The Truth About How Many Cheesecakes The Golden Girls Cast Consumed During Filming

For seven glorious seasons, audiences tuned in faithfully to watch the lives and loves of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia. "The Golden Girls" was must-watch TV and remains popular even today; during the lockdown days of the pandemic, Hulu subscribers watched 11 million hours of reruns in April 2020 alone, per The New York Times. What made the show such a hit? Talent had a lot to do with it — Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty were all stage and screen veterans long before they signed on. Clever writing and relevant topics were factors as well; for instance, they were one of the few network shows at the time to address LGBTQ+ topics and AIDS (per Biography). Or maybe audiences just loved the basic premise: four women "of a certain age" defying all stereotypes about aging. These "girls" weren't sitting around playing bingo and waiting for their grandchildren to call; they were living rich, independent, complex and — yes! — sexually active lives.

Not everything about the show was true to life, though. While the four stars had a fantastic working relationship, Betty White has admitted that Bea Arthur "found me a pain in the neck sometimes" because their personalities clashed (via OK!). That beautiful Miami bungalow featured on the show was actually located in Brentwood, California — and recently sold to a new owner for a cool $4 million, per House Beautiful. And there's one other fascinating bit of trivia that fans have been wondering about for years.

Like any classic sitcom, "The Golden Girls" had plenty of recurring gags. On any given episode, you could count on Dorothy and Sophia to butt heads over some small topic (followed by Dorothy's hollow threat to have her mother sent to Shady Pines). Blanche was either bragging about her sex life or being teased about it. Rose, the sweetly naïve one of the group, would go on a rambling tangent about her childhood in St. Olaf, Minnesota. 

And so it would follow, as the night the day, that after a particularly stressful life crisis, the lifelong friends would gather in their kitchen late at night to commiserate over a cup of coffee and a generous slice of a certain dairy-based pastry. As Dorothy memorably said in one episode, "Do you know how many problems we have solved over a cheesecake over this kitchen table?" 

As you might imagine, seven seasons' worth of cheesecake commiseration adds up to... a whole lot of cheesecake. More than 100 of the creamy confections got eaten during the run of the show, per IMDb, which aligns with Dorothy's figure of "147!" In a twist of irony, however, Bea Arthur reportedly hated cheesecake, according to Good Housekeeping. So the next time you watch a rerun, notice that Arthur is rarely seen actually taking a bite (as in this series of YouTube clips). That's what you call professionalism.