A year after Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner had moved on from All in the Family, Jean Stapleton felt it was time. “I had decided we’d done everything we could,” she recalled in an interview with EmmyLegends.org. “It was time to go on or be buried as far as casting is concerned in this kind of part.” She was ready for something new, and she left with no regrets. However, series creator Norman Lear just wasn’t ready to let her character go quite yet.

About a year later, while she was touring in a play in Florida, Stapleton got a call from producer Bud Yorkin, followed by another from Lear, who wanted to know if she truly wasn’t coming back. His show Archie Bunker’s Place was moving forward, and they were planning to expand the storyline, get Archie out of the bar and have him date again. But there was one problem. Lear couldn’t bring himself to approve a script that would say Edith had died.