Erin Murphy opened up about the famous Darrin Stephens casting switch on Bewitched. In May 2026, the former child star appeared on Billy Corgan’sThe Magnificent Others podcast, where she revealed that it never felt “weird” for her when her TV dad, originally played by Dick York, was recast on the show, because she witnessed the actor’s health struggles behind the scenes.
“It wasn’t weird only because I had been there,” Murphy, 61, shared. “I worked three years with Dick York before Dick Sargent came in, and I saw that he was in pain. And even as a child, there he had this board. It was like a leaning board on set. So he’d have to lean in between scenes.”
“But for viewers of the show, the last season, especially, with Dick York there would be episodes written with Dick York. We do the table read with Dick York. Then something would happen where he couldn’t be there. He was in pain,” she explained. “So there would be episodes that had Dick York and then we would not film it with Dick York. So there were, I think, seven or eight episodes in that season where he wasn’t there.”
Murphy noted that before replacement Darrin, Dick Sargent, was brought in, the network aired a succession of episodes without the Darrin character in them at all.
“They aired those seven or eight no Darrin episodes in a row, thinking no one would notice,” she laughed. “It’s like, ‘No one will notice, we’ll bring back Darrin, they’ll think it’s the same guy.’ Obviously, everyone noticed.”
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York’s exit came suddenly
Murphy played Tabitha Stephens on Bewitched from 1966 to 1972, but York and series star Elizabeth Montgomery made their debut on the ABCsitcom in 1964.
In a profile for the Los Angeles Times three years before his death, York detailed a severe spine injury he suffered while shooting the 1958 film, They Came to Cordura. While he continued to work as an actor, York relied on heavy doses of painkillers and cortisone for years, although he told the outlet he never took the drugs while he was on set.
York missed a lot of time from work due to his ailment, and in 1969, he collapsed on the Bewitched set and was hospitalized, never returning to the series again.
In footage included in the documentary The Bewitched 60th Anniversary Special, York said he felt like he “failed” everybody. “I didn’t finish that show, so I felt guilty, and I felt embarrassed, and I felt that I let everybody down,” the actor said in the interview.
York’s final Bewitched episode, “Samantha and Darrin in Mexico City,” was filmed in the fall of 1968, a few months before his collapse. It aired in April 1969, after the succession of Darrin-free episodes at the end of Season 5. When Season 6 premiered in September 1969, Sargent made his debut as Darrin in the episode “Samantha and the Beanstalk.”
Erin Murphy helped Dick York forget his pain
On Corgan’s podcast, Murphy shared that York once told her that one of the things that helped him get through the physical pain he was dealing with was spending time with her on the set.
“He told me as an adult that one of the things that would get him through is he would sit and tell me stories,” she recalled. “Like I was a kid on set and he was a dad…. so he was very paternal and he said I would take his mind off the pain.”
Murphy has always maintained that she was close to both of her Darrin dads, but that York was the more paternal of the two actors. In an interview with People, she said, “Dick York was a dad, and he had a lot of kids, and he was just more paternal. So he was more like a dad.”
This story was originally published by Parade on May 11, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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