Clash
So Carroll O’Connor would fight constantly and brutally with Norman Lear during production and even resulted in a few boycotts and contract holdouts. O’Connor would argue with Lear about the direction that the show was taking. As he was a writer himself he would often rewrite Archie’s dialogue, sometimes he had Lear’s approval, sometimes not.
Original
Gavin MacLeod had read for the part of Archie, but rather reluctantly. Personally he was opposed to bigotry of any kind, and therefore felt that the subject matter was inappropriate.