{"id":508105,"date":"2026-05-29T04:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T04:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/508105\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T04:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T04:43:12","slug":"jay-daniel-dead-moonlighting-roseanne-producer-was-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/508105\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Daniel Dead: \u2018Moonlighting,\u2019 \u2018Roseanne\u2019 Producer Was 82"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJay Daniel, the two-time Emmy-nominated producer who kept the chaos in check on the popular but difficult to make ABC series Moonlighting and Roseanne<\/a>, has died. He was 82.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel died Wednesday at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center of a pneumonia-related illness, his wife, artist Vicky Daniel, told The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel also partnered with Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron on Clean and Sober, the 1988 Warner Bros. film that starred Michael Keaton<\/a>, in his first dramatic turn, as a real estate agent struggling with addictions to cocaine and alcohol.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus, he lured Moonlighting star Cybill Shepherd<\/a> back to television by developing her 1995-98 CBS sitcom Cybill, created by Chuck Lorre.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel was with Caron from the very beginning of Moonlighting, which starred Shepherd as Maddie Hayes, owner of the struggling Blue Moon Detective Agency, and Bruce Willis<\/a> as David Addison, the playful private eye who goes to work for her.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 20th Century Fox midseason replacement, which ran five seasons from 1985-89, became notorious for missing deadlines, with the perfectionist Caron often waiting until the last minute to write, shoot and\/or edit the light-hearted, hourlong program. Further complications ensued when Shepherd got pregnant and when she feuded with Willis.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel was given the difficult task of keeping the train running on time, and he told<\/a> The New York Times in 1986 that \u201cwe\u2019re just about as close as you can get to being live without being live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think a lot of the success of Moonlighting, when you look back on it, came out of spontaneity,\u201d he noted in a 2005 interview<\/a>. \u201cAt the time it was chaos, you know, the script wasn\u2019t ready, Glenn had to go write something now or we\u2019d have to shut down.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHis back was to the wall, and he\u2019d go in the room and write this thing and you\u2019d look at it and go, \u2018OK, let\u2019s shoot it,\u2019 and then it was done. It was written the day before, sometimes the morning of, and done by the end of the day. And you know what? It was pretty damn good. Sometimes it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel stuck around as showrunner for the show\u2019s final season after Caron was fired, then joined Roseanne for its third year. On the sitcom, star Roseanne Barr<\/a> often walked off the set after arguing with the writers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey thought of me because I had somehow kept Moonlighting going in spite of all the tumult, especially the problems between Bruce and Cybill,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was well known that somehow Moonlighting kept going when it could have imploded at any second. So the network brought me onto Roseanne to calm the waters and try to deal with her concerns.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was more about the actress than it was about the strong female character she was playing. It was about me going into the lion\u2019s den with a whip and a chair and dealing with an actor who could be very volatile, although I must say she never raised her voice to me, not once. To a lot of other people she did, but for some reason, never to me. I ended up doing that show for the better part of five seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn X, Caron wrote<\/a> Thursday that there would have been \u201cno Moonlighting without Jay Daniel. Probably no Roseanne. Definitely no Cybill. Certainly no Clean and Sober. He was simply the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of two boys, Jay Mills Daniel was born in Cushing, Oklahoma, on June 1, 1943. He graduated from Oklahoma State University and attended graduate school at UCLA as a theater arts major, wanting to be an actor. He landed an agent and appeared as a snack bar drive-in attendant in Targets (1968), the directorial debut of Peter Bogdanovich<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tHe decided his future was on the other side of the camera and got into the DGA trainee program, leading to a stint as an assistant director on ABC\u2019s The Brady Bunch.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1973-76, he served as a unit production manager, A.D. and associate producer on NBC\u2019s Police Story before producing the 1979-80 NBC crime series Eischied, starring Joe Don Baker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1984, Daniel received a Daytime Emmy for outstanding children\u2019s informational\/instructional special for producing a CBS Schoolbreak Special episode about a man on Death Row who advises kids not to make the same mistakes he made.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe and Caron first worked together that year on Concrete Beat, a pilot for an ABC series that starred John Getz as a newspaper columnist, but it was not picked up.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOn June first of 1984, I get a call from Glenn saying, \u2018You know, they want me to do this boy\/girl detective thing, and they\u2019ve given me a \u2018go\u2019 on it. Would you like to do it?\u2019\u201d Daniel recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018Sure,\u2019 and that turned out to be Moonlighting. June 1 is my birthday \u2014 best present I\u2019ve ever been given.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGlenn took two months to write the script, and we had a long, long time to cast it. I\u2019m sure you know all those stories. We cast Cybill early on, in July of that year, and we didn\u2019t start shooting until October. They picked us up immediately after we delivered the pilot. I became part of Glenn\u2019s company [Picturemaker Productions], and Moonlighting became my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel, Caron and others shared outstanding drama series nominations for Moonlighting in 1986 and 1987 (they lost to Cagney & Lacey and then L.A. Law), and he got to direct four episodes of the series.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe worked on Clean and Sober, Caron\u2019s directorial debut, between the third and fourth seasons of Moonlighting.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter ending his run on Roseanne in 1994, Daniel said he \u201cwas able to convince [Shepherd] to come back to television, even after what she\u2019d been through on Moonlighting,\u201d and he spent three seasons as an executive producer on the sitcom about a 40ish career woman with two ex-husbands and a teenage daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel also was a producer on ABC\u2019s The Naked Truth in 1997, The WB\u2019s Maybe It\u2019s Me in 2001-02 and ABC\u2019s Hot Properties in 2005.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to his wife of 46 years \u2014 she was a dancer when they met on a set and were together for 50 years \u2014 survivors include his niece, Lori.<\/p>\n

\n

The was no “Moonlighting” without Jay Daniel.<\/p>\n

Probably no “Roseanne”
Definitely no “Cybil”
Certainly no “Clean and Sober”<\/p>\n

He was simply the best.<\/p>\n

He left us last night. He will be very missed.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Glenn Caron (@GlennGCaron) May 28, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay Daniel, the two-time Emmy-nominated producer who kept the chaos in check on the popular but difficult to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[25093,434,220400,18,117,19,17,50491,5768,195655,172552],"class_list":["post-508105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bruce-willis","tag-celebrities","tag-cybill-shepherd","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-michael-keaton","tag-obituaries","tag-roseanne","tag-roseanne-barr"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}