THE FACTS OF LIFE: 35 Years Later

The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills held the final event of its 10th Annual Fall TV Previews with a Fall Flashback panel focusing on the 35th Anniversary of the classic television comedy The Facts of Life.

On tap for the night were original cast members Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair Warner; Nancy McKeon, who played Jo Polniazcek; Mindy Cohn, who played Natalie Green; and legendary actress Charlotte Rae, who played Mrs. Edna Garrett. Fellow cast member Kim Fields (who played Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey) was unable to attend the event, but a pre-recorded video was played directly after the panelists took their seats on the Paley Center’s stage.

The episode entitled “Cousin Geri” – which aired on December 24, 1980 – was also screened prior to the start of the panel, featuring comedienne Geri Jewell, who was the first person with a disability to have a regular role on a primetime series and was the first actor with cerebral palsy to be featured on a TV show. With those acknowledgements announced, moderator Danielle Nussbaum, Senior West Coast Editor at Entertainment Weekly, welcomed Geri to the stage to join the rest of the panelists.

Since the show aired during the 1980’s, the norms of that time were – to our 21st century attitudes – quite tame and clean cut; and the ladies freely admitted that it was a different time in TV when The Facts of Life aired. They did not have paparazzi following their every move or social media invading into every facet of their lives. In fact, Mindy shared that if the comedy were airing now, she “would not be here. I’d have to move to a faraway island”.

But the show was not averse to focusing on controversial issues like sex, drugs and teen suicide. In fact, the ladies talked about receiving a fan letter from a young girl who had been thinking about taking her life only to watch an episode of The Facts of Life that focused on that very subject. The letter writer shared that she “didn’t do it” that night because of the show. That was when the girls knew that were reaching viewers in a positive way.

And while the girls had strong families to support them while they literally grew up in front of America on the show, they did have their fair share of silliness behind the scenes, but they all agreed that it was “good clean fun”. The real troublemaker, though, was actually Charlotte, who had a five-cigarettes-a-day habit. The girls would routinely pull the cigarettes out of her mouth.

When talking about the audition process for the show, Charlotte and Mindy shared that the latter didn’t actually audition for the show; rather Charlotte wrote a character for her based on meeting Mindy and several other students at Westlake School [now Harvard Westlake, one of the top private schools in Los Angeles]. Charlotte was so taken with Mindy’s bubbly personality that she brought her onto the show even though Mindy had no acting experience and at the young age of 12 wanted to be a doctor. Charlotte joked had that Mindy “never acted prior to her big network break. You must have been scared sh–less”. This comment brought the house down with Charlotte joking that “I’m not Mrs. Garrett!”.

When asked what the ladies are doing now, Charlotte shared that she is working with her son, who is a writer, on a book to be called “The Facts of My Life” and is still acting, having a small role in “a Disney show”. She is also a supporter of PanCan.org, a charity organization for survivors of pancreatic cancer of which she is one. Mindy is the voice of Velma on the animated series “Scooby Doo” and does a lot of philanthropy work. Nancy is raising her two little girls (who are 8 and 10), wanting to spend as much time with them “before they stop talking to me” and Lisa went straight from the series into married life, taking on the role of stay-at-home mom to her 3 kids. But now divorced with an empty nest, Lisa and her youngest daughter Clancy – who is also an actress – are living together and developing a sitcom called “Like Mother, Like Daughter” and she is working with Hallmark on some projects.

Lastly, the subject of whether The Facts of Life could be reimagined for our modern times was tackled with the panelists being evenly divided in their thoughts on that show’s success. Lisa shared that “TV is so edgy now you have to go outside the norm to get a show (maybe) if we were all naked (it could possibly work)”. While Mindy stated that “if you were to pitch the idea of [a Norman Lear-type comedy] where there’s a moral at the end, I think we’d be left out of the pitch meeting”.

Regardless of how the show would be perceived now, The Facts of Life was a groundbreaking series that touched the hearts of countless fans all over the world, running from 1979 to 1988 on NBC, airing 209 episodes in total. The nine-season box set will be available in January.

Photo Credit: Kevin Parry for The Paley Center for Media