Can you believe it has been 35 years since television viewers first heard the lyrics “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life?” To celebrate the anniversary of one of American televisions most iconic sitcoms, the cast of The Facts of Life reunited at PaleyFest this week and talked about the show, their lives now, and of course that George Clooney kiss!
In attendance at the red carpet panel discussion event, and looking damned AMAZING by the way, were Lisa Whelchel (Blair Warner), Nancy McKeon (Jo Polniaczek), Mindy Cohn (Natalie Green), Geri Jewell (“Cousin” Geri), and of course, Charlotte Rae (Mrs. Edna Garrett). (Kim Fields, who played Tootie Ramsey, was not able to attend, but she did send a video message for fans.)
During their two-hour Q&A session the cast revealed a lot about what went on behind the scenes of The Facts of Life, which ran for nine seasons from 1979-1988. Unlike most “Hollywood True Stories,” The Facts of Life gals were apparently as straight-laced as their on-screen personae and had no skeleton stories to dig out of the closet. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even smoke and managed to get Charlotte Rae to give up her 5 cigarettes a day habit! “They kept pulling them out of my mouth,” Rae recalled. So I guess we won’t be seeing The Unauthorized Facts of Life Story on Lifetime any time soon.
Though not “shocking” by any stretch of the imagination, the cast did point out that there is often a misconception about how much money they were paid for making the show. “I think there’s a misconception out there that we’re sitting on these pots of gold,” Cohn revealed, before clarifying that the cast were paid “insanely well.”
Whelchel, who divorced her husband of 24 years, pastor Steve Cauble, in 2012, said her financial situation was a major factor in her decision to compete on Survivor that same year. Whelchel did not win the reality competition, but fans voted her to be the $100,000 recipient of the show’s “Player of the Season.” “That paid for me to move out to California after my divorce,” Whelchel said. “I’m forever grateful to my fans for that.”
51-year-old Whelchel (WHUH?!?) is currently working on a sitcom with her 21-year-old daughter, Clancy Cauble (seen with her mom in the photo above), titled Like Mother, Like Daughter. “It’s basically our lives: We are 25 years apart but are experiencing the same things,” she revealed of the project to The Hollywood Reporter. “I just went through a divorce, and we’re both entering [the] dating [world], going back to school, finding new jobs, and they are different roles than we’ve both been in. We’re very different, and that makes for some funny situations. And also the generations have changed so much. And then the two of us make for the comedy part.”
One of Hollywood susperstar George Clooney’s earliest roles was as a handyman on the show and of course the subject came up. “He was just another actor to us,” Cohn recalled. “We already knew him when he came to our show, because he had worked on a nearby set, so it wasn’t a big deal for him to be on the show. He didn’t just walk in one day.”
Clooney’s unremarkableness even extended to his now-infamous kiss with Whelchel’s Blair as the actress revealed she doesn’t eve recall the moment. “I am all for repressed memories, but why I repressed that one I don’t know!” she said jokingly, before pointing out that she has “since watched that (scene) several times” on YouTube.
Although it doesn’t have “The Kiss,” here’s a little flashback clip of George Clooney as George Burnett in The Facts of Life episode “Into the Frying Pan” from 1985:
Talking with Today.com, Mindy Cohn joked about her character being the first to lose her virginity. “My character was the only one in a committed relationship at the time and, honestly, one of us just had to break a hymen, no?” Cohn joked. “You’re going to talk about teen suicide and stealing and pot but you’re not going to talk about sex? It was time! She was 17, almost 18, so it wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god!’”
Geri Jewell (above) spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about playing the ground-breaking role of “Cousin” Geri. “It was the most amazing thing to have happened to me, and I think everybody was surprised that America embraced me,” Jewell said. “It was like, ‘What do we do with cerebral palsy? We can’t talk about cerebral palsy in every episode.’ So they let me be me; they let me be Blair’s cousin. And that was a stepping stone to the mainstreaming that we’re seeing today with people with disabilities in the industry. We have a long way to go, but I was first, and I am very proud of having that be a part of who I am.”
The cast was mixed on whether or not The Facts of Life would be a success now. “I think we’d be laughed out of a pitch meeting,” Cohn said, with Whelchel chiming in that the only way it would work would be if “we were all naked.”
88-year-old Charlotte Rae (above) disagreed. “I don’t watch sitcoms — I do watch Modern Family — but I don’t like all that [other] crap,” she said of the modern television landscape, before adding that a retooled version of The Facts of Life could be a success. “I think it could be updated and it could work,” the 88-year-old actress said. “I think we need it.”
Jewell agreed with Rae about the viability of a show similar to The Facts of Life in 2014. She humorously suggested a show with the original cast. “You could pitch a new show,” she said, “called The Change of Life!”
