A Facts of Life nearly happened. The NBC sitcom starred Charlotte Rae, Lisa Welchel, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn, and Nancy McKeon and ran for nine seasons from 1979 to 1988. A spinoff of Diff’rent Strokes, Facts of Life centered on Rae’s Edna Garrett as she becomes a housewife and dietitian at an all-girls boarding school in New York. Cohn, who played Natalie Green, recalled a fairly recent time that a reboot was being discussed, all thanks to the Live in Front of a Studio Audience ABC special in December 2021.
Via Us Weekly, Cohn shared on SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live, “You know they were doing the live versions of Norman Lear’s sitcoms with all these big stars? They did one of , and after that, Norman Lear… he called all of us and said, ‘I knew you guys were still popular, but holy hell. The response from the live [special].’”
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Lear had asked Cohn and her former costars about doing a spinoff series, as Cohn recalled, “We had all never really talked about it, but we all started to consider it a little bit. We got into talks, and we hired a writer. The four of us got together on a Zoom – this was during COVID – and we had meetings with Norman about it.” Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse after “there was drama.”
“It wasn’t me, I’ll put it that way,” Cohn stated. “One of the girls went behind our backs to try to make a separate deal for a spinoff deal just for herself and devastated the rest of us. I’m just saying, for a 40-year-friendship and sisterhood, there was a tidal wave of emotion around it. I’ll say it, she’s a greedy b—ch. Now, we do [talk]-ish, but it was an ouch.”
Because of that, any hopes for a Facts of Life revival, even after the death of Norman Lear, have greatly diminished. “It’s very dead,” Mindy Cohn admitted. “A couple of people don’t want to move past it. We are not as united; we were united for 40 years over not talking about each other, not doing dirty [and] all-for-one, one-for-all. This kind of wrecked that, which is kind of sad.”
While Cohn did not reveal the identity of the odd one out, she did say that fans can go on her Instagram and see who still hangs out with. “What it is is really sad… Some people are so desperate for either money or fame that it causes them to do things that to me, I guess, I’m still not that jaded. It shocks me. It always just kind of shocks me. You’re gonna do that over money or that over becoming famous? It always just kind of freaks me out that people will do that [and] throw deep true friendships under the bus for a dollar.”
