Rue McClanahan: Every Kick's A Boost

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly

Episode: Rue McClanahan: Every Kick's A Boost

Date: April 18, 2026
Host: Terry O'Reilly (Sister podcast: We Regret to Inform You – The Rejection Podcast)

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Overview

This mini-episode, originally from the Apostrophe Network’s sister series “We Regret to Inform You – The Rejection Podcast,” spotlights acclaimed actress Rue McClanahan’s journey through repeated rejection to eventual fame, especially focusing on her inspirational motto, “Every kick’s a boost.” Via archival audio and host commentary, the episode explores how setbacks, rejections, and disappointments shaped Rue’s career, providing broader insights into resilience within the entertainment and creative industries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Rue McClanahan’s Moment at the Emmys

• [03:58] Terry O’Reilly introduces the episode’s “nugget” – a phrase distilled by the subject herself.
• [05:34-06:11] Rue McClanahan wins the 1987 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy for The Golden Girls, sharing a key story in her acceptance speech.

2. “Every Kick’s a Boost”: The Origin and Impact

• Rue’s mother gave her the advice after Rue was told in 1960 she wasn’t photogenic enough for television ([06:11], Rue McClanahan):

  “Oh, Eddie Rue, for heaven’s sake, don’t you know every kick’s a boost?”

• This phrase became McClanahan’s guiding principle through years of setbacks.
• [06:11-07:08] Rue, as she receives her award, humorously notes:

  “There’ve been a lot of kicks and there’ve been a lot of boosts. I’m not going to mention the people who gave me the kicks, but you know who you are, and you’ll be in the book.”

3. Reframing Rejection: Examples Inside and Outside Rue’s Story

• Terry O’Reilly discusses how great rejection stories often involve a “reframe”—turning a negative into something that propels you forward ([07:08-09:06]).
• Examples:
  • Lisa Kudrow: Fired from Frasier but later cast as Phoebe on Friends—her setbacks led to bigger opportunities.
  • Brian Grazer: His mermaid film Splash was initially rejected; rethinking his pitch with the “human story” angle led to its success.
• Takeaway: Sometimes, rejection is simply redirection.

4. The Cycle of Setback and Perseverance in Rue’s Career

• [11:00-13:36] Rue endured:
  • Being fired from multiple jobs
  • Cut from soap operas, most memorably when her character “Aunt Fran” was killed off (famously by choking on a chicken bone). Rue later joked about this indignity in her memoir, calling it “a glorified firing.”
  • Each kick, each job loss, was ultimately a step towards her big break on The Golden Girls.

5. Turning Points and Turning “Kicks” Into “Boosts”

• After being freed from a previous show, McClanahan’s agent brought her the script for The Golden Girls ([13:36-14:20]).
• The narrative underscores how being rejected or “kicked” often opens doors to new, better opportunities.

6. Wisdom in Perseverance: Rue in Her Own Words

• [15:37-16:31] Rue McClanahan (2006 Television Academy interview) offers advice to actors:

  “Perseverance, perseverance. You’ve got to hang in there, hang in there, hang in there. Because you’re gonna get rejected so much and you’re gonna get disappointed so badly. If you really want this career, you gotta fight for it and fight for it... Fight the sense of failure that you may be feeling... Perseverance.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Receiving Rejection ([06:11], Rue McClanahan):

  “My mother said to me once, some agents had just turned me down... They said I wasn’t photogenic and that I would never work on television... ‘Oh, Eddie Rue, for heaven’s sake, don’t you know every kick’s a boost?’”

• On Surviving Professional Humiliation ([11:00], Terry O’Reilly recounting Ty Burrell’s story):

  “Then one day, he was told by a New York City agent that his features were too big to ever make it in film or television. So Burrell walked out of the agent’s office into Times Square and soiled himself out of sheer anxiety. But in that moment, his rejection anxiety lifted. He’d faced his fears, taken a meeting, been rejected to his face, and he survived. That kick was a boost Burrell did not see coming.”

• On Perseverance and Perspective ([15:37], Rue McClanahan):

  “If you really want this career, you gotta fight for it... I don’t mean fight other actors. I mean fight the sense of failure that you may be feeling. Fight the ‘Will I ever get hired?’... Perseverance.”

