Rules The Cast Of That '70s Show Couldn't Break

They knew how to groove and how to stick it to the man back in the 1970s, but some rules in life just can't be ignored, even when you're a rebellious teenager. The same was true for the cast of "That 70's Show," who had to follow a strict set of commands, whether they were on the set or simply promoting the show. Sometimes, the actors loved obeying these rules. However, on occasion, they openly rebelled against them, trying to forge their own paths through life and causing a ripple effect in the show's writing in the process.

The powers that be did their best to make the group obey these rules, for better or for worse. But what did the young stars have to do, exactly? We've compiled a list of must-follow rules that the cast of "That 70's Show" had to follow at all times, no matter the circumstances. Years later, some of them proved to be major bummers for some cast members — but they still look back on the sitcom with fondness and the same sort of nostalgia that the show's fans hold.

"That '70s Show" became well-known for its 360-degree circle scenes, in which the main cast members sat around smoking pot together. However, no actors were actually getting high on the set — unsurprisingly, this was not allowed. Naturally, rules involving the employment of minors and California's then-current marijuana ordinances (the show was filmed at CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles) kept the actors from going method and smoking joints on-camera. So how did they go about creating those smoky circle scenes?

According to Danny Masterson, who played the staunchly anti-establishment character Steven Hyde, they used a mixture of cigarettes and Hollywood smoke machines. "Laura [Prepon], Ashton [Kutcher] and I smoked cigarettes at the time," Masterson told Smashing Interviews Magazine. "We'd be smoking cigarettes and holding them low, and then they would just pump in this movie smoke that smelled like strawberries. It was like some incense in the background." It certainly worked well on camera, with these moments becoming iconic. This is just one of many examples of actors getting creative when they're supposed to be taking drugs.

Many TV show casts have special pre-show routines that they perform prior to taping as a kind of self-imposed rule. Sometimes it's a prayer, sometimes it's a rallying cheer, and sometimes it's a speech. "That '70s Show" was no different: They absolutely had to perform a specific ritual before each taping. This is according to Wilmer Valderrama (who played loveable foreign exchange student Fez), who revealed the details of their ritual during an interview with ABC News. 

Valderrama revealed that the cast would form a circle before they got to work on an episode, kind of like a sports team. The actor explained that they would "put their hands in the middle of the circle and decide on a word to represent the episode and break." Valderrama admitted that as the years went on their word picks became goofier and goofier, causing great merriment for the actors. "The word from Season 1 to Season 8 became more and more ridiculous," he said.

The wilder things got, the closer they all became, which resulted in those fun-loving performances that audiences came to expect from the show every single week. You can see them getting more comfortable with their characters as the seasons roll on — in fact, Topher Grace (who starred as Eric Forman) told Chicks in the Office that some of the early episodes weren't really that great, adding, "Because a lot of us never acted before, including myself."

One of the great things about "That '70's Show" is that it is fairly accurate to the period in terms of how it looks, from the way the sets are dressed to the cool vintage threads and the character's signature hairstyles. Unfortunately, not every actor was on board with having period accurate locks, specifically Topher Grace, who hated the helmet hair he had to sport to play Eric Forman. Despite his reservations, he kept the style for a long time — until he had to cut his hair for a movie role. The makeup team's solution was simple, and one that left the actor bemused — they simply plopped a wig on his head. "Once we realized how great the wig worked, I was kicking myself. I'd had the 'fro for five years," Grace told Time magazine.

Two more famous follicle rebellions occurred on the set of the series. Fans have often wondered why Donna's hair color changed from red to blonde, and the truth is that Laura Prepon dyed it so she could appear in the film "Karla," and the change was kept for Donna during the show's final two seasons. Debra Jo Rupp, meanwhile, cut her signature Kitty flip late in the series and the change was written into "That 70's Show" as Kitty having scorched her hair by mistake while trying to seduce Red (Kurtwood Smith). The producers tried their best to impost a no-haircut rule, but sometimes an actor will simply throw the rulebook out of the window if they want another role or are just sick of the same dated hairstyle.

