Yesterday, Gary replied to Brendan’s claims saying: “I will never forget the good times and let’s not dwell on the bad.”
Mrs Brown's Boys star Brendan O’Carroll has revealed that Scots actor Gary Hollywood was “family” and we “miss him”.
The 66-year-old from Dublin, who writes the show and plays potty-mouthed matriarch Agnes Brown in the award-winning BBC1 sitcom, still seems shellshocked by the Glaswegian’s exit from the cast after working with him for 20 years.
Brendan, who is bringing Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Live Show to Glasgow and Edinburgh next month, said: “He was a great actor and we miss him.
“He used to call me ‘Father’. He was part of the family and we haven’t spoken since and haven’t heard a word from him since.”
Ex-High Road star Gary was doing panto in 2000 when he met Brendan and joined the Mrs Brown cast. The Scot was in the Irish DVD versions of the sitcom in 2004 and when it was taken up by the BBC in 2011.
Filmed in Glasgow, it became a huge hit, has won five BAFTAs and is still a Christmas mainstay. The cast also starred in chat show All Round to Mrs Brown’s.
But in 2020, Gary quit alongside fellow actor Damien McKiernan, who played Rory Brown, claiming he was paid less than other cast members.
The Scot launched a legal action in 2021 against Brendan, the BBC and TV production firm Hungry Bear Media, citing discrimination and unfair dismissal.
He also bad-mouthed his former “father” in the press, claiming the show was like Mrs Brown’s mafia because many of the cast members were O’Carroll’s family members.
In papers lodged with an employment tribunal, the actor claimed he was paid 25 per cent less than his colleagues for his role in All Round to Mrs Brown’s last year.
And he says he was dropped from one of the two Christmas specials days before filming started, however he withdrew all claims in June last year during a preliminary hearing.
Chatting via Zoom and looking every inch the Irish Rab C Nesbitt in a black string vest, Brendan admitted the episode has left him puzzled and doesn’t see a way back for the Scots actor, despite his sadness at losing him.
He said: “I think that is it. It was the most bizarre time. I don’t know where it came from. It came out of the blue.
“I got a call from the office to say Gary has been on and wants his flight home to Spain changed to tomorrow.
“I was like, ‘But we haven’t been to Glasgow (where the chat show was being filmed) yet? We are meant to be isolating. We haven’t started yet’.
“He said if he’s not going to be in both episodes he’s not going to do it. But nobody is in both episodes. It’s Covid, I’m trying to spread it around everybody. He knows that.
“If I’d said to Gary, ‘I want you to come down the stair naked and I’m going to whack you on the willy,’ he’d have said ‘Sure, no problem.’
“Never said ‘no’. Never. So this came out of the blue. And then he was gone.”
Gary then made claims about pay.
Brendan said: “He came back in the Press saying he didn’t get paid as much as everyone else. He did. In fact he got more than some because he’d been with us longer.
“He had a new manager so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. He was saying stuff to us about why he was leaving that didn’t exist.”