After seven years of being the cruise director on the ship that promised love, this actress faced a lot of negativity when she was thrown overboard due to her very public struggle with cocaine.
After ruining her career and personal life, the now 70-year-old star transitioned from being TV’s favorite ship steward to a cheese steward for a catering company in Seattle.
Keep reading to find out who this actress is!
When The Love Boat first launched in 1977, the TV show delivered on its promise of having something for everyone.
Every week, fans eagerly watched the adventures of their favorite crew on the Pacific Princess, including Captain Stubing and his daughter Vicki (played by Gavin McLeod and Jill Whelan), Doc (Bernie Kopell), Gopher (Fred Grandy), bartender Isaac (Ted Lange), and the cruise director, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, who was just 23 when she began her role as Julie McCoy.
In the eighth season of the popular TV series, the Golden Globe-nominated Tewes, who won the part over 100 other hopefuls, was noticeably missing from the ship. She was replaced by Patricia Klous, who portrayed her on-screen sister and the new cruise director, Judy McCoy.
In a 1985 interview with TV Guide, executive producer Douglas Cramer shared the reason for Tewes’ dismissal: “There were serious issues with Lauren. Not just recently, but throughout all seven years she was part of The Love Boat… It was very disruptive.”
Tewes was fired from the show in 1984 for her addiction with cocaine.
“All that cash didn’t end up in a bank. It went right into my nose,” Tewes mentioned during the same interview. “I wanted to fit in with the group. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s the truth. The first time I tried cocaine was right after I got the role on The Love Boat, and I was heading to a party. My date suggested, ‘Let’s do drugs.’ And I replied, ‘Why not?’
“The high was an amazing feeling of happiness. You feel like you’re okay. You feel stronger and braver. I thought it gave me the courage I lacked. It was like going to Oz and asking for bravery. But instead, I got cocaine.”
In 2014, Tewes opened up to Oprah Winfrey about her battle with cocaine addiction.
“I felt guilty, ashamed, humiliated, disgusted, and disappointed. I realized I had put myself in a situation I couldn’t escape from alone,” she shared. “I secretly pleaded and pleaded for someone to help me. For me, it was a cocaine problem in the 1970s and early 1980s when it was a trendy drug, but if you ask anyone, I was the only one doing it in all of Hollywood. It was just me, and nobody wanted to help me.”
Facing her addiction by herself, the actress from the 1981 movie Eyes of a Stranger began her withdrawal in 1980, but it took her several years to get sober.
“It finally hit me that I wasn’t enjoying myself, that I was harming myself, and that I was wasting all my money. So, I completely stopped,” she said in her interview with TV Guide.
After she got sober, Tewes decided to focus on her career in theatre, which allowed her to show off her skills as both an actor and a director.
During this time, she went through two divorces and then met Robert Nadir in 1993 while acting in a play with the Arizona Theater Company. They had a long-distance relationship for a year before Tewes moved to Seattle to be with him.
“I made the choice to completely change my life, and it has been an amazing experience for me,” she said in 1998. “The theater community here has really welcomed me.”
The couple got married in 1996, but in 2002, Robert was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). He passed away that same year at the age of 46. This wasn’t the first time Lauren faced a family tragedy; in 1987, she lost her baby daughter, who died after being born too early.
Her career didn’t completely bounce back, but she did make some small appearances on TV shows like Who’s the Boss?, The Fugitive, and Twin Peaks. Tewes also got back together with the original cast for an episode of The Love Boat: The Next Wave, where her character is in a relationship with Doc.
However, she wasn’t on the latest Princess Cruises’ Love Boat at Sea Celebration, which was a seven-night themed cruise featuring some original cast members from the show, including Kopell, Lange, Whelan, and Grandy, who was a congressman from 1987 to 1995. McLeod passed away in 2021 at the age of 90.
Even though Tewes wasn’t there, her old co-workers didn’t forget about her.
People reports that Whelan, who is now 57, mentioned that she often sees her old castmate, who flies out to visit for a weekend, and they spend time “cooking and just laughing and sharing stories all the time.”
“We should talk about our friend, who is like a sister to all of us,” says the former child star. “She’s just a really genuine, sweet person, and by the way, an amazing actress. I mean, I look back at The Love Boat episodes and I just admire her and how she can switch so easily between dramatic scenes and comedy. She’s one of our favorite people, and we really love her.”
Meanwhile, Grandy discussed her exit from the show, mentioning that she “has recovered magnificently” and that “the circumstances of her departure were not so lovely.”
“This would’ve been the early ’80s, and substance abuse on a set back then was a serious issue,” Grandy, 76, explained. “It wasn’t seen as a healthcare issue, and people didn’t understand it like they do today. In a way, she was a victim of her situation because the support and therapy she really needed were replaced with punishment.”
Now, she can be heard on Murder and the Murdochs, a funny and mysterious radio show hosted by Imagination Theatre.
When she’s not acting, the now 70-year-old culinary artist is busy improving her skills as a cheese expert with a catering company in Seattle.
“I hope and pray that’s all behind me now,” Tewes told the Los Angeles Times. “I believe I made the right decisions by staying in the industry even when it was trying to push me out, by following my own heart and passion, and by choosing to stick it out.”
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