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M*A*S*H's McLean Stevenson admitted he never found another role quite like Henry Blake
Life after the 4077th wasn't quite the same!
Plenty of actors enjoy successful careers, but sometimes one role outshines all the rest. For McLean Stevenson, that role was undoubtedly Henry Blake on M*A*S*H.
Stevenson was there from the very beginning, but his time on the series came to an end in 1975. In the years that followed, the actor was candid about how difficult it was to find another character quite like Henry.
"After Henry Blake, they were all caricatures," Stevenson told The Tampa Tribune. "My problems were in accepting jobs and hoping the producers knew what they were doing."
Stevenson didn't necessarily regret leaving M*A*S*H when he did, but he realized that Henry Blake would be a tough act to follow.
"When I left the show, the mistake was not in leaving," Stevenson said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "The mistake was that I thought everybody in America loved McLean Stevenson. That was not the case. Everybody loved Henry Blake. So if you go and do The McLean Stevenson Show, nobody cares about McLean Stevenson."
Still, Stevenson had no shortage of pride in his work on M*A*S*H, even if his time on the series was relatively short.
"I have no regrets about any of the things I've done," Stevenson told The Tampa Tribune. "And when I look back at the reruns of M*A*S*H, I'm amazed at how good that show was."
In the end, Henry Blake may have been just one chapter in Stevenson's career, but it remained the role that meant the most to him and his fans.
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