Jay Daniel, the Emmy-winning executive producer of the hit 1980s and ’90s TV series Roseanne, Moonlighting and Cybil, among others, died Wednesday, May 27, in Los Angeles of a pneumonia-related illness. He was 82.
His death was announced by his frequent producing partner Glenn Gordon Caron. The cause of death was reported by Daniel’s wife, Vicky Daniel, to The Hollywood Reporter.
In a post on X, Caron wrote yesterday, “The was no ‘Moonlighting’ without Jay Daniel. Probably no ‘Roseanne.’ Definitely no ‘Cybil.’ Certainly no ‘Clean and Sober.’ He was simply the best. He left us last night. He will be very missed.” (Clean and Sober was the 1988 feature film drama directed by Caron and starring Michael Keaton as a man struggling with alcohol and cocaine addiction.)
Daniel, born June 1, 1943, in Cushing, Oklahoma, moved to L.A. to study theater arts as a UCLA graduate student with the intention of being an actor – his sole acting credit was a small role in Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968).
By the mid-1970s, Daniel had shifted gears and was credited as an assistant director and associate producer on the hit cop drama Police Story, and, among others, as a producer of 1979’s detective series Eischied starring Joe Don Baker. A string of TV movies in the early ’80s followed including Power, Once Upon a Spy, For Lovers Only, Cry For Strangers, a Daytime Emmy-winning episode of CBS Schoolbreak Special, and in 1984, a pilot for a newspaper drama called Concrete Beat starring John Getz. That project didn’t go to series, but introduced Daniel to its writer, Caron.
Caron had just been given the greenlight to write a detective series featuring a male-female central romance, and the writer-producer invited Daniel to join the producing team. Within months Cybill Shepherd had been cast as a lead, and she’d be paired with a then-unknown Bruce Willis for what would become the hit Emmy-nominated series Moonlighting. Though the series was plagued by such troubles as missed deadlines and a headline-making feud between the stars, Moonlighting would remain a popular 20th Century Fox show for five seasons (1985-89).
Caron, who was famously fired from the beleaguered Moonlighting, leaving Daniel to soldier on during the series’ fifth and final season, teamed again with the producer for Clean and Sober, a film that featured Keaton in an early career-expanding dramatic role.
Daniel would later say that his experience on the chaotic Moonlighting was the likely reason ABC recruited him to join the production team on the similarly besieged Carsey-Werner Productions sitcom Roseanne, starring Roseanne Barr. Daniel joined the show in 1990, its third season, and remained until 1994.
The year after he left Roseanne, Daniel convinced his old Moonlighting star Shepherd to return to network television for her own self-titled sitcom, Cybill, created by Chuck Lorre. The comedy featured Shepherd as a twice-divorced mother of two still trying to find success as an actress. Cybill would eventually win three Emmy Awards from 12 nominations.
Daniel’s subsequent TV producing credits would include ABC’s The Naked Truth (1997) starring Tea Leoni, The WB’s Maybe It’s Me (2001) with Julia Sweeney, and ABC’s Hot Properties (2005), a sitcom that included Sofía Vergara in a pre-Modern Family role and a premise that combined elements of Designing Women and Sex and the City. None of Daniel’s later series approached the groundbreaking impact of his peak work.
Daniel is survived by wife Vicky Daniel. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
The was no "Moonlighting" without Jay Daniel.
Probably no "Roseanne"
Definitely no "Cybil"
Certainly no "Clean and Sober"
He was simply the best.
He left us last night. He will be very missed.
English (US) ·