Murphy Brown

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1. #001

   One of the series' most common running gags was Murphy Brown's inability to find a good secretary, or one she could work with. Over the show's first ten seasons, Murphy had a total of ninety-three secretaries. In each episode's end credits, they were listed by number, as "Secretary #1", "Secretary #2" and so on. One of the most memorable was Marcia Wallace, who had played Carol Kester on The Bob Newhart Show (1972). At the end of that series, Dr. Robert Hartley (Bob Newhart) appeared and begged her to come back, and she did. In one episode, Murphy discovered that her former secretaries had a support group, where they consoled one another for not being able to keep the job.

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2. #002

   The exterior building shown as Murphy Brown's home is the same building shown as Diana Prince's home in Wonder Woman (1975).

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3. #003

   After winning her fifth Emmy Award for the role of Murphy Brown, Candice Bergen declined all future nominations for the role.

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4. #004

   The recurring character Stuart Best (Wallace Shawn) was a reference to former Beatles members Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best.

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5. #005

   In "Birth 101", the twenty-sixth episode of the fourth season, Murphy Brown gave birth to her child, Avery. Around that time, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the series during a televised debate for introducing the theme of an unmarried woman having a child, thereby promoting the idea of single motherhood and the decay of family values, a hot topic during that year's election campaign. The producers and writers retaliated in the sixty-minute fifth-season premiere, "You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato". A clip of the debate featured prominently in the episode, and much of the writing mocked Vice President Quayle's words (Vice President Quayle later sent the fictional baby Avery a real plush toy elephant).

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6. #006

   The series' creator appeared as a doctor in the tenth-season finale.

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7. #007

   The series' first ten seasons were filmed in Burbank, California. The eleventh season was filmed at the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens, New York.

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8. #008

   When Married… with Children (1987) ended on June 9, 1997, this became the longest-running American primetime sitcom then on the air, and it held that status until its tenth-season finale on May 18, 1998. It was succeeded by Family Matters (1989).

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9. #009

   The character Jim Dial (Charles Kimbrough) was reportedly modeled after Jim Jensen, a television news reporter at WCBS-TV in New York City.

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10. #010

    The series was a favorite of many at 60 Minutes (1968); not only did several correspondents appear as themselves in guest roles on episodes, but after the original series ended in 1998, CBS asked Candice Bergen to join 60 Minutes as a full-time correspondent. Bergen, however, wanted to continue acting after the series aired and felt that being an actress and a journalist at the same time would be a conflict of interest, so she turned down the 60 Minutes offer. As a side note, a notable exception to a 60 Minutes program hiring an actor as a full-time correspondent was the actor Charles Grodin, who delivered a closing commentary similar to Andy Rooney's on 60 Minutes II (1999) for three years. Unlike Bergen, however, who continued acting after Murphy Brown's original ending, Grodin had taken a break from acting for several years while on the program and did not return to acting until several years after the series was cancelled.

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11. #011

    The character Miles Silverberg was initially based on Jeff Zucker, who was the executive producer of The Today Show at age 26.

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12. #012

    As of August 2023, the series is nearly impossible to release on streaming platforms because the music used in its soundtrack makes licensing rights so expensive. Season 1 received a DVD release, but because sales were low and the rights were too expensive, Warner Bros. never greenlit DVD releases for any of the later seasons. In an interview in May 2023 promoting Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023) with Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen, an audience member asked Bergen whether she thought the series might ever be released. She said yes and was surprised that it had not been possible to do so yet. She said she felt the problem would be solved and that she hoped the series would begin streaming in the near future, even though Warner Bros. had not yet done anything official.

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13. #013

    In season 8, Candice Bergen's husband, French film director Louis Malle, who was 14 years her senior, died at the age of 63. Bergen briefly considered leaving the series to take a break from acting, and Pat Corley and Grant Shaud also planned to leave to pursue other projects. However, all the other main cast members wanted to continue with the series, and since the show was still in the top 20, the ratings still gave CBS hope. In the end, CBS decided to determine whether Bergen would leave the series and to continue with Faith Ford's character Corky Sherwood in the lead and the other actors continuing in their roles. Ford, however, was ultimately hesitant about making the series her own lead and tried to persuade Bergen to continue despite her husband's death. In the end, Bergen agreed to continue, feeling that work would help her get through her grief, and wanted to continue the series for the fans, as it was still a fairly popular sitcom. But after the ratings began to drop dramatically following Corley's and Shaud's departures, even though Lily Tomlin replaced Shaud in his role, Bergen decided that the series ended with season 10 in 1997, and the series concluded its original run in 1998. The revived season, however, returned to the air in 2018, albeit for only one season.

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14. #014

    Following Charles Kimbrough's death in January 2023, Candice Bergen became, as of July 2025, the oldest actor to have appeared on the series throughout its entire run. Pat Corley was in fact the oldest actor overall, but he did not remain on the series throughout its entire original ten-year run and had already died by the time of the revival. Faith Ford remained consistently the youngest actor throughout the entire series. In addition, Lily Tomlin, who joined for the last two seasons, is 7 years older than Bergen but did not appear on the series throughout its entire run.

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15. #015

    The series was referenced in The Simpsons (1989), and multiple Simpsons voice actors appeared as guest stars on the series. Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer and Marcia Wallace each appeared on the program at least once.

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