No Golden Girl is an island on her own. In order to make a show as successful as the hit sitcom was in the 1980s, everyone from the cast to the crew needed to be firing on all cylinders at all times.

Jay Sandrich had gained such an impressive reputation as a television director that his name was the only convincing reason Betty White needed to join the cast of The Golden Girls. White had previously worked with Sandrich and understood that his instincts and judgment were second to none in the entertainment industry.

“I didn’t need to read the script to know it would be a good show,” White said during an interview with The Houston Post. “I just saw that Jay Sandrich would be directing it, and that was enough. Jay did all of the Mary Tyler Moores. I’d fall in love with anything that Jay was directing. But then I read the first script and knew it was something special. For me, if Jay is involved, all the script has to be legible.”

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White had put her faith in the right man; It was Sandrich who made Rose Nylund a three-dimensional character.

“Rose is different now. In the first show, Rose was an amorphous creature,” said White. “You knew who the others were, but Rose was an unknown quantity. It was Jay Sandrich who told me to keep her completely innocent. Rose never gets the joke. She takes everything for the surface meaning of the word. I just love Rose. And so do the people watching.”