A 'Cybill' Action

13 Sep, 2008 By: Fred Topel

Cybill

Cybill Shepherd supports the Sept. 16 DVD release of Cybill: The Collector’s Edition Vol. 1, even though she has little monetary stake in its release. She is personally proud of her eponymous 1995-98 sitcom, but circumstances have made a DVD release difficult in the past 10 years.

“It was the most fun and the hardest work I ever did,” she said. “It was a great opportunity for me to play the heart of the show, to take the pies in the face, the falls in the mud and do raw comedy. It was just so weird to see something just fall off the face of the earth and never even being noticed that it was gone.”

Now, First Look Studios is releasing the two-DVD “Cybill” set at $24.98.

Even though Shepherd shared producer credit on the show, the “Cybill” DVD became a labor of love, not business. In the show she played an actress named Cybill Sheriden, whose weekly humiliations at auditions and taking second-rate jobs provided much of the show’s humor.

“When the show ended, I knew it would never be syndicated,” Shepherd said. “I didn’t think it would ever come out on DVD. The studio made a deal in which the network had to pay the money and the studio was going to pay the network back once it went into syndication.”

Shepherd said trouble between the studio and the network held up a DVD release until now. Shepherd picked some of the 10 episodes in the collection, which is a greatest hits rather than a season set, but there were restrictions.

“Well, we couldn’t have any that I sing in,” she said. “One of my favorite episodes is when I sing ‘That’s Life’ on top of the sushi bar, but it would have cost $65,000. I thought about paying for it myself.”

Shepherd said she’s just glad the show is coming out at all.

“I mean, I’ll never make a penny, and I totally understand that, but I don’t care,” Shepherd said. “I just wanted to get it out there.”