"That friction ran between them. And he was always trying to tell Redd how to be funny. That is so stupid for him to have approached that. And he approached it with, 'I'm one of the producers and I can tell you how to be funny.' … That was the undercurrent all the time," Reese continued.

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On the day of Foxx's death, Reese says, Foxx was doing an interview with Entertainment Tonight on the set. But the producer insisted that Foxx finish his scene during a rehearsal, which only involved Foxx walking across the back of Reese's chair. The producer demanded that Foxx come and do his scene and asked Reese where he was.

"He goes in there, stops their shooting and brings Redd out. And when Redd gets out there and finds out all he has to do is walk across the back of [the chair]—that anybody could have done—he becomes livid. And he falls. Well, he was always doing pratfalls. … I thought that's what he did. … I leaned down to him and I put my hands on him. He said, 'Get my wife, get my wife,' " Reese explained.

That's when they realized Foxx had had a heart attack. Foxx was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead four hours later.

At the hospital, Reese said, the producers asked, "What are we going to do with this script? This script was written for Redd and Della," Reese remembered.

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Reese said she went crazy on everyone because Foxx's wife had just been told that her husband was dead. Reese said from that point on, she looked at television from a different viewpoint.

"They never treated him with the respect he should have had," Reese said.