This performer received a lot of hostility when she was thrown overboard for her highly publicized battle with drugs, following seven years of shining as the cruise director on the ship that promised love.
The now 70-year-old celebrity went from being TV’s most adored ship steward to a cheese steward for a catering business in Seattle after ruining her career and personal life.
Discover this actor’s identity by reading on!
The TV show The Love Boat delivered on its promise to provide “something for everyone” when it set sail for the first time in 1977.
Fans eagerly anticipated the weekly adventures of their favorite cast members on the Pacific Princess: Doc (Bernie Kopell), Gopher (Fred Grandy), bartender Isaac (Ted Lange), Captain Stubing and his daughter Vicki (Gavin McLeod and Jill Whelan), and the cruise director, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, who played Julie McCoy at the age of 23.
The Golden Globe nominee Tewes, who was chosen for the part over 100 other applicants, was conspicuously missing from the ship throughout season eight of the popular TV show. Patricia Klous, who portrayed Judy McCoy, the new cruise director and her on-screen sister, took over as the star’s replacement.
Executive producer Douglas Cramer gave the following explanation for Tewes’ termination in an interview with TV Guide in 1985: “There were severe problems with Lauren.” Not just now, but during her entire seven-year tenure on The Love Boat… It was quite upsetting.
Tewes’ cocaine addiction led to her termination from the show in 1984.
“A bank did not receive any of that money. In the same interview, Tewes stated, “It went into my nose.” “I desired to be a member of the group. It hurts to admit it, but it’s the truth. I was headed to a party the first time I used cocaine; I had recently started working on The Love Boat. My date suggested that we take drugs. Then I exclaimed, “What the heck?”
It left me in a state of extreme bliss. You believe everything is OK. You believe you are bolder and stronger. It seemed to give me the bravery I had been lacking. It was like asking for bravery at the Wizard of Oz. But I received cocaine instead.
Tewes opened up to Oprah Winfrey about her battles with cocaine addiction in 2014.
“I knew that I had put myself in a situation that I couldn’t get out of on my own, and I felt guilty, ashamed, humiliated, disgusted, and disappointed,” she added. “In private, I pleaded with everyone to please come to my aid. When cocaine was a fashionable substance in the 1970s and early 1980s, I had a problem with it, but if you ask anyone in Hollywood, I was the only one doing it. I was alone, and no one cared to assist me.
The 1981 movie star, Eyes of a Stranger, worked her way through her addiction on her own. She began withdrawal in 1980, but it took her several years to get clean.
It suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t enjoying myself, that I was killing myself, and that I was wasting all of my money. Thus, I gave up entirely,” she states in the TV Guide interview.
Family misfortune
Tewes turned her attention to theater after she sobered, which provided her with a new stage on which to display her skills as an actor and director.
She went through two divorces during this period, and in 1993, while appearing in a play with the Arizona Theater Company, she met Robert Nadir. Before Tewes moved to Seattle, the two had a year-long long-distance relationship.
In 1998, she declared, “I decided to change my whole life, which has been a wonderful thing for me.” “The local theater community has responded to me really well.”
Although Robert was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) in 2002, the two were married in 1996. At 46, he passed away in the same year. Lauren hadn’t experienced a family catastrophe previously. Her prematurely born baby passed away at the age of one month in 1987.
“Victim of situation”
Although she never entirely recovered, she did make a few cameos on television programs including Twin Peaks, The Fugitive, and Who’s the Boss? In an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave when her character is in a relationship with Doc, Tewes also made a comeback with the original cast.
She was not, however, on Princess Cruises’ most recent Love Boat at Sea Celebration, a seven-night themed trip that included Grandy, a congressman from 1987 to 1995, Kopell, Lange, and Whelan, among other original cast members from the TV series. Aged 90, McLeod passed away in 2021.
Even though Tewes was absent, her former coworkers didn’t forget about her.
According to People, Whelan,57, claimed she spends a lot of time “cooking and just laughing and sharing stories all the time” with her former castmate, who will come in for a weekend visit.
The former child actress says, “We should talk about our pal, who is a sister to all of us.” She’s just a really kind, sincere person who is also an amazing actress. Even now, when I watch old episodes of The Love Boat, I’m in awe of her ability to go between comedic and dramatic roles with such ease. However, we adore her and she is one of our favorite individuals.
Grandy addressed her termination from the program in the interim, stating that she “has recovered magnificently” and that “the circumstances of her departure were not so lovely.”
Grandy, 76, stated, “This would have been the early ’80s; substance abuse on a set in those days was a punishable offense.” It wasn’t a medical issue, and the current understanding of it was not the case. She was also somewhat a victim of the circumstances at the time, as discipline was used in place of the proper attention, care, and rehabilitation.
She can be heard now on Imagination Theatre’s comedy-mystery radio series, Murder and the Murdochs.
The now 70-year-old culinary genius also works as a cheese specialist for a catering firm in Seattle, honing her craft in her spare time.
According to Tewes, “I hope and pray that’s all past now,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “I believe I made the right decisions by trying to stay in the industry when it was trying to push me out, by going with my gut and my motivation, and by deciding to persevere through the difficult times.”
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