Why Harriette Winslow Actress Jo Marie Payton Left Family Matters

A spin-off from the classic ABC sitcom "Perfect Strangers," "Family Matters" didn't take long to captivate viewers, showcasing the hilarious day-to-day lives of Chicago cop Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson), his wife Harriette (Jo Marie Payton), and the rest of their family. Along with shows such as "Full House" and "Step by Step," the sitcom was a reliable mainstay of ABC's "TGIF" lineup from 1989 to 1997. By 1998, though, the show had moved to CBS for its final season, and it had clearly seen better days; it had long felt like "the Steve Urkel show," with said breakout character (Jaleel White) pretty much overshadowing the "family" in "Family Matters." And it wasn't quite the same family anymore, as Judyann Elder replaced Payton in the role of Harriette for the show's last nine episodes.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2017, Payton revealed why she made the decision to leave "Family Matters" after eight seasons and change playing the Winslow matriarch. Apparently, the move had been a long time coming, as she had been wanting to exit the show for about two years before her departure. "I was unhappy about a lot of things; I was going through a divorce, I wasn't happy on the show — it didn't mean I did not want to perform as an actress or an artist," the actor explained. "The way I explain it is that, when you're a baker, you don't always want to bake cakes or cookies; you want to bake pies, you want to bake bread. I wanted to do something else."

There's little doubt that "Family Matters" was, and still is, one of the best TV spin-offs of all time. But the show was seemingly on its last legs at the time Jo Marie Payton left, and it didn't help that some of her castmates found it difficult to adjust to the fact someone else was playing her role.

Darius McCrary, who played Carl and Harriette Winslow's son, Eddie, said as much when explaining how he felt after Judyann Elder replaced Payton. "No disrespect to Judyann ... but I felt like my mom was gone, you know?" he admitted to Entertainment Weekly. "I did my job as an actor, but there were just so many things that had gone on behind the scenes that the audience wasn't privy to that had kind of already shut it down." Meanwhile, Reginald VelJohnson similarly said it felt "weird" with Elder stepping into Payton's shoes toward the end of the sitcom's run. "It was hard for me after nine years of doing something with one person," he shared. "It's like getting a divorce and then marrying somebody else."

While Payton's departure from "Family Matters" wasn't the best news for her castmates at the time, she has made it clear that she harbors no resentment toward them. "I did love all of my 'Family Matters' crew," she told Entertainment Tonight in 2022. "I've kept in touch with a lot of them ... I love them all. We had incredible writers, I love them, and they know who my issue was with. It wasn't with the entirety of them."