair Avenue residence, with the exception of the immature landscaping. Over time it sustained hurricane damage (along with the
Empty Nest home), leading to Disney's 2003 decision to bulldoze the houses of "Residential Street" and construct its
Lights, Motors, Action!: Extreme Stunt Show attraction, later replaced by
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. In 2020, owners of the original Brentwood home marketed the property for $3 million. The show's designer, Ed Stephenson, took inspiration from his time living in Florida to design a "Florida look" for
The Golden Girls house set. The wooden accents, columns, and doors were painted to mimic
bald cypress wood, popular in South Florida homes, with
rattan furniture and tropical-printed upholstery chosen for the furniture. The kitchen set seen on
The Golden Girls was originally used on an earlier Witt/Thomas/Harris series,
It Takes Two, which aired on ABC from 1982 to 1983. However, the exterior backdrop seen through the kitchen window changed from the view of Chicago
high-rises to palm trees and bushes for the Miami setting. Space was limited on the soundstage, so when the kitchen was off camera, it was usually detached from the rest of the set and the space used for something else. The doorway from the living room, with the alcove and baker's shelf just inside, was designed to give the illusion that the actors were walking into and out of the kitchen.
Costumes Costume designer Judy Evans created distinctive looks for each of the four actresses to suit their characters' personalities and to reflect the Florida setting. According to Evans, "I wanted a sexy, soft, and flowing look for Rue, a tailored, pulled-together look for Bea, a down-home look for Betty, and comfort for Estelle." Anna Wyckoff of the
Costume Designers Guild wrote, "Evans took the direction from the producers to create a vibrant look for the four mature leads, and ran with it...redefining what 'dressing your age' looked like." Many of the characters' outfits were designed by Evans and made especially, but seven to ten costume changes per episode were made between the four actresses, which entailed a great deal of
off-the-rack shopping. Evans generally dressed the actresses in expensive pieces and high-quality fabrics, despite the recurring theme that the four characters were struggling with money, because, "The main idea was to make them look good. We didn't want the show to be about four dowdy ladies." Much of Arthur's wardrobe was custom-made because at the time, finding off-the-rack clothing that was flattering for a taller woman was difficult. Rue McClanahan had a special clause written into her contract allowing her to keep her costumes, which were mostly custom-made for her, utilising expensive fabrics. Eventually, McClanahan went on to create a clothing line for
QVC called "A Touch of Rue", inspired by Blanche, but made with affordable fabrics and practical designs. ==Reception==