By Michaela Gordoni
Jeri Weil, who starred as Beaver Cleaver’s fussy classmate Judy Hensler, revealed why she left LEAVE IT TO BEAVER after three seasons.
“I was bigger than all the boys. I was taller. And they really had a problem with me starting to develop,” 77-year-old Weil recalled in an interview this month.
When they told her to wear ace bandages while filming, she decided she didn’t want to do it anymore. The final straw was when she was asked to twirl in a skirt. She was concerned that her sanitary napkin would show and didn’t want to shoot the scene. That moment made her give up acting.
“I guess I had such a bad taste in my mouth from those experiences. I just stopped and wanted nothing to do with it,” she said in March. “I read once where it said they fired me, but that wasn’t true.
“They didn’t fire me. I don’t know where I read that, but they didn’t let me go. I let them go. That’s the true story,” she said.
She also said the director would purposely make her irritated.
“The director, when I’d come, you know we’d have to go to school, on the set when we were working. He used to come in and just rag on me…And then he would ‘Roll it.’”
“…I guess he wanted me to come off like a little brat. So he got me all riled up. So I’d react the way he wanted,” said Weil.
Her role as an annoying classmate also didn’t earn her many friends.
“When I started junior high, nobody would even talk to me,” she said. “I mean, they wouldn’t. One girl talked to me, and she became my best friend.”
“It wasn’t comfortable. I’ll tell you that. I mean, I was Judy — who wanted to be friends with Judy Hensler?!”
“They didn’t know that wasn’t who I was — to them, I was Judy. So that’s the only way they knew me,” she said. “They never bothered to want to get to know me. They just wanted nothing to do with Judy Hensler.”
Weil had gotten into acting because an infamous agent for child stars, Lola Moore, saw Weil and her sister walking with their mother on Hollywood Boulevard.
The “lady came up and said to my mother, ‘How would you like your daughters to be in the movies?’” Weil told ReMIND.
“Of course, my mom said, ‘Well, what do I have to do?’ And she said, ‘Well, nothing, just get some pictures and blah, blah, blah,” Weil said.
As an adult, Weil became a real estate agent, like her mother. She is now happily retired.
Read Next: LEAVE IT TO BEAVER’s Hugh Beaumont Was Authentic Family Man On and Off Screen
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