Michele Lee Admits She Still Gets Emotional Over This Knots Landing Scene at Sid’s Grave 

Over 43 years later, Michele Lee is still touched by one of her Knots Landing character’s most emotional moments.

Lee, 83, appeared alongside her Knots Landing costars (and podcast cohosts) Donna Mills and Joan Van Ark at Southfork Experience at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel in Richardson, Texas, on Aug. 9 to talk about their tenure on the show, why audiences still love it and why their bond is still so strong today. Knots Landing was a spin-off of the hit series Dallas (but ultimately ran for more episodes).

During the panel, moderator William Keck showed a clip of one of the show’s most emotional moments — when Lee’s Karen Fairgate takes off her wedding ring after her husband’s death. Her husband, Sid Fairgate (Don Murray), died at the beginning of season 2, which premiered in November 1981, after he was in a car crash. Lee’s journey throughout the season deals with her quest to move on and keep living her life.

That brings her to the season’s 17th episode, “Letting Go,” where Karen visits Sid’s grave for the first time since his funeral. Speaking to Sid at his graveside, she delivers a long monologue, telling Sid she met someone, before finally taking off her ring.

Explaining why the scene still moves her now, Lee said, “The ring I took off was the ring my father gave to my mother. And I was married at that time to Jim Farentino — James Farentino, the actor — and that became my wedding ring to Jim.”

She continued, “So when I actually took off that ring, it meant… I can’t tell you how many things it meant to me. It was like saying goodbye to my parents, right? To both of them, and to a marriage that — we loved each other and was broken.” 

Lee met Farentino, who died in 2012 at 73, in 1963. They wed in 1966 and divorced in 1983, but in 1981, they spoke to PEOPLE about the ups and downs of their marriage. Lee said at the time, “When I have a long time with no days off, Jim will complain I’m never here — a way of saying a woman’s place is in the kitchen. I’m as unhappy about it as he is, really, but we have some screaming rows.”

In 1987, Lee married again, to Fred Rappaport. Her character, Karen, also moved on from her loss. While trying to get justice for Sid (whose brakes had been tampered with), Karen falls in love with Federal Prosecutor Mack MacKenzie (played by Kevin Dobson), and their characters married in 1983. 

As for why Karen’s stories — and the rest of the plots on Knots Landing — resonated so widely with fans, Lee said during the panel, “We were real people. You could identify with us because we were like you.”

Van Ark, 82, added, “David Jacobs [who created Knots Landing and Dallas] said, the reason it was better is that Dallas was about them, those few millionaire, billionaire people, and Knots Landing was about us. And I love that. It’s a synopsis of the show that is the heart and soul.”

Knots Landing ran from 1979 to 1993, and Lee was the only cast member to appear in all of the show’s 344 episodes. She also appeared in the 1997 sequel miniseries Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac, where Karen and Mack celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary.