Summary

• Christina Applegate initially replaced Tina Caspary as Kelly Bundy in the sitcom after Caspary's chemistry with Ed O'Neill didn't work out in the original pilot.
• During the tenth season, Christina Applegate wore a wig for Kelly Bundy's character due to her role in the movie "Nowhere" where she had to dye her hair red and chop off her signature long locks.
• Despite her ditzy portrayal, Kelly Bundy is actually smarter than her family thinks, as Christina Applegate played her as a genius in her own mind and even proved to be a quick learner in sports trivia.

Kelly Bundy from Married...With Children stole viewers' hearts, and despite that there's still a ton that audiences don't know about her. Played by Christina Applegate, Kelly became a breakout star of the classic sitcom that ran for 11 seasons. Kelly's entrances on the show were always met with raucous applause from the studio audience, as she was a '90s trendsetter with her skin-tight outfits and always left viewers in fits of laughter, which was thanks to Applegate's incredible comedy timing at such an early period in her acting career.

In a lot of ways Kelly Bundy is the heart of the family. Despite making fun of him, she genuinely does seem to care about her brother Bud and is usually happy for him when he winds up on dates. She is naive enough to have a pet turkey around Thanksgiving and not expect her family to do the unthinkable. She's usually the Bundy with the kindest heart, and she's seldom mean-spirited aside from the sibling barbs she trades with Bud. However, over 11 seasons, there are a number of behind-the-scenes instances where it wasn't smooth sailing as it looked on the sitcom.

12 Tina Caspary Was Originally Cast As Kelly Bundy

After playing Kelly for 11 years, it’s hard to think of anyone else besides Christina Applegate in such a memorable role. But, in the original pilot, a female actor named Tina Caspary attempted to play Kelly. As with a lot of TV pilots, the show was working out the kinks, and Tina’s chemistry with Ed O’Neill just wasn’t there. When the network picked up the show, Tina Caspary was dropped as Kelly Bundy. The character was recast, and that's when Applegate took over.

11 Christina Applegate Wore A Wig In Married... With Children Season 10

Kelly was a bottle blonde from the very first episode. Peggy had begun dying her hair when a boy in elementary school liked another girl over Kelly. However, during the show’s tenth season, Christina Applegate was also filming a movie called Nowhere. The movie was an unconventional look at teenage life in Los Angeles. It’s the concluding chapter in the “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy” from filmmaker Gregg Araki. For the role of Dingbat, Applegate was required to dye her hair red and chop off Kelly’s signature long locks. As a result, she wore a wig for a lot of the 10th season.

Watch Married With Children on Hulu

10 Kelly Bundy Is A Virgin

According to her brother, Bud, Kelly is one of the easiest girls in Chicago. However, between her sweet-natured naivety in bringing boys home and Al smashing their heads into the door, it’s quite possible that Kelly was actually a virgin. That’s actually how Christina Applegate played her. According to an interview with NPR, she once said about her famous role,

“Ditzy, yeah? Lazy thinker. I guess, you know, I had to play her as a genius. You know, in her own mind, she’s a genius—and a virgin, actually. So those are my little secrets that I had about her. You know, she was really, like, kind of a product of that time.”

9 Kelly Bundy Is Always There For Her Family

Married... with Children is one of the best sitcoms that depict the warring relationships between siblings. However, while Kelly and Bud would always trade nasty barbs at one another, insulting their looks and sexuality, Kelly would still protect Bud. Kelly Bundy has the logic of “I can do whatever I want and say whatever I want about my family, but you can’t.” However, if any character crossed the Bundy children, they suffered the consequences. One early episode featured a meeting between Kelly and Tiffani Amber-Thiessen, who quickly learned that the only one who can humiliate Bud is Kelly.

8 Kelly Bundy Is Based On Cindy Birmisa

The '80s and early '90s had a strong hair metal scene, and Kelly was a poster child for that era and those teenagers. She was the epitome of a video vixen come to life and squeezed into tight dresses and fishnets. Besides the look of some metal girls of the time, Applegate actually based Kelly on a real person: rock groupie Cindy Birmisa. She was also featured in the rockumentary, The Decline Of Western Civilization, Part II - The Metal Years.

7 Kelly Bundy Is Smarter Than Her Family Thinks

Despite what just about everybody has ever said about her in the sitcom, Kelly isn’t nearly as dumb as her family would have audiences believe. Christina Applegate played her as if she was a genius, and, in her own way, she was. She knew how to pick winning numbers on a roulette wheel and definitely knew how to use her femininity to her advantage. At least in one instance when she was preparing for a game show, Kelly Bundy proved she was a quick learner when Al threw a number of sports trivia questions at her.

