Sitcom icon George Jefferson was a loud, witty, and opinionated man who always spoke his mind. Next-door neighbors to the Bunkers from All in the Family, along with his wife Louise, the Jeffersons were the black couple from the sitcom that was just as successful.

With their wives being best friends, George and Archie Bunker had to learn how to get along over time, but despite George being smaller than Archie, he never backed down when the two began to bicker.

Norman Lear, the creator of  All in the Family, said himself that when he was looking for the role of George Jefferson, he was looking for someone who could ‘stand up’ to Archie Bunker.

As Lear began to find the star for his new sitcom, The Jeffersons, all he could think about was the performance of this particular man he saw in a Broadway show.

How Norman Lear set out to find Sherman Hemsley

Lear was set on figuring out who that guy was, but remembering his name took him a while. “It took some weeks before I remembered having seen Sherman in ‘Purlie’ on Broadway, ” he told the Vicksburg Post in 2012. Hemsley finally came in to read for the role, and Lear said the minute he opened his mouth, he was George Jefferson.

Lear added that although Hemsley’s George Jefferson was smaller than Carroll O’Conner’s Archie Bunker, he was “every bit as strong as Archie.”

Sherman studied acting at the Philadelphia Academy of Dramatic Arts as a child and then began acting in workshops and theatre companies in New York.

The success of the George Jefferson character

Hemsley made his Broadway debut in”Purlie” in the 1970s and even starred in a TV adaptation of the play in 1981. Then, Lear approached Hemsley about the role of George Jefferson for All in the Family. In 1973, Hemsley joined the show and immediately became a fan favorite.

Two years later, George and Louise Jefferson’s characters were so popular that their spinoff series, The Jeffersons, ran for 11 seasons—and although George was pompous and aggressive, Hemsley was the complete opposite of the character. “All of it was hard because I don’t like to be rude, ” Hemsley said in 2003, “but it was the character, and I had to be true to it.”