Whatever Happened To The Cast Of Empty Nest?

It's fair to say that without "The Golden Girls," there would be no "Empty Nest." The beloved sitcom about four female retirees living together in Florida — played by Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White — not only shattered the commonly held opinion that viewers would never watch a TV show focused on older women, but also laid the groundwork for a spinoff set within the same universe that told a very different story.

First introduced in an episode of "The Golden Girls" — a backdoor pilot, in TV parlance — pediatrician Dr. Harry Weston, played by veteran actor Richard Mulligan, was a neighbour of Dorothy Zbornak (Arthur) and her roomies. The premise found the recently widowed doc's life turned upside down when his two grown daughters — high-strung Carol (Dinah Manoff, also known as Marty from "Grease") and hard-nosed policewoman Barbara (Kristy McNichol) — moved in with him. Rounding out the cast was Park Overall as Harry's wisecracking nurse, and David Leisure as wacky neighbor Charley Dietz.

The show proved to be a big hit, and as the seasons passed, new characters were introduced — including "Golden Girls" star Getty, who reprised her fan-favorite role as outspoken Sophia Petrillo. When the series finally ended in 1995, after seven successful seasons, the members of the cast went their separate ways. So what did these actors get up to after the show concluded? To find out, keep reading for a rundown of whatever happened to the cast of "Empty Nest."

Prior to taking on the lead role in "Empty Nest," Richard Mulligan had already amassed an impressive roster of screen credits, extending back to TV guest spots in the early 1960s. He'd memorably played doomed General Custer in the 1970 comedy Western "Little Big Man," and, in his first long-running role as a TV series regular, portrayed Burt Campbell in the sitcom "Soap." He also became a favorite of director Blake Edwards, who cast Mulligan in his films "Trail of the Pink Panther" (as the father of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau), "Micki & Maude," "A Fine Mess," and "S.O.B." — co-starring in the latter with Edwards' wife, legendary performer Julie Andrews.

After "Empty Nest" ended its run in 1995, Mulligan appeared in a few TV movies and lent his voice to some animated projects, but it was clear that he'd slowed down the pace of work during those years. When he died in 2000 at the age of 67, the Los Angeles Times reported that he'd been ill with cancer for some time.

"He was a gentleman first and foremost," Mulligan's "Empty Nest" co-star Park Overall told the LA Times of the veteran actor. "He was the best teacher for me in the world. He didn't have a false moment in seven years." She added, "You don't know how hard he worked. He was a workhorse. He carried the whole show on his back."

Dinah Manoff had already experienced a pretty extensive Hollywood career before joining "Empty Nest." After making her Broadway debut in Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures," she reprised her role — for which she won a Tony Award — in a 1982 feature film. Prior to that, she'd already become part of movie history by playing Marty, one of the Pink Ladies in the mega-hit movie musical "Grease."

Following the end of "Empty Nest," Manoff appeared in a few more films and TV series before returning to episodic television with the 2000 to 2004 series "State of Grace." After that, she decided she'd had enough of Hollywood; Manoff and her husband and children said goodbye to Los Angeles and settled in Bainbridge Island, a small community in the Pacific Northwest. "We moved to an island near Seattle with a very progressive and creative community," Manoff explained in an interview with Empty Nest Online. "So now I am raising my kids, riding my horse, writing a novel, teaching acting, cooking vegetable soup from my garden ... wait ... who am I?"

Embracing her new life outside the Hollywood spotlight, Manoff taught acting and worked with the local theatrical community. "I really fell in love with teaching," Manoff told Bainbridgeisland.com. "I thought, 'Wow, this is my calling.'" She also wrote a novel, loosely based on her own experiences in Hollywood, called "The Real True Hollywood Story of Jackie Gold."

As Laverne Todd, Dr. Harry Weston's loyal and acerbic nurse, Park Overall proved to be a reliable source of "Empty Nest" punchlines. When the show ended in '95, Overall remained active in film and television, appearing in a few TV movies (including "Fifteen and Pregnant"). However, her next two sitcoms were far less successful than "Empty Nest," with both "Katie Joplin" and "Ladies Man" being quickly cancelled. After a seven-episode stint in country superstar Reba McEntire's "Reba" in 2001 and 2002, Overall's onscreen output slowed down considerably. 

