The anguished words could be from a TV series of heavy domestic travail, perhaps NBC's now departed United States. But the unlikely speaker is Joyce DeWitt, the lovably klutzy Janet on ABC's Three's Company, and her distress is wrenchingly real. After a turbulent seven years with her live-in man, actor Ray (Rhoda) Buktenica, DeWitt has broken with her only love and is facing uncertainly a new life alone. (She forcefully denies rumors of a romance with her, and Ray's, manager, Stu Ehrlich.) "One day I had the courage to say, 'I need time to myself,' " she explains. "I had to go away and find out what I liked, what I wanted, and what would make me happy."
Actually, it was Buktenica who moved out of their Malibu beach house last January after they'd lived there only two months. Convinced that "I wasn't living my life anymore," Joyce had asked Raymond (as she calls him) for a "pause" in their relationship. "I didn't know what was troubling me, so I couldn't tell him," she says. "It wasn't his fault; it was my inability to deal with the relationship." But, she continues, Ray said he could not live with half measures. "So it was more or less his choice that we should break up and not just separate. I could understand that," she admits. "And I respect his choice."
Ray, too, is understanding of the split: "She was simply being true to herself by declaring her freedom."
DeWitt freely concedes that many of her problems with relationships date back to her own sheltered family life in Speedway, Ind., home of racing's Indianapolis 500. "Before I knew Raymond, I worried about being whatever my father thought would make a good and wonderful human being," DeWitt recalls, adding that she was a late bloomer who "can still remember my first French kiss—that's how old I was." She took her teaching certificate at Indiana's Ball State University, then met Buktenica her second day at UCLA studying for her master's in fine arts. "I transferred onto Raymond all my fears that I wouldn't be loved and wanted—a hell of a load to ask anyone to carry," she realizes. "So I got to be a 30-year-old woman and I still have a lot of growing up to do." (When Buktenica left, she slept on the couch at her sister's for a couple of weeks and still fears to be alone in her beach house after dark.)
Her confidence had grown when Three's Company took off—but so had her problems. Unlike co-star Suzanne Somers, Joyce shunned publicity "because I'm so scared of being controlled by other forces, probably because of how I dealt with the men in my life." Then her sudden celebrity forced "demands on me that neither of us wanted. I had to go to the network affiliates banquet, so Raymond would have to, too. He was being dragged along." Conversely, she claims, he expected her to continue her housewifely duties. "I couldn't be strong at work all day and come home and be this docile person," she snaps. "Raymond liked the old Joyce, but the old Joyce was a slave."
She began to create the new Joyce last year when she cropped her curly Three's Company hairdo and returned to her naturally straight locks. At the same time, she lost 15 pounds with the Pritikin diet and merchandised her new look with a lucrative L'Eggs hosiery campaign that was just renewed. She also shot a new G-rated poster. "If only 25 people want to put me on their wall, I'll be thrilled," she cracks.
Raymond apparently wasn't thrilled by her new attitude. "He didn't like the changes in me—I think I've gotten better," she says. "I want to become independent—to take responsibility for my own life, make my own mistakes and my own success. I would like it if someone turned around and said 'I like you' and didn't make me sit up and beg for it. More than ever I want my liberty."
DeWitt's on her way. She and Buktenica have settled their affairs amicably (she got the dog; he got the living room sofa) and dissolved their production company. "We trusted each other, and we're not going to rob each other," she says. Parenthood is further off now, but Joyce shrugs, "I'm too screwed up to be a good parent right now. I'm practicing on my dog." Among her supportive friends are John and Nancy Ritter. (Joyce and Somers are less close.)
The newly assertive DeWitt recently made overtures to Broadway, but her Three's Company shooting schedule prevented her from replacing the vacationing Sandy Duncan in Peter Pan. Instead, Joyce just returned from touring in an Ohio summer stock production of, appropriately, Neil Simon's bittersweet play of personal and marital renewal, Chapter Two. "No matter how rough it is, I have this feeling that I'm going to be happy," Joyce affirms. "I'm going to figure out how to like me, and take my chances with the rest of the universe. I hope they'll still like me," she adds, "after I like me."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
