Butler was reportedly tough to be around on the Grace Under Fire set. She fought with show brass so much that the series employed five executive producers in five years. For a February Sweeps "crossover" stunt, ABC sent the casts of its Wednesday night sitcoms—Ellen, Coach, The Drew Carey Show, and Grace Under Fire—to Las Vegas. Butler refused to take the 45-minute flight from L.A. to Vegas with the other actors and demanded ABC charter her a jet. On one taping day in Sin City, she left cast and crew waiting for more than two hours.
In 1996, Butler publicly admitted that in addition to struggling with alcoholism, she also had an addiction to prescription painkillers. Those issues certainly didn't help life at Grace Under Fire. Butler went to rehab more than once during the show's run, with an August 1997 stint temporarily shutting down production. Shortly after Butler returned to the show in January 1998, she "blew up," as an ABC insider told E!. That was the last straw—the next day, ABC suspended production on Grace Under Fire in the middle of its fifth season, effectively canceling it. Butler later took full responsibility for the show's demise, blaming her "failure to address my active addiction, by that I mean taking drugs almost to the point of dying. That will end even the worst of shows."
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