Charlie's Angels was again experiencing a major cast change in 1979. After its first season in 1976, Farrah Fawcett decided to leave the series and pursue a movie career. It has been revealed much later that the reason for her sudden departure was pressure from her then husband, Lee Majors, who couldn't understand why she had to spend all those hours doing the series when she only made $5,000 per episode. He made considerably more money per episode from doing The Six Million Dollar Man than she did doing Angels, but always got home earlier to fend for himself. Farrah was sued by Spelling/Goldberg but the case was settled out of court. She was to appear in 6 episodes in seasons 3 and 4 to the tune of (as revealed later by her then manager Jay Bernstein) $175,000 per episode, which totals to a little more than a million dollars.
Kate Jackson was the next to go. In 1979, after season 3, Kate was fired/left by mutual agreement (whichever you want to believe) at the end of that season. In 1978, she was offered the part of Joanna Kramer in the movie Kramer vs. Kramer. The film's writer and director Robert Benton wanted Kate to play Joanna (she was his first choice for the part) opposite Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer. Some reported that the divorce drama was to be filmed simultaneously with Angels - with Kate filming Angels on weekdays and Kramer on weekends. But Spelling/Goldberg wouldn't give her the go signal because of the scheduling conflict it would create with Angels, so Kate had to turn the part down (which went to Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for it.) This dampened her enthusiasm for the series and she became difficult to work with. It resulted to her being terminated/leaving at the end of season 3.