California law mandates that all child actors need to do plenty of studying to match their acting; performers who came to Hollywood decades before "That '70s Show" existed have been fighting for that right for decades. Mila Kunis was only 14 when she joined the cast of "That '70's Show," and for her, that meant taking time out of the show's schedule to attend to her education. She alternated between using an on-set tutor and going to classes at a local school — which worked out well for her initially, as she boasted a 3.8 GPA at one stage.

During an appearance on "The Jess Cagle Podcast with Julia Cunningham" (via Gallatin News), Kunis explained that her schedule was rather erratic at the time. "I had tutors when I was shooting and then when you do sitcoms, there's a schedule of like three weeks on, one week off; two weeks on, one week off," she said. "So during that one week, you as an adult, you can do other projects, if you have time or you can do other things. I just went back to public school. So the erratic behaviour was probably popping in and out of my public high school and then going back and doing schoolwork on sets."

Kunis confessed to People that sometimes it was hard to blend in during her school days, when everyone around her kept thinking of her as a television star. "Kids come up with magazines and ask me to sign them," she said. "When I'm trying to fit in, that doesn't help." After graduating high school, Kunis ultimately went to UCLA and then Loyola Marymount University before dropping out. She had her heart set on getting a degree as everyone in her family is college educated, but her career got in the way and it never worked out.

Fans of "That '70's Show" have been relentlessly honest about their disappointment in some of the show's writing choices, specifically what happens in Season 8. It seems that some of those plot twists weren't popular backstage, either. Mila Kunis in particular has spoken out about Jackie's love life, with her character's tendency to flit between boys becoming a huge sticking point for her that both embarrassed her and her family.

While appearing on "The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn" (via Business Insider), Kunis admitted that Jackie's boy-hungry ways were tough for her to grapple with. "I'm the one who's kissed every single guy on the show except for Topher," she remarked. Jackie's liplocks didn't stop there, as she also kissed some guest characters. When asked by Kilborn what the writing staff had in mind, she admitted, "I don't know what they're thinking." The actor would later have issues with Jackie's story arc on "That '90's Show," which put her in an on-again-off-again relationship with Kelso and plunged her into the business world instead of keeping her with Fez. Nevertheless, she cheerfully went with what they threw at her and praised "That '90's Show" in general.

Some "That '70s Show" actors have defended the sitcom's writer's room, including Wilmer Valderrama. The actor created Fez's unique accent by blending lots of different accents together and was given permission to carry on with this approach. "I felt like that accent was another great aesthetic to create a character that was still multi-dimensional that I hadn't seen on television," he told The Today Show, adding that he was given "license to be a little bit of everyone."

No one would ever call the Point Place gang role models. They drink booze behind their parents' backs, they smoke in Eric's basement, and they sometimes even cut class. But within the cast, the actors involved in making "That '70's Show" considered each other role models — especially young Mila Kunis, who was looking to her co-stars for tips and advice. She thought they were very cool and much more sophisticated than her. She even patterned her behavior on how they acted, since the entire cast was older than her. Kunis admitted her fellow cast members kept her on the straight and narrow, urging her away from illicit behaviors.

"I will say, the reason I don't do drugs, the reason I didn't get into doing drugs, all of that was because nobody on the set did. I looked up to them, at 14, and so the trajectory of my career, my life, could've gone any which way, but it didn't," she told Vanity Fair. She also recounted that if she was ever made to feel lesser-than while on set, her castmates would stand up for her. Understandably, she looks back on the experience with a lot of fondness, even though she hasn't watched a complete episode of "That 70's Show" in years due to the fact that it causes her to relive her awkward teenage years.

Of course, her older co-stars definitely had to treat her differently. She was never invited to the group's beer-laden poker games when she was younger, for instance. Future husband Ashton Kutcher admitted that he, too, treated her differently due to her age back in the day. He told People magazine about kissing her: "I was so nervous. She acted so cool. She seemed as if she'd done it a thousand times. I was the one with the butterflies in my stomach. I mean, here's this little girl and I have to kiss her. It was nerve-racking."

