Here are seven actors who became huge stars after appearing on cancelled TV shows — because sometimes setbacks lead to bigger long-term successes.
Of course, almost all TV shows eventually become cancelled TV shows — all good things must come to an end, right? So we’re focusing on shows that lasted less than a season.
Ready? Here we go.
Michelle Pfeiffer
One of the more intriguing cancelled TV shows in sitcom history is the Animal House spinoff, Delta House.
It should have worked. Besides the obvious advantage of having Pfeiffer in the cast, it came from the Animal House writers and also had future teen movie icon John Hughes on the writing staff. Additionally, the actors who played Dean Wormer, Flounder, Hoover, and D-Day in Animal House reprised their roles as well.
Delta House couldn’t get John Belushi, so Bluto was replaced by his heretofore unmentioned brother Blotto, played by Josh Mostel.
Pfeiffer, of course, went on to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world, with a run of successes that has included Scarface, Married to the Mob, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Batman Returns, Age of Innocence, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and many more films. She’s a three-time Oscar nominee,
Halle Berry
Halle Berry started her career as a pageant contestant and model, so she brought life experience to the role of Emily Franklin in the sitcom Living Dolls (above), a spinoff of Who’s the Boss that aired for 13 episodes in 1989.
Of course, she didn’t spend too much timing sweating the cancellation: She broke out as a film star in 1991’s Boomerang and had very strong ’90s, appearing in hit films and winning an Emmy and Golden Globe for the TV film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
But the next decade was even better: She won her Best Actress Oscar for starring in 2001’s Monster’s Ball as a struggling widow.
Her recent films include John Wick 3: Parabellum. And the X-Men alum made her directorial debut with 2020’s Bruised, in which she also starred.
Dave Chappelle
Chappelle and Jim Breuer caught the eye of network executives when they guest starred on a 1995 episode of Home Improvement as two guys who appear together on Tool Time to ask Tim Taylor (Tim Allen) for some advice about their girlfriends.
They were rewarded with a spinoff series, Buddies. But after rehearsals, the show replaced Breuer with Christopher Gartin, and the vibe was off — the chemistry between real-life friends Chappelle and Breuer was nowhere to be found. Buddies lasted 13 episodes in 1996.
Chappelle and Breuer, by then a Saturday Night Live cast member, reunited in the 1998 comedy Half-Baked, and Chappelle went on to star on Chappelle’s Show (co-created by Half Baked co-writer and real-life buddy Neal Brennan) and to become one of the biggest standup comedians of all time.
And Buddies joined the ranks of cancelled TV shows that perhaps didn’t realize they had a future superstar on their hands.
Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank appeared on the sitcoms Evening Shade and Growing Pains before starring on her own sitcom, Camp Wilder, which ran for 20 episodes on ABC in the 1992-93 season.
Swank moved on fast from the cancellation: In 1992, she had made her film debut in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she followed that up with a starring role in 1994’s The Next Karate Kid and Beverly Hills, 90210.
But she was just getting started. She soon won her first Best Actress Oscar for 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, which she followed up with another Best Actress Oscar for 2004’s Million Dollar Baby.
Her recent films include Ordinary Angels.
As cancelled TV shows go, Camp Wilder had a great eye for talent: The cast also included Jay Mohr and Jerry O’Connell, who, like Swank, have done quite well for themselves.
Margot Robbie
The 2011 season brought several 1960s-set TV shows, thanks to the success of Mad Men on AMC. Networks tried to get their own version of the smart, sexy and sophisticated cable phenomenon.
ABC shot its shot with Pan Am, centered around a team of flight attendants. The biggest name in the cast was Christina Ricci. But a lesser-known cast member was Margot Robbie, already a veteran of Australian TV.
Pan-Am lasted for 14 episodes. But Robbie soon became a movie star with her role in 2014’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and went on to three Academy Award nominations and became one of the most successful actors and producers in Hollywood. Her greatest success so far is producing and starring in Barbie, the biggest hit of 2023.
We don’t know why Pan Am failed to take off with audiences, but you can’t blame the cast.
Amber Heard
Network TV’s other big swing at a Mad Men-style ’60s drama in the 2011 season was The Playboy Club, centered on a group of waitresses, or “Bunnies,” at one of Playboy Enterprises’ once-popular Playboy Clubs.
Long before she was known for an acrimonious parting with Johnny Depp, Amber Heard wore bunny ears to offer drinks and cigarettes — with a side of intrigue. The NBC show also starred Eddie Ciprian as a Don Draper-esque Playboy Club key-holder with shady connections, and Laura Benanti, Jenna Dewan and Naturi Naughton as Bunnies.
The Playboy Club lasted just seven episodes, but Heard went on to appear in films including Pineapple Express, Machete Kills, Magic Mike XXL and The Danish Girl, as well as the DC films Justice League, Aquaman, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
John Mulaney
John Mulaney’s career is soaring now — he’s one of our greatest comedians and the host of Netflix’s Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney.
But he hit a rare career setback with the Fox sitcom Mulaney, in which the comedian and former Saturday Night Live writer — not yet a household name — played a version of himself alongside an impressive supporting cast that included Elliott Gould and fellow SNL vets Martin Short and Nasim Pedrad.
The show was negatively compared to Seinfeld, but the real Mulaney obviously turned out OK, succeeding not just in standup and numerous television television shows, but also on Broadway, where he starred with friend Nick Kroll in Oh, Hello.
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Main image: Margot Robbie in Pan Am. ABC