Interestingly, Overall followed a path similar to that of co-star Dinah Manoff, stepping away from Hollywood and returning to her native Tennessee. There, she embraced a whole new mission as an environmental activist, working tirelessly to clean up parts of the region that had been made hazardous due to industrial pollution. "The problem with America is Citizens United," Overall explained while appearing on the "Classic Conversations" podcast, referencing the landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision that reversed long-held restrictions on campaign finance and allowed special interest groups to spend massive sums of money on political campaigns. "If you're going to have economic development, and money and corporations running things, then there is no chance for any of us to have quality lives, because the pollution is going to be so overwhelming, we're not going to make it," she added.

David Leisure came to prominence in the 1980s under a fictional name: Joe Isuzu, a smarmy automobile pitchman in a series of successful TV commercials in which onscreen messaging refuted the outrageous lies he told about the vehicles. Cast in "Empty Nest," he played a variation on that character, womanizing airline pilot Charley Dietz, neighbor of the Westons.

Since the series' demise, Leisure has continued to be a familiar presence in film and television, appearing in numerous movies and TV guest spots. In the 2000s, he gravitated toward soap operas, appearing as Rev. Grace in "General Hospital," Roger Wilkes in "The Young and the Restless," and District Attorney Charles Woods in "Days of Our Lives." His most recent screen credit was in a 2020 episode of sitcom "The Goldbergs." That episode, in fact, served as a callback to another of Leisure's now-classic screen roles, a Hare Krishna devotee in "Airplane!" As Leisure explained in an interview with Eyewitness News 7, he played an airline pilot in a special episode of "The Goldbergs" paying tribute to the classic big-screen comedy. "It's quite the homage to the movie which of course has been around for 40 years," Leisure said.

These days, Leisure resides in Park City, Utah. He's become a regular at fan conventions, often appearing alongside "Empty Nest" co-stars Dinah Manoff and Kristy McNichol.

Kristy McNichol was a successful child actor before being cast in the TV drama "Family." That led to film stardom in the 1980 hit "Little Darlings," which she followed with starring roles in more films — none of which, however, were nearly as successful. She returned to television when she was cast as Barbara Weston in "Empty Nest."

She exited the show partway through the fifth season and quit acting entirely after that. In 2001, she revealed the reason for her abrupt exit. "It was because I was suffering from manic depression [now more commonly called bipolar disorder], but I didn't want to talk about it at the time," she said in a statement, via Parade. She kept her personal life private in the years that followed, until 2012, when she came out as gay. She made the decision to go public, her publicist Jeff Ballard told People, to show her support of young gay people being bullied. "She hopes that coming out can help kids who need support," said Ballard.

More than a decade later, she offered more details about her self-imposed exile from Hollywood. "I was on the big stage between ages 8 and 30," McNichol explained in a 2014 interview with People. "I left show business for a variety of reasons, but a big one was my interest in learning what else there is in life." McNichol had no regrets about stepping away from Hollywood. "This phase of my life is so good," she said. "My home life is happy and serene." She admitted that a return to acting was unlikely but not entirely out of the question. "Never say never," she added.

The role of acid-tongued Sofia Petrillo on "The Golden Girls" brought Estelle Getty seven Emmy nominations (one of which she won, in 1992). When Bea Arthur decided she wouldn't return after the seventh season, "The Golden Girls" came to an end. Her co-stars, however, felt differently, and Getty joined Betty White and Rue McClanahan in a short-lived 1992 spinoff series, "The Golden Palace." Meanwhile, Kristy McNichol's departure from "Empty Nest" during the fifth season in 1992 left a void in that show, forcing producers to retool. When "The Golden Palace" was axed after just one season, Getty's character remained such a fan favorite that she was invited to join the cast of "Empty Nest," reprising Sofia for that show's final two seasons.

Following the series finale of "Empty Nest" in 1995, Getty continued to appear in TV guest spots, including such series as "Touched by an Angel" and "The Nanny," in addition to playing Grandma Estelle in the hit film "Stuart Little." She retired in 2000, revealing she'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and that she'd been struggling to remember her lines in recent years; she later said she'd also been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Her final screen role was in a 2001 episode of the sitcom "It's Like, You Know..."

Getty was subsequently diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. She died in 2008 at the age of 84. Getty's son, Carl Gettleman, told "Inside Edition" that watching his mother's condition deteriorate in her final years was heart-wrenching. "Mom always worried about this happening and now it's happening," he said shortly after her passing. "For me it's extremely difficult."