6 Christina Applegate & Katey Sagal's Showbiz Roots

Christina Applegate and her TV mom Katey Sagal have great chemistry in the series, as Kelly and Peggy were an exceptional mother-daughter duo. Both women knew how to muse their way into getting what they wanted, and they both had the knee twitch down pat. One more connection for the actresses that the male Bundy actors didn’t share was their showbiz routes. Sagal’s famous family included her father, Boris, and her twin sisters, the Doublemint Twins. Christina Applegate’s mother is Nancy Priddy, a singer-songwriter who has appeared with her daughter in several projects.

5 Kelly Bundy Is The Hardest Worker In The Bundy Family

For a girl who once reported that “God did not invent this package to work,” Kelly is actually the hardest worker in the family. Along with preparing for a game show shockingly quickly, the aspiring model/actress was also a weather girl and a waitress. Even if the success of those jobs greatly varied, she still worked harder than any other character on the sitcom. Most famously, she was also the fictional superhero exterminator The Verminator who worked at Chicago’s favorite theme park, TV Land. While she might not have done it with a smile, Kelly Bundy's strong work ethic was on display way more than anyone in her family.

4 Kelly Bundy Had Several Famous Boyfriends

Over the course of the series, Kelly went on countless dates and found herself in a lot of relationships. Her most famous and consistent boyfriend was Vinnie Verducci, who was played by Married With...Children guest star and future Friends star, Matt LeBlanc. However, he wasn’t the only actor to get his start playing one of Kelly’s idiot boyfriends. Kelly Bundy had a few soon-to-be-famous boyfriends. Corey Feldman once played Ralph, a punk who tried to take advantage of Kelly until she walked out on him, and the future Angel star, David Boreanaz, cheated on Kelly, which met the wrath of Al in a movie theater.

3 1 Of Kelly's Boyfriends Got His Own Married... With Children Spinoff

Following the end of a popular sitcom, networks will almost always try to develop a spinoff to continue the show's success, whether it comes to fruition or not. That inevitably happened with Married... with Children, as the network produced Top of the Heap, a spinoff based on Matt Le Blanc's character, Vinnie Verducci, Kelly's ex-boyfriend. The series only lasted for one season, though another spinoff, Vinnie & Bobby, was developed, which also lasted for one season. Unfortunately, LeBlanc doesn't have much luck with spinoffs, as he'd go on to lead the Friends spinoff Joey years later, which was critically scathed.

2 Christina Applegate's Mother Had A Cameo In Married... With Children

Over the course of Married... with Children, just about every cast member had one or more of their family members guest starring on the sitcom. Christina Applegate's mother guest-starred on the series, too. Nancy Priddy took part in an early episode, “Oh, What A Feeling.” She played the mother of a spoiled brat that Al noticed when he tried to get a new car. Al had a meltdown, telling her that, if the kid didn’t want the car, he’d be happy to have it. While Priddy wasn't of any connection to the Bundy family in the series, the family ties couldn't have been clearer.

1 Playing Kelly Bundy Earned Applegate "Billions" Of Offers... That She Didn't Want

Thanks to her reliability and charisma, Kelly Bundy is such a popular character in Married... with Children. As a result, Applegate had "billions" of offers thrown her way (via Best Life Online), only she had no interest in them because they were all derivative characters of Kelly. Playing Kelly was seemingly a double-edged sword for Applegate, as she also couldn't get different roles because networks and studios feared her connection to Kelly. The actor commented,

"I would audition for stuff and people would be like, 'Oh my god, she gave the best audition of anyone, but it's Christina, and we can't have that name associated with this masterpiece.'"

• 

  Married... With Children

  Cast:

  Ed O'Neill, Katey Sagal, Amanda Bearse, Christina Applegate, David Faustino, Ted McGinley

  Release Date:

  1987-04-05

  Seasons:

  11

  Summary:

  This long-running sitcom follows the Chicago-based lives of hard-luck shoe salesman Al Bundy; his lazy wife Peggy; their ditzy daughter Kelly; and their smart-aleck son Bud.

  Network:

  FOX

  Genres:

  Sitcom

  Story By:

  Ron Leavitt

  Writers:

  Ron Leavitt

  Streaming Service(s):

  Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Peacock

  Directors:

  Ron Leavitt

  Showrunner:

  Ron Leavitt

  Season List:

  Married... With Children - Season 1, Married... With Children - Season 2, Married... With Children - Season 3, Married... With Children - Season 4, Married... With Children - Season 5, Married... With Children - Season 6, Married... With Children - Season 7, Married... With Children - Season 8, Married... With Children - Season 9, Married... With Children - Season 10, Married... With Children - Season 11