Lisa Whelchel on 'Facts of Life' ending 35 years ago — and what it was like going 'through puberty in front of millions of people'

If you were an '80s kid, The Facts of Life — about those core four Eastland girls and their housemother — was probably a staple on your rabbit-eared TV set. And maybe, just maybe, you can still sing all the words of the earworm theme song. (Go ahead, we'll wait.) Well, it's officially 35 years since the NBC sitcom ended in a two-part finale on April 30 and May 7, 1988. Or, in the words of Lisa Whelchel, who talks Yahoo Entertainment through those final episodes, "a lifetime ago."

The show, which debuted in 1979 as a Diff'rent Strokes spin-off and was produced by Norman Lear's company, centered around boarding school girls turned grownup roommates Blair, Jo Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon), Tootie Ramsey (Kim Fields) and Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), who learned life lessons — about drinking, drugs, sex, disabilities, suicide, eating disorders and relationships — under the guidance of Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae) and later her sister Beverly Ann (Cloris Leachman). The show's send-off, after nine seasons, centered around heiress Blair using her trust fund to buy Eastland and becoming headmaster to a new crop of kids. The finale was to launch a spin-off with Whelchel starring alongside young stars including Mayim Bialik and Juliette Lewis, but didn't end up being greenlit. 

"It's hard to believe it's been 35 years since it ended," says Whelchel, who's currently host of MeTV's Collector's Call. "That also means it's 44 years since it started. Both of those numbers feel just — they're more than a lifetime ago."

"The Beginning of the Beginning" was really the end

Surprisingly, "The Beginning of the End" and "The Beginning of the Beginning," the titles of the finale episodes, had little of the core group as it instead teed up Whelchel's spin-off. So it wasn't all blubbering and tears as the the longest running sitcom at that time ended. At that point, Natalie had already moved from Peekskill, N.Y. to NYC with her only scenes taking place via phone. Jo was a newlywed and moving on. In the final show, Tootie learned she had been accepted to acting school in London. Their store, Over Our Heads, had already been shuttered to make bedrooms for Beverly Ann's adopted son Andy (Mackenzie Astin) and exchange student Pippa (Sherrié Austin).

"What I remember most about the finale was really just the sadness that it didn't get picked up, because the kids that they hired were phenomenal" says Whelchel, who turns 60 this month. "It would have been an amazing show because the the next generation of kids — Mayim Bialik, Juliette Lewis and Seth Green. The talent was astounding." 

She felt there was a bottomless well of stories to tell about "puberty and going through those adolescent years. And they were going to add the boy dynamic," making the Eastland coed. "It was really a timeless formula." Plus, Blair had taken on a Mrs. Garrett-like role, nurturing trouble-making students as she and the girls had once been. She also had a new love interest, a teacher, played by Sam Behrens.

The spin-off didn't work out, but Whelchel feels everything happened for a reason.

"I would have really enjoyed it," she says. "But it turned out it wasn't as painful for it not to be picked up as it could be typically because we filmed that pilot in March," it aired in April-May, "and I got married in July," with McKeon, Fields, Cohn and Geri Jewell, who played Cousin Geri (also, notably, the first person with a disability to be cast in a prime time series) as bridesmaids. "I got pregnant 10 months later and had three kids, three years in a row. So I really was going from nine years of an incredible show to a whole other wonderful adventure."

The show had attempted five previous spin-offs, none of which took off, so Whelchel wasn't in bad company. And she had a backpack of great memories from her years on the show, which evolved from the early boarding school setting to the girls attending college while living together and working at Mrs. Garrett's store, Edna's Edibles, and later Over Our Heads. There was a young George Clooney (for 17 of the show's 201 episodes) as well as baby-faced Molly Ringwald, Pamela Adlon, Helen Hunt and David Spade. And many TV movies, including The Facts of Life Down Under.

"I was a teenager when I started the show — I was 16," says Whelchel, noting how it was hard to fully appreciate the opportunity when she was "young and dumb [and thought I knew] better than everybody. But it's really as I've gotten older — and especially in the last year with the celebration around Norman Lear turning 100 — that I've come to appreciate the privilege of being on a Norman Lear show. Because he really did create shows with a purpose," helming many of the era's hits, including politically charged shows including All in the Family,The Jeffersons and Maude. "I didn't even learn until this year that he created Facts of Life because there was nothing on TV for his own daughters to watch and learn from. So I really do tend to appreciate the opportunity to be on The Facts of Life more with every aging year."

"I didn't live the Hollywood life"

That doesn't mean it was all roses as an '80s TV icon. The Texas native's character was seen as the stereotypical "beautiful" one of the girls — perfectly coiffed blond locks and vanity to spare — and that was a lot to live up to at times. There was a scale on the set to weigh the actresses, and a young Whelchel was sent to a so-called "fat farm" during show hiatuses — three times.

When we say that must have been emotionally challenging to overcome, she says, "Yeah, it was. Obviously we're in a different time. We've learned a lot. We're a lot more body positive right now, which I'm grateful for. I mean it's still an issue.