The retooling that took place in the wake of Kristy McNichol's departure from "Empty Nest" also resulted in former "Night Court" star Marsha Warfield joining the cast, playing Dr. Maxine Douglas, who ran the clinic where Harry Weston worked. "The next thing you know this opportunity came up, and I ended up on the show," she recalled in an interview with Empty Nest Online. Warfield continued appearing on television for the next few years after "Empty Nest" wrapped. In 1999, she decided to take a hiatus from Hollywood, moving to Las Vegas to help her sister raise her nephew. "I ended up staying until he graduated high school," she told The Advocate.

In 2015, she decided to return to showbiz and restart her career, but quickly realized she faced an uphill battle. "I had 20 years of stage rust," she admitted. "A lot of people think they can just take 20 years off and go back to it. It doesn't work like that," she said. "I wasn't the same comedian. I wasn't the same person. I had to reintroduce myself to myself."

In 2017, Warfield came out as gay, after keeping her sexuality a closely guarded secret for decades. She also staged a television comeback, which included a guest spot in the sitcom "The Upshaws," a nine-episode story arc in "9-1-1," and reprising her "Night Court" role in several episodes of NBC's reboot. Her primary gig, however, remained stand-up comedy. "I do stand-up," she said. "Acting? That just came with it. But telling the truth, making people laugh, being real? That's what I live for."

During the fifth season of "Empty Nest," producers introduced a new character: eccentric sculptor Patrick Arcola, who moved into Harry Weston's garage. Played by comedian Paul Provenza, Patrick became Carol's boyfriend and Charley's pal. The character was written out of the show at the start of the sixth season, when Provenza took on a starring role in hit series "Northern Exposure." (He replaced original star Rob Morrow after his departure, as the new doctor in the quirky Alaska town of Cicely, for what would be that show's final season.)

Provenza continued his acting career, but his focus has remained stand-up comedy. In 2005, he directed the documentary "The Aristocrats," in which more than 100 comedians tell their own variation of the same filthy joke. From 2010 to 2011, he hosted "The Green Room with Paul Provenza," a unique Showtime talk show in which he's joined by a panel of comedians to discuss comedy.

He also created a popular live comedy show called "Set List," in which stand-up comedians perform without knowing the set list of material they'll have to work with until the moment they set foot on the stage. "As I was doing the show the first time, I was watching the audience, and I realized that both the audience and the comedians were having an experience they don't generally have," Provenza told Vulture of the concept. "It's the closest I've ever experienced to the first time you ever went on stage, when you really truly, you don't even know if you're funny ... it just strips everything bare."

Shortly after Kristy McNichol's departure from "Empty Nest," Lisa Rieffel joined the show as the mentioned-but-theretofore-unseen third Weston sister, Emily. The character didn't stick around long, appearing in just 14 episodes during the final half of the fifth season. After that, Rieffel continued appearing as a guest star in various TV series, including "Roseanne," "Designing Women" spinoff "Women of the House," and "NCIS." She also played the recurring role of Sara Spooner in a few episodes of the sitcom "King of Queens."

However, it was music, not acting, that had always been her true passion, and in recent years she's focused on her parallel career as a singer and songwriter. Along with fellow actor Timm Sharp, Rieffel formed a musical duo known as H. Kink. "H. Kink is a music project, wherein Timm and I express ourselves in whatever way we're feeling at the moment," Rieffel told Hollywood Soapbox. "I'd probably avoid trying to describe it to someone, because music is like a painting, and it means different stuff to different people. Depends on what song you pick. Some are rhythmic, some have guitars, some are synth, some are country. I'd say 'check it out, hypothetical person!'"

Character actor Todd Susman had racked up numerous film and TV credits when he began playing the recurring role of deadpan Officer Shifflett on "Newhart," which proved to be something of a breakout for him. He first appeared in the seventh and final season of "Empty Nest" as Ben Braxton, Carol's boss at her new job at a small local newspaper. All told, Susman appeared in six "Empty Nest" episodes.

Since then, Susman has remained a frequent presence on film and TV screens, primarily as a guest star in a wide array of television series. Those have spanned comedy and drama, including Dick Van Dyke's "Diagnosis Murder," "ER," "Suddenly Susan," "Law & Order," and a five-episode stint on "Orange Is the New Black," to highlight just a few.

Susman has also acted extensively onstage, starring in "Hairspray" on Broadway and in "Old Jews Telling Jokes" off Broadway. He has also written two plays, served as a member of the faculty of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, and taught acting at London's Royal Academy of Music.