The Vista Cruiser may ride like a dream in "That '70's Show," but the cast were not allowed to drive it. Why? Because the vehicle used onscreen was in a bad condition under the hood and it didn't actually run, which means the actors had to fake everything from their jovial show-opening singalongs to their country-spanning road trips with the aid of green screens and other effects. 

Wilmer Valderrama actually bought the show's iconic car after the run ended. He told People that he had to hire a mechanic to get it back up and purring after he spent $500 snagging it from the props department. Dead engine or not, the actor waxed about how much the vehicle makes him think about his time on the set. "All those little dings. You know, the nose dent. There's still glue from the tape from the microphones. There's still velcros when they had the lights hanging," he said.

The 1970s are known for sky-high shoes, but the decade's signature planforms were more than just de rigueur for Mila Kunis. At 5'4", the actor is a lot shorter than Laura Prepon (six inches, to be exact), who she often shared scenes with. This forced the show's directing staff to think up reasons to have them both be sitting down while they interacted. When she had to stand, Kunis was made to wear platform shoes — an era-appropriate way to be sure she and the show's taller actors could be seen in the same frame.

The scenes that Kunis shared with future husband Ashton Kutcher — who is a lot taller than her at 6'3" — were also challenging, and that spilled over into their married life. She told "Hot Ones" that she often finds herself standing on "tippy toes" at home, as their house is made more for someone who is Kutcher's size. "I have ladders everywhere," she revealed. "I have a ladder in the closet, I have a ladder in the kitchen — I can't reach things!"

There are plenty of characters that fans of "That 70's Show" don't talk about — Randy Pearson (Josh Meyers), we're looking at you — but what about those that the characters themselves can't talk about because they've been memory-holed into the ether? We're thinking of Donna's little sister, Tina (Amanda Fuller), who ceases to exist early in the show's run. Donna and her dad, Bob (Don Star), stop referencing her after she pops up during Season 1, though she does get briefly mentioned in Season 2's "Vanstock" as part of a meta in-joke. At least fans got to meet Tina — there's another Pinciotti sibling floating around out there. Donna also briefly mentions an older sister, Valerie, who never makes it on-camera as a character. At some stage, the writers decided that they wanted Donna to be an only child, so her sisters were never mentioned again.

Interestingly, Laura Prepon and Amanda Fuller went on to work with each other many years later in "Orange is the New Black." The actor who briefly played Donna's little sister appeared in the hit Netflix series as Madison "Badison" Murphy, the secondary antagonist of Season 6. "It was interesting for me because I've worked with Laura [Prepon] before, and we have a lot of mutual people in our lives and all these weird connections," Fuller told PopSugar. "It was kind of a trip. We were like, 'This is surreal. What is happening here?' It was not a full-circle moment that I ever anticipated, but it was really nice to have that connection from before, and just made it a little bit easier."

Eric and his friends do a lot of silly things in "That '70s Show," like hanging out at the rickety local water tower — many of the characters fell from it at one point or another, and some of them more than once. However, while their characters did dumb things on occasion, the actors followed a self-imposed rule on set: Don't do anything stupid.

This was an edict handed down by Danny Masterson, who, as the eldest of the main cast, was essentially the group's ring-leader. According to Ashton Kutcher, Masterson warned his younger co-stars about doing anything that might jeopardize the future of the show. "He's like, 'One f***ing rule: Don't do anything f***ing stupid and f*** this up. Because if you f*** it up, you f*** it up for everybody,'" Kutcher said during an interview with Esquire, quoting Masterson.

Of course, we now know that Masterson was far from the role model that he appeared to be: He was convicted of two counts of rape and handed a thirty year to life sentence in 2024. The rapes took place in 2003, when he was still playing Hyde on "That '70s Show." Kutcher and Mila Kunis faced backlash after it was revealed that they wrote to the judge in support of Masterson. His previous position as the group's driving force might explain why they stood by him, but their position was widely criticized and they eventually apologized.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).