"But certainly as a teenager [that] was a lot," she continues. "Though even back then I understood it's a business. They hired me to play a certain character that looked a certain way. And it was also really, really hard because I was going through puberty and my parents were going through a divorce and I was living in California and they were in Texas, so there was emotional eating involved. All the things that are not atypical of teenage girls. But I think everybody was doing the best they could back then. And as Maya Angelou said: 'When you know better, you do better.'" (The late Carrie Fisher also talked about being sent to a similar facility before filming Star Wars in the late 1970s.)

She remains thankful there was no social media that time. 

"I'm really grateful for that because it was difficult enough to go through puberty in front of millions of people," who were judgmental at times," she says. "There was some difficult press that I had to navigate. But at least it wasn't on the same level as social media!"

Being a young TV star in the '80s meant fame like appearing on Battle of the Network Stars and making a "One to Grow On" PSA — but she wasn't on the party scene. Whelchel was religious, earning a Grammy nomination for a Christian album she released in the mid-'80s, and felt her faith kept her grounded as an adolescent living away from her family. 

Also, "I was also very shy. My mom put me into an acting class when I was 8 to see if it helped me overcome my shyness — and that really never went away," says Whelchel, whose career was launched after a role on The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1977. "So I didn't live the Hollywood life. That wasn't something that was attractive to me. It was actually quite anxiety-producing. So being a big star in the '80s, I kept to myself quite a bit."

And while she kept to herself, her deep bond with co-stars McKeon, Fields and Cohn was the real deal. 

"It was genuine," she says. "We really did have a good time, and we were like sisters. And we continue to be close. We were and still are good friends." (Elder stateswoman Rae and Leachman died in 2018 and 2021, respectively.)

The Facts of Life ... reimagined?

The co-stars have had many partial and full public reunions through the years — stand-alone specials, on panels at events and in the 2019 Lifetime movie You Light Up My Christmas. Most recently, Whelchel slipped back into her Eastland uniform, joining Cohn and Fields for Live in Front of a Studio Audience's re-creation of the Facts of Life in 2021. While Jennifer Aniston tackled the role of Blair — alongside a star-studded cast — she sang the theme song.

"I was geeking out," she says. "I was just in awe trying to act natural around Jennifer Aniston, Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Jon Stewart and all these incredible actors that I look up to," also including Gabrielle Union as Tootie, Allison Tolman and Natalie and Kathryn Hahn as Jo. "What I wasn't expecting was —because they were children when Facts of Life was on — was that they looked up to me from their childhood. That was something I wasn't prepared to experience. It was a surreal experience for sure."

As for whether she wore her original show wardrobe for the event, which was speculated about on social media when it aired, she says, "I don't think so. I mean — it was at the studio, so who knows? I don't think so, but it sure did look like it!"

Whelchel says talk persists to this day of a real reboot or reimagining of the classic show. 

"Well, it really doesn't matter what it looks like in my mind," she says. "I'm not a showrunner or producer. It really has more to do with Norman Lear owns the rights and Sony owns the rights to Norman Lear's catalog. It has more to do with what they feel would be a good reimagining. There's been lots of conversations about that — and all of them are very exciting. But you have to hold all of them loosely because in this business something can be a wonderful idea and still not get made."

It doesn't mean she's not hopeful.

"I have to say that fans really seem to not give up wanting there to be some kind of reimagining," she says. "The women that watched it — well, the men too, the boys too — we're all at this age now where we really do want to remember those simpler times and friendships we had. There's nothing like going back and seeing friends that you made in high school and college. And I think that is very similar to the generations that that grew up on The Facts of Life. They want to see what their old friends are doing."

Collector's Call

While that's all just talk for now, Whelchel has been hosting Collector's Call on MeTV since 2019. It's the memorable entertainment network's first original series and the actress travels around the country to spotlight some of the biggest collectors of pop culture memorabilia. Think: Elaborate — and valuable — Elvis Presley, James Bond, Barbie and LEGO collections.

In one memorable episode, Whelchel's visited with the late Charlotte Rae's son Larry who shared his collection chronicling the Emmy winner's TV career.

"It was especially meaningful to me because I'd known Charlotte since I was a little girl and we stayed friends through throughout her life," she says. "Yet, I learned so much more about her seeing the things that she had collected. She had this huge, huge career before The Facts of Life, so seeing her collectables really helped me get to know her even better after she passed."

The collection included a letter Leachman, who succeeded Rae on the Facts of Life, wrote to "Char." The women were friends with in college at Northwestern University before they became TV stars. An added bonus was Jewell also appearing in the episode.

"What makes all the collections so compelling is they're tied to the collector's childhood," she says. "They start collecting something that keeps their childhood feelings alive." 

And, as host, Whelchel feels like she gets to revisit her own childhood. For instance, meeting a collector of vintage pinball machines took her back to her days as a girl in Texas. "My great aunt owned a bar and would pull up a stool to a pinball machine and I'd stand on it and play," she says. In her high school years, "there was an actors strike," in 1980. "I really hadn't gone to [traditional] high school, but during the strike, I went back to Texas and attended high school there, and there was a deli next door where I played a lot of pinball." The episode "brought back feelings of what a more normal teenage life would feel like." 

Collector's Call "brings us back to sweeter times," she says. "It's definitely a fun job — and not lost on me that I get to make a living doing interesting things."

Collector's Call airs Sundays at 6:30 p.m. on MeTV.