by Kim Fields
I was enamored of Julie Piekarski—or Julie Pie as I called her. Like Lisa Whelchel, she was a former Mouseketeer from The All New Mickey Mouse Club, which had been one of my favorite TV shows. Julie took me under her wing. Maybe it was because I was constantly standing under her wing. We were like sisters—one tall and blond, the other short and black.
The same thing happened with Mindy. On our first day on the set, she confided that she did not know what she was doing and hoped she would be funny. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I got your back.” She had mine, too, and we have been that way for each other ever since. After the Diff’rent Strokes episode aired, NBC picked up our “backdoor pilot” as a series. They called it The Facts of Life.
We shot on the MetroMedia lot in Hollywood. Our set was near the soundstages for Good Times, One Day at a Time, Diff’rent Strokes, and The Jeffersons. I saw Janet Jackson in studio school; spied on my first crush, Todd Bridges; and met Roxie Roker’s teenage son, Lenny Kravitz, a gorgeous high school freshman. Over the years I would see him around the studio. Lenny was hot even back then, and I was…well, I was maturing. I sent out the vibe and got nothing back except a smile, a pat on the hand, and reassurance that I was in the friend zone. Ugh, have you no consideration of me outside the friend zone? I thought. None at all?
Mikhail Baryshnikov was another hottie who captured our attention. During our first season, he filmed a TV special on the lot. He rehearsed next door to us, and we would take turns carefully opening the door a crack and sticking in our heads. We would’ve made excellent spies. We watched everything he did. He wore elegant clothes and always had a sweater draped over his shoulders. One day he walked into the bathroom and came out without his sweater. Instantly, Felice ran into the bathroom, fetched his sweater, and returned it to him. We were envious.
“What’d he say?”
“Thank you.”
“But like how?”
“Like Baryshnikov.”
* * *
The Facts of Life debuted at the end of summer 1979. Mrs. Garrett, everyone’s favorite housekeeper, was now the housemother at Eastland School, a private boarding school for girls. The first episode dealt with questions of sexual orientation and identity, and subsequent episodes, like all Norman Lear shows, addressed other issues, from divorce to smoking pot. But ratings were disappointing, and after only four episodes, the show went on a three-month break so the network could rework it.
That spring, Facts returned with nine more episodes, but again the ratings were lackluster. Instead of canceling the show over the summer, which would have been easy, the network went back to the drawing board yet again. We heard they were making “creative changes,” and soon we learned those creative changes meant they were going to get rid of some of the girls.
I assumed that I was going to be among those let go, if not the first to go, because I was the only black girl. They’ve got all these white girls in here, I thought. Of course they’re going to stay. The black people always get cut first. In the years since then, I have often wondered not why I thought that way, but what can I do to make sure my children never think that way. The answer is simple. Make sure there are roles for us. Make sure black kids see people like themselves on every size screen. Back then, it was me and Janet.
Needless to say, I was stunned when my mom told me that the show was getting ready to tape its second season, and I was still on it. I returned to work feeling excited but wary after learning that Julie Piekarski, Julie Anne Haddock, Felice Schachter, and Molly Ringwald had been written out of the show. While they were brought back periodically, it was different and took getting used to. “Where’d everybody go?” Mindy asked.
In addition to whittling down the core group of girls, the producers also created a brand-new character, the streetwise, Bronx-born tomboy Jo Polniaczek. They cast Nancy McKeon in the role. Nancy was a perfect choice to play Jo. She had the look, the brains, and the heart. Nancy had worked in the business since she was two. She had done a ton of commercials, and her brother was on a series. The first time I saw her on the set, I recognized her from an episode of The Love Boat.
Nancy and I became friends right away. We were the only two in studio school. Lisa had taken an equivalency test to get her high school degree and did not have to go anymore, and Mindy continued to attend her private school. As I recall, her parents gave her permission to do the show but basically told producers, “You aren’t going to mess around with her education.”
For me, the big news was that I had grown taller and no longer had to wear roller skates. I had no idea, but parents around the country probably shared my delight. Years later, my Living Single costar Erika Alexander told me that she got in trouble for roller-skating in their house. When her parents asked what gave her the idea that roller-skating inside was okay, she said, “Tootie does it.” Well, starting in season two, Tootie did not have to anymore. I was overjoyed to have my feet back.
Despite the cast changes, Facts retained its gutsy sensibility. The show continued to deal with serious issues, as we did in one of the early episodes that season when Tootie meets an African American boy who accuses her of only hanging out with white kids. I related to some of these story lines, but not all of them. I turned twelve toward the end of that season, and my social awareness, like my world itself, was fairly limited. Here’s your script. Learn your lines. Do well in school. Enjoy your childhood.
My