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Cybill's Self-Help Book

Hosting the new daytime talk show Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is something of a personal triumph for Cybill Shepherd, who feared her career had ended with the 1998 cancellation of her self-titled CBS sitcom. The former Moonlighting star credits her recently published memoir, Cybill Disobedience, with helping to put things back on track. "At the time I was writing it, a very close friend said, 'Aren't you worried you'll never work again?'" she tells TV Guide Online of her best-selling bio. "My feeling was that I was never going to work again anyway, so why not take that chance?" Shepherd had hoped to follow immediately her Cybill gig with her own talk show. In fact, she tried to set her career in that direction by insisting she play a talk show host in the final three episodes of the sitcom. But it wasn't until she published the tell-all book — complete with behind-the-scenes tales of working with Elvis and Moonli

Rich Brown

Hosting the new daytime talk show Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is something of a personal triumph for Cybill Shepherd, who feared her career had ended with the 1998 cancellation of her self-titled CBS sitcom. The former Moonlighting star credits her recently published memoir, Cybill Disobedience, with helping to put things back on track.

"At the time I was writing it, a very close friend said, 'Aren't you worried you'll never work again?'" she tells TV Guide Online of her best-selling bio. "My feeling was that I was never going to work again anyway, so why not take that chance?"

Shepherd had hoped to follow immediately her Cybill gig with her own talk show. In fact, she tried to set her career in that direction by insisting she play a talk show host in the final three episodes of the sitcom. But it wasn't until she published the tell-all book — complete with behind-the-scenes tales of working with Elvis and Moonlighting co-star Bruce Willis — that TV execs decided to give her another chance.

"It lifted a cloud of blame and confusion about the ending of the Cybill show and about who I truly am," she says. "I was really hard on myself and not bitter. I think that people really know me better than they ever have, and I feel their hearts are open to me."

Shepherd admits it was just as tough trying to reinvent herself following the end of Moonlighting in 1989. "Honey, it was hard," she admits. "I couldn't get a job. I didn't have the blockbusters, like Bruce Willis. I didn't have those wonderful vehicles where I got to be a national hero. I always wanted to be a national hero. There was a movie I could never get anyone to do called The Blond Guerilla. Isn't that a great title?"