Jeff Garlin has found enormous success as Murray Goldberg, the man at the head of the household opposite Wendy McLendon-Covey’s Beverly in the popular ABC sitcom The Goldbergs. But the immensely recognizable actor just revealed that his likable persona onscreen belies a condition he lives with in real life. “Bipolar is a motherf*****,” he wrote via Instagram on September 20. “Sometimes it’s just too much to deal with. I’m doing the best I can. This the first time that I’ve opened up about this.” Jeff completed the post with the hashtag “#bipolar.” The Curb Your Enthusiasm actor posted the sentiment alongside a vintage photo of a surprised man in suspenders reading an issue of Mad magazine, with Batman and Robin on the cover. Jeff disabled comments, so the message stood on its own — but among his 213K followers, the post had several thousands likes at the time this was published.
Jeff’s comments were timed to coincide almost exactly with the season 10 premiere of the sitcom on September 21 — but the actor, who starred in the series since its 2013 debut, won’t be on it. His character was killed off following allegations of “misconduct” on set that broke back in December, per Deadline. While his new revelation might provide context in relation to his exit from the show, that doesn’t mean changes to the show won’t be cataclysmic.
“[Murray] will have passed, and we are sort of starting from a place of multiple months removed from his death,” showrunner Alex Barnow told Entertainment Weekly in late August. “The family has already grieved, unlike Pops [George Segal] and the premiere of season 9 where they’re dealing with it sort of very freshly. This is going to be a family that has not reconciled the fact that their father’s gone but has sort of moved on and has dealt with a lot of that. So we’re starting with optimism about a baby coming and looking forward to the future. It’s an opportunity for this interesting emotional basis for the way people are behaving.”