Did Garibaldi and Sinclair not meet in “War Without End” due to a falling out between the actors?

Did Garibaldi and Sinclair not meet in “War Without End” due to a falling out between the actors? - Picturesque scenery of high waterfall falling in water stream between  rocky mountains

TVTropes’ trivia page for Babylon 5 says that Jerry Doyle (Michael Garibaldi) and Michael O’Hare (Jeffrey Sinclair) had a falling out during Season 1’s production, with Doyle threatening to quit if O’Hare remained. This is said to be the reason that the two don’t meet in person during Season 3’s “War Without End” two-parter.

Oddly for Garibaldi, he never crossed paths with his "old friend" in Season 3, instead communicating over an old video recording. This is because Doyle and O'Hare got into a fight when the latter became schizophrenic. Note: If this seems like a Real Life Kick the Dog moment, bear in mind that no one but JMS knew he was schizophrenic at the time. Eventually, Doyle gave an ultimatum saying he'd quit if O'Hare remained on the show. Clearly, this ultimatum was still in effect for season 3 (according to Doyle, they'd promised to kick each other's asses) which is why Doyle doesn't share any screen time with him.

This is the first that I’ve heard of this, and I couldn’t find anything online or in JMS’ Usenet posts to back it up. Is there any truth to this claim? Or is it a fan theory with little merit?



Best Answer

Something I didn't know until recently is that the late Jerry Doyle had a radio show where he briefly talked about his experiences with Michael O'Hare. I've found a podcast site that archives all of the episodes but I don't know which episode it was or how long ago this was recorded. So hopefully the quotes I found are accurate.

"

My first season of Babylon 5 working with Michael O'Hare, he's a whack-job a complete lunatic. He flies out from New York, he gets the gig, we're doing our rehearsels he says to me one day "Uh can you give me a ride out the the set?" yeah sure! "Wanna stop and have breakfeast?" yeah good! He gets in the car and he's playing with the buttons in my car trying to turn the radio off and I'm like what are you doing? And he goes "I don't want any sound" and I go well why dont you just ask me to turn it off? And he goes "I dont want to talk today!" And I say well why do you want to go to breakfeast and he goes "you talk, I'll listen!" so obviously we hurry through breakfeast, we go out to the set and I realise I'm dealing with a complete nut-job here.

After we finished that first Friday night we go to this bar in Santa Clarita and I'm off in one corner talking to this actress Pat Tallman..just chatting her up having drinks we just got done shooting. He comes over and sits between us and I go oh ok...he was number 1 on the call sheet, he was the lead. He was the guy that got all the media interviews..because he was the lead on the show, and the face and voice on Babylon 5. So he's chatting her up and I'm like "Oh..ok..I'll just talk to the bartender here..." and order 3 more drinks. He turns around, looks at the 3 drinks and says "What is that?" and I say "umm...I'm buying a round..", and he says "Dont try to control me!!" and I went "oh..o...k..." this guy is a complete lunatic!

Now outside of the fact that he sexually harrassed an 18 year old makeup artist and hair gal because he's talking about how its lonely to be on the road and well he did certain things at night with her in mind I thought thats a very nice thing to address to an 18 year old that was interning on a show, not making any money trying to work her way up in the union.

He punches a female actress on the set. He comes after me we have the big meeting. Finally I say to him "Michael is there an Indian behind every tree?" and he says "maybe..you and I will settle this May 26 after we wrap production" And at the end of all this I went back to the guys and said you know what? I don't need this crap..I dont need the money"

As schizophrenia runs in my family, I can sympathize with Doyle and anyone else who had to deal with the unpredictability of a mentally ill person. Some people are better equipped to handle it than others but in this case, O'Hare tried and failed to hide it from everyone.

Also, here is a link to SciFi Debris' review of War Without End, wherein he touches on O'Hare's final days with the show.

World Without End Part One Review




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Babylon 5 - Garibaldi and Sinclair killing flight time




Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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