Before the season's premiere, Roberts was featured in People Magazine with the headline: "Is the Jiggle Up?: In the Wake of Low Ratings, Will Tanya Roberts Save Charlie's Angels from Rerun Heaven?" As the series was moved several times on the broadcast schedule and its viewership continued to fall, the series was canceled after its fifth season. Roberts played the sultry Julie Rogers, a streetwise fighter who used her fists more than her gun. Roberts was chosen in 1980 from some two-thousand candidates to replace Shelley Hack in the television series, Charlie's Angels.
Roberts was featured in several television pilots that were not picked up: Zuma Beach (a 1978 comedy) Pleasure Cove (1979) and Waikiki (1980). Roles in the 1979 cult-movie, Tourist Trap, Racket and California Dreaming followed. The following year, Roberts participated in the drama, Fingers. In 1977, as her husband was securing his own screenwriting career, the couple moved to Hollywood. This was followed by the 1976 comedy The Yum-Yum Girls.
Her film debut was the 1975 thriller, Forced Entry. She also supported herself as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. She played serious roles in the Off-Broadway productions, Picnic and Antigone. Her career began as a model in TV ads for Ultra Brite, Clairol and Cool Ray sunglasses. While Barry pursued a career as a screenwriter, she began to study at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen under the name Tanya Roberts. After meeting psychology student Barry Roberts (while waiting in line for a movie), she proposed to him in a subway station and they were soon married. She eventually returned to New York City and became a fashion and cover model. At age 15, she left high school lived for a while hitch-hiking across the United States. She lived with her mother in Toronto for several years, where she started formulating a photo portfolio and laying plans for a career. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager. Blum was born in The Bronx, of Irish and Jewish descent.