Patrick Duffy recalls starting “Dallas” days drinking champagne with Larry Hagman

How did anyone survive the 1980s?

Patrick Duffy recently opened up about the brash and boozy experience on the set of Dallas, recalling, "When we started working, every morning that we would be working together on the set, we'd get a call time, usually, you know, seven, six o'clock call time. I would pull in to MGM. We'd park the cars. We'd go to [Larry Hagman's] room. We'd open a bottle of champagne."

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Duffy gave the rare interview to his former Step by Step costars Staci Keanan and Christine Lakin on their Keanan And Lakin Give You Déjà Vu podcast - and he didn't stop there. "We could judge when the show was about to wrap for the day, how it was going, what the last couple of shots were going to be, what the setups were going to be. When we knew it was the right time, we would catch the prop guy's eye... and then magically a styrofoam cup would appear."

What was in the cup - water? A modest, celebratory fruit punch? A fistful of multivitamins? No, "We'd have a little shot of tequila before we wrapped," he said.

Duffy and Hagman starred in the ensemble of Dallas throughout its 14-season run, which means they spent the full decade of the 1980s together. The pair played brothers Bobby (Duffy) and J.R. Ewing (Hagman), sons of oil tycoon Jock (Jim Davis) and matriarch Miss Ellie Ewing (Barbara Bel Geddes), whose deep-seated sibling rivalry frequently erupted into dramatic physical conflagrations.

He remembered Hagman as not too dissimilar from his hot-headed, unpredictable character on the series, crediting him as both the driving force and instigator behind Dallas' drinking culture. "When we read the script of Dallas, we all met for the very first time. Not one actor on the show had ever met any of the other actors on the show," he said. "We entered the room, 'Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you?' And then Haggy came in, full cowboy, fringe, leather outfit, big hat, leather saddlebags over his shoulder. And in the saddlebags were bottles of champagne."

"I wouldn't drink anymore after that first glass. Haggy would continue, and in the course of the day, he'd get through three or four bottles of champagne," Duffy shared.

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"We all sat down and drank champagne before we ever started reading the pilots of Dallas to get to know each other," which Duffy described as "the beginning of a relationship." It was also the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Hagman. Duffy said that he "went home that day after the whole process and I told my wife, 'I think I met my best friend today.' That was Hagman. We were best friends from that moment on until the day he died."

Hagman was the only actor to appear on all 357 of the original series, and he reprised the role of J.R. Ewing on the spinoff Knots Landing, the 2004 televised reunion special The Return to Southfork, and part of the 2012 TNT reboot, before his death the same year from leukemia.

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"That was my workday with Hagman for 13 years," Duffy remembered fondly. "That was the '80s."

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