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Key Timestamps

• 03:58 – Introduction to Rue’s Emmy night and the “every kick’s a boost” theme.
• 05:34 – Nomination and announcement segment from the 1987 Primetime Emmy Awards.
• 06:11 – Rue’s acceptance speech; origin of “every kick’s a boost.”
• 07:08-09:06 – Discussion of reframing rejection; comparison to Lisa Kudrow and Brian Grazer’s careers.
• 11:00 – Ty Burrell’s comedic but insightful rejection story.
• 13:36 – How being written out of shows ultimately led to Rue’s big break.
• 15:37 – Rue McClanahan’s Television Academy interview: advice on perseverance.

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Takeaway

“Every kick’s a boost” is both Rue McClanahan’s personal motto and the episode’s core message, encouraging listeners to seek the hidden opportunity within rejection. The stories and examples interwoven in this episode reinforce the power of reframing setbacks, persevering through adversity, and transforming humiliation into motivation. As Rue herself insists: perseverance is the ultimate key.

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For more rejection stories and backstage insights: Follow "We Regret to Inform You: The Rejection Podcast" from the Apostrophe Podcast Network.

Transcript

[Sydney O'Reilly]

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[Sydney O'Reilly]

This week we're dropping an episode from our sister podcast titled We Regret to Inform youm. In this podcast series, we talk about the mountain of rejections famous and successful people had to overcome and how they did it. In this mini episode, we talk about actor Rue McClanahan, who starred in the Golden Girls sitcom. The motto she clung to was every kick's a boost, meaning that inside every rejection there is a silver lining. Here is Rue's story. This is an apostrophe podcast production.

[Rue McClanahan (archive audio)]

Foreign.

[Terry O'Reilly]

This is, we regret to inform you, the Rejection Podcast. Hi, and welcome to another minisode. This week, I wanted to share something with you that I came across in my travels. On our show, as you know, we tell a story and then we extract the insight, the nugget, the heart of the story we hope you remember and take with you. Terry and I have many conversations about what that nugget might be, and then Terry encapsulates it beautifully at the end of every show. But sometimes we come across someone who's done all that work for us. They've looked back at their journey, extracted the key insight and encapsulated it in a perfect, singular, memorable phrase, or in this case, today, four words. Let's travel back to 1987. It was the biggest night in television. The 39th annual Primetime Emmy Awards. The Golden Girls won Outstanding Comedy Series. Michael J. Fox won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy for Family Ties. Then came Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy. There were three Golden Girls up for the award.

[Award Show Announcer]

The nominees for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy series are Bea Arthur for the Golden Girls, Blair Brown for the Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Jane Curtin for Kate Nally, Rue McCallahan for the Golden Girls, Betty White for the golden girl,

[Terry O'Reilly]

and the Emmy one two.

[Award Show Announcer]

Rue McCallahan, the golden girl.

[Terry O'Reilly]

The Golden Girl made her way to the stage. Stage was handed her award. And she said, my mother said to

[Rue McClanahan (archive audio)]

me once, some agents had just turned me down. They said I wasn't photogenic and that I would never work on television. That was in 1960. And she said to me, oh, Eddie Rue, for heaven's sake, don't you know every kicks a boost? And I've remembered that over the past 27 years, there've been a lot of kicks and there've been a lot of boosts. I'm not going to mention the people who gave me the kicks, but you know who you are, And you'll be in the book.

[Terry O'Reilly]

Every kick's a boost. You may have noticed Howie Mandel, who presented the award, called her Rue McCallahan, both when he announced the nominees and the winner. The woman who declared every kick a boost had her name mispronounced not once but twice, moments before winning her first Emmy Award. The episode writes itself, but this phrase is such a good one because it's a reframe, and there are a few different ways one can interpret that reframe. Sometimes on our show, rejection is redirection, like Lisa Kudrow's story. When Lisa Kudrow's Groundlings castmate landed the last spot on Saturday Night Live instead of her, then she was cast and subsequently fired off the set of Frasier, she was devastated. Little did she know, the very next year she'd land an audition for Friends, and thankfully she was available. Those kicks were boosts. Kudrow just didn't know it yet. Other times, there's a lot of useful information in a no or a kick. Like Brian Grazer's story. When producer Brian Grazer pitched his mermaid movie Splash to studios, they all rejected him because what adult would watch a movie about mermaids? But it occurred to him one day that they weren't rejecting the story, just its shell. So he took that feedback and reframed his pitch that underneath the scales and the tail was a human story of feeling different and wanting to be loved. That reframe landed Splash at Disney

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[Terry O'Reilly]

Sometimes we can turn kicks into boosts by sheer force of will. When Hailey Wickenheiser was cut from her youth hockey team because they just couldn't have a girl on the team, she used that rejection as fuel to score her first goal on the women's national team. And I've told this story countless times, but it's just such an important comma, hilarious one. Ty Burrell was terrified of going to auditions, to the point he attended three colleges to study acting, got a master's in theater just to avoid, you know, actually acting. Then one day, he was told by a New York City agent that his features were too big to ever make it in film or television. So Burrell walked out of the agent's office into Times Square and soiled himself out of sheer anxiety. But in that moment, his rejection anxiety lifted. He'd faced his fears, taken a meeting, been rejected to his face, and he survived. That kick was a boost Burrell did not see coming. Every kick's a boost if you're willing to sift through the disappointment, the pain, the humiliation. Take what's valuable and leave the rest behind. As Terry put it in the Splash episode, you must drain the rejection of its poison and look for the nugget. Rue McClanahan said in her Emmys speech that she was told she wasn't photogenic. Here's the story. She was in a play called before breakfast in 1960, and a pair of agents in the audience were impressed by her performance. So after the show, they told her to bring her headshot and resume to their office on Sunset Strip the next day. When she dropped them off, they told her they liked what they saw on stage but needed to see how she'd look on camera. So they arranged for McClanahan to judge a live televised dance contest. But following the show, she never heard from the agents. She called and called, but no response. Eventually, she made her way to their office and they told her she didn't look great on camera and thus would never make it in television. Then they handed her back her headshots and resume. The 26 year old was devastated. She stumbled down the stairs, out the door, into her car, where she cried. Her mother was sitting in the passenger seat. And that's when she told her daughter to remember every kick's a boost. McClanahan remembered that phrase. She kept it close when she was fired as a waitress after just one lunch shift, when she was fired from the next restaurant after one fateful dinner shift. When her character was killed off a soap opera, and when she was cast as Aunt Fran in a spin off of a Carol Burnett show sketch called Mama's Family. The character was written as a fireball nemesis of the main character, then was rewritten as a mousey background character. Then Aunt Fran choked on a chicken bone. She was killed off again, in perhaps the least dignified manner. One can be killed off. McClanahan later said. Being killed off a show is just a glorified firing. Suddenly, she was back to languishing in guest spot purgatory. But she wrote in her memoir that it turned out the chicken bone that killed Aunt Fran must have been a wishbone. Now that she was untethered to another series, her agent called her to tell her she was about to messenger over a pilot script. Her agent said, I think you'll like it. It's called the Golden Girls. I'll leave you with this clip from an interview Rue McClanahan did with the Television Academy in 2006, just four years before she passed away. When asked her best advice for actors, she said, perseverance.

[Rue McClanahan (interview audio)]

Perseverance, perseverance. You've got to hang in there, hang in there, hang in there. Because you're gonna get rejected so much and you're gonna get disappointed so badly. And you've got. If you really want this career, you gotta fight for it and fight for it. And I don't mean fight other actors. I mean fight the sense of failure that you may be feeling. Fight the Will I ever get hired? I went through a lot of that in the beginning, and then will I ever get the role I want? And then will anyone ever see me? Who's really gonna matter, you know? Perseverance.

[Terry O'Reilly]

The Rejection Podcast is an Apostrophe Podcast production and is recorded in our Airstream mobile recording studio. This series is written By Me, Sydney O'Reilly Production and research by Allison Pinches Director Callie O'Reilly Engineer Jeff Devine Theme music by James Aidan, Jeremiah Pick and Casey Pick. Tunes provided by 8pm Music and we're powered by Acast. Follow us on socials Apostrophepod, and while you're there, let us know of any rejection stories you'd like to hear. This series is executive produced and co hosted by Terry O'Reilly. See you next time.

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[Terry O'Reilly]

Oh yeah, that part's cute.

[Rue McClanahan (interview audio)]

Cute too.

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[Terry O'Reilly]

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