For eight seasons, Joyce DeWitt played Janet Wood on Three’s Company — the sensible, grounded roommate who held things together while Jack Tripper tripped over couches and Chrissy Snow giggled through life. But behind the scenes, DeWitt was fighting battles nobody saw.
Now, decades later, she’s finally telling the truth.
“Our Bodies Were Talking to Each Other”
DeWitt has opened up about the extraordinary chemistry she shared with the late John Ritter, her co-star and on-screen best friend. Speaking at The John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health’s Evening From the Heart gala in September, she described a connection that transcended dialogue.
“For John and I, the day that we met, our bodies were talking to each other,” DeWitt told PEOPLE. “It’s like we knew instantly — like if he swung high, I ducked low. If I ran low, he would swing high”.
She explained that they communicated “kinesthetically” — a physical language that required no words at all.
“My body knew what his body was going to do and his knew what mine was going to do,” she said. “And that was just there from the moment that we met”.
DeWitt called it “wonderfully joyous” and said that kind of connection happens “maybe once in a lifetime.”
“I don’t expect ever to have that again — and certainly not with someone as spectacular as Jonathan”.
The Truth About the Producers
But the joy of working with Ritter was matched by a much darker reality behind the scenes. DeWitt revealed that the show’s producers had little respect for the input of its female stars.
In a 2012 conversation with Suzanne Somers, DeWitt was blunt about the atmosphere. “(Producers) were very chauvinistic when it came to whose input they would take,” she said.
She described her frustration at being unable to contribute creatively without help from male colleagues. Every time Ritter made a suggestion, she noticed, “my producers would fall over themselves trying to say ‘Yes’ first”.
So she devised a scheme with Ritter — a quiet act of collaboration that worked like a charm. Rather than waste time fighting with producers on set, she would privately share her ideas with Ritter. If he thought she had a good idea, he’d present it as his own. The producers, of course, loved “Ritter’s” suggestions.
“Slowly and Subtly, So They Wouldn’t Notice”
When producers refused to let her shape her own character, DeWitt took matters into her own hands.
“Slowly and subtly, so they wouldn’t notice, I began to move Janet in a direction that I felt was right,” she said. By the middle of the second season, she was beginning to feel comfortable with the character she had quietly sculpted.
The producers loved the result — never realizing that DeWitt had been incorporating the very changes she’d fought for a season earlier.
The Ending That Offended Her
DeWitt has also spoken openly about her disappointment with how Janet was written off the show. When the series ended, producers decided to marry Janet off to a character — a choice DeWitt found insulting.
“I was a bit offended when it was time to retire the show that they chose to ‘marry her off’ as the path forward for that character,” she told US Weekly. “I would have sent her to law school or medical school or to the Peace Corps”.
It’s a telling statement. Janet was the grounded one, the problem-solver, the roommate with real ambition. And yet her story ended with a wedding rather than a career.
“A Safe Haven”
Despite everything, DeWitt remains deeply grateful for what Three’s Company meant to its audience. She still receives letters from fans — many of whom tell her the show saved them during difficult years.
“The most dear, precious, tender — and utterly unexpected — experiences that have come from working in ‘Three’s Company’ are the many, many adults who have told me that ‘Three’s Company’ was a safe haven they could count on during their teen years — for some, the only safe haven,” she said.
She described the show as “a time out from the oppressive, challenging, difficult circumstances” many viewers were navigating, adding that it was the “love, trust and support of the characters, one to the other” that made them lifelong fans.
A Gift, Not a Burden
DeWitt has never resented being forever linked to Janet Wood.
“Does it bother me that I’m attached to ‘Three’s Company’ 30 years after? Not at all,” she said. “All we were trying to do was be funny. How can I complain? That’s all I wanted to do”.
And of Ritter, she remains fiercely loyal.
“I think I would not be chastised by my friends and fellow cast members in speaking for all of us in saying that working with John was a gift,” she said. “An adventure and a gift, a true gift”.
The Legacy That Endures
Joyce DeWitt could have walked away from Hollywood bitterness. Instead, she’s chosen gratitude — for the fans, for the laughter, and for the once-in-a-lifetime partnership she shared with John Ritter.
The show may have ended in 1984. But for DeWitt, the gift never stopped giving. ❤️
