The Love Boat
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You can’t talk about television during the 1970s and 1980s without bringing up “The Love Boat”. The series was a big hit with a solid main cast that had plenty of guest stars throughout the years that included many future A-listers getting their start. Among the regulars was the cruise director Julie McCoy, who was played by actress Lauren Tewes. Though she’s mostly been away from acting in the 2010s, Tewes is still remembered fondly for her role on the show.
Tewes was born on October 26, 1953 in Braddock, Pennsylvania and spent her early childhood in the Pittsburgh area before her family had headed out west to California. It was while she was in high school in the Los Angeles area that Tewes developed an interest in acting and began taking classes and appearing on stage. Tewes furthered her training in college, earning a scholarship along the way. Her acting career started modestly, acting at theme parks and on commercials before she landed her big break.
In 1976, Tewes made her on-screen debut when appeared in an episode of “Police Story”, and in that same year with “Charlie’s Angels”. The following year, Tewes joined the cast of “The Love Boat” for the first time. Tewes took on the role of Julie McCoy, the cruise director. All in all, Tewes appeared in nearly 200 episodes of “The Love Boat” over the span of a decade. During that time, Tewes also remained busy on other productions.
She made guest appearances on television during the late 1970s with shows like “Vega$”, “Starsky and Hutch” and “Fantasy Island”. This was then followed up by early 1980s roles such as “Murder, She Wrote”, “T.J. Hooker” and multiple television movies. Then, in 1987, Tewes’s time with “The Love Boat” came to an end with the show reaching a conclusion following its long run.
Tewes didn’t make it through the end as a full-time cast member, however. She was dismissed from the show on a regular basis in 1984 due to substance abuse. She had made a lot of money on the series, but lost most of it because of her habit. “All that money didn’t go into a bank,” Tewes admitted. “It went into my nose.”
Tewes said that it was wanting to fit in with the typical Hollywood scene that got her in trouble. “I wanted to be one of the gang,” she said. “I am ashamed to say it, but it’s true. The first time I took (drugs) I had just gotten the job on ‘The Love Boat’ and I was on my way to a party. My date said, ‘Let’s do drugs.’ And I said, ‘What the heck?’”
There was more pressure on her career as the show began to take off. “I was trying to keep my job, keep my husband, keep my house,” she continued. “I was trying to please everybody and I was destroying myself. I was on drugs. I didn’t sleep. I slept at work. I behaved poorly at work, and that is where I made my fatal mistake.”
Tewes had a couple more TV guest spots to finish out the decade and then continued that type of work in the early 1990s, as well as many more TV films. Some of the feature films that Tewes was involved with during the 1990s included “The Doom Generation” and “Nowhere” in small roles. She started to get more into voice acting, appearing in several video games as the technology improved and more actors were needed for voice work.
It was also during the 1990s that Tewes’s personal life started to turn around. She started a new relationship and was off of her substance abuse habits, moving away from Hollywood to Seattle. “It changed my life,” she said. “To be surrounded by trees and water and caring, concerned people that are interested in things other than show business.”
To kick off the new millennium, Tewes appeared in several episodes of the TV series version of “The Fugitive” in 2000 and 2001. After that, however, Tewes decided to step away from acting. Since then, she’s appeared in just one television movie with 2013’s “Locally Grown” and was on an episode of the “Twin Peaks” reboot in 2017.
Still, it always comes back to “The Love Boat” for Tewes when discussing her career, even if she didn’t think the show was a hit while it was on. “I don’t think I knew how successful the show was until it was over,” Tewes said. “At the time, nobody could afford to go on a cruise. Or they thought they couldn’t. (The cast), they were able to take a vacation every week.”
Tewes added that “A lot of people remember the show in a whole different reality than it really was...They remember the sweet, lovey show,” she said. Tewes said that it was more about free and open relations among the cruise goers. “Julie never actually had any (relations),” Tewes said. “But she tried to hook (other) people up three or four times in a cruise, if possible. I mean, that was her/my job.”
The stage became an escape for Tewes following her firing from “The Love Boat”. “TV tends to define you as the role you play and cryogenically freezes you for the rest of your life as that person,” she said. “You wind up being Julie or Gopher or Radar or Klinger forever. You’re blessed and cursed at the same time...It’s a big part of my past. It’s not any of my present. My personal journey has been well documented.”
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