With the personalities involved, maybe two handfuls.” (FWIW: Jennifer Aniston, in an ABC featurette, said that The Facts of Life will feature “three unexpected visitors,” presumably in addition to Jon Stewart’s “mystery” role.)Īs usual, the specific episodes being revisited is also intended as a surprise, though Miller confirms for TVLine that Diff’rent Strokes is not tackling what we will call “ the Gordon Jump episode.” (As the EP explained, “After the pandemic and our two-year break, we really wanted to lighten things up.”) How many such surprise guests can viewers expect across the two episodes? Lear quipped, “About 44!,” while Miller himself narrowed it down to “over a handful.
“We do have surprise guests, and we intentionally want to keep it that, way, to keep it fun and exciting, to make sure people stay tuned for both episodes.” Notably missing from the announcement for this third Live in Front of a Studio Audience special was any casting for Diff’rent Strokes‘ Kimberly, but don’t take that to mean they’re recreating one of the few episodes from which the late Dana Plato’s character was absent or light. Lear concurs, saying “I enjoyed as if I had never spent a day in show business.” But I have to say, Norman and I went to the table read on Wednesday and Thursday, and instinct was spot on.”
Miller admits that “when we were talking about casting Facts of Life the same age as the women who are still with us” - meaning, OG cast members Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon, Mindy Cohn and Kim Fields - “I was a little confused. At the time, I didn’t know: Is he going to want to cast everybody old, or is he just going to have the joke be Kevin? But as we started talking through it, it made sense to be consistent with that conceit of having older people play kids.” “He had mentioned it when we were doing our second special, that the third one has to be Kevin Hart. “It started with Jimmy and his desire to have Kevin Hart play Arnold Jackson, the Gary Coleman role,” Miller, who is Lear’s creative partner, tells TVLine.
The choice to cast adults as kids, while an obvious play for word of mouth/publicity, was met by potential viewers with some confusion and in extreme cases rather righteous indignation, but it was set in motion more than two years ago. Similarly, the live staging of The Facts of Life - which follows teen girls at a prep school - stars Jennifer Aniston ( Friends) as Blair, Kathryn Hahn ( WandaVision) as Jo, Allison Tolman ( Fargo) as Natalie and Gabrielle Union ( L.A.’s Finest) as Tootie, alongside Dowd’s Mrs.
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