Why Martin Lawrence & Tisha Campbell Had To Be Kept Separate During Martin

Television Comedy Shows

Despite the fact that the characters on sitcoms are usually close friends or even family, there are frequently feuds behind-the-scenes that can make filming pretty difficult. Sometimes things get bad enough that people get fired, like when Dan Harmon was kicked off of "Community" because of a spat with star Chevy Chase, but usually everyone can work things out at least somewhat professionally.

Unfortunately, the classic 1992 sitcom "Martin" suffered from some serious offscreen drama that ultimately contributed to the show ending with season 5. The series starred Martin Lawrence as DJ and talk show host Martin Payne and was a hit for Fox, which was positioning itself as a channel with edgier programming than audiences could find on the mainstream networks. "Martin" was a bit more family-friendly than other Fox shows, like sketch series "In Living Color" or even "Married... With Children," and a big part of the draw was the relationship between Martin and his girlfriend (and later wife) Gina (Tisha Campbell). Each week, the two were guaranteed to get into some kind of wild disagreement that led to all kinds of comedy, then they would usually make up before the credits rolled. 

That tempestuous relationship was even more fraught offscreen, and it led to Campbell quitting the show, suing Lawrence, and only agreeing to come back to finish the final season if producers could guarantee she wouldn't ever be on set with Lawrence. Both Campbell and Lawrence have spoken about the incident since, though it doesn't clear up everything. 

Why Campbell and Lawrence had to be kept separate

According to People magazine, the real trouble began when Campbell discovered that Lawrence's wife, Patricia Southall, had a restraining order against him and that he had made threatening remarks to her, so she quit the show. The pair were going through a messy divorce and Southall alleged that Lawrence threatened to "bust her teeth in" and pushed her while she was holding their infant daughter. Campbell quit the series and the producers sued to get her to come back and finish the fifth season, so Campbell countersued, alleging "repeated and escalating sexual harassment, sexual battery, verbal abuse and related threats." In the end, everyone settled out of court, but only under the condition that Lawrence and Campbell would never be on set at the same time. 

The finale is wild to watch, as the pair almost seem to play a game of musical chairs with the stage, a logistical nightmare for everyone involved. No one except for Lawrence and Campbell will ever know what really happened, though she and Southall were far from the only people to have problems with the comedian in the mid-1990s. Lawrence even got himself banned from NBC after hosting "Saturday Night Live" in 1994, which is a pretty impressive feat. But how does everyone feel about how "Martin" ended these days?

The cast of Martin now

Despite the fact that Lawrence once told GQ that the whole ordeal was "bulls***" and that he "just decided to walk away from the show," he also told the magazine that he had "nothing but love" for Campbell. It seemed like everything was copacetic when the cast reunited for the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards, with Campbell joking that "Martin" deserved an Emmy during its run, and the pair shared the stage without incident. Campbell spoke with People in 2022 about the reunion, saying, "Everything else is a personal situation that we've all healed from, so we're not even gonna talk about it."

It sounds like there were definitely some real problems when "Martin" was filming back in the 1990s, but that the people involved have grown and healed, and things would have been handled much differently these days. There probably won't ever be a "Martin" reboot, but it's great that at least everyone is on friendlier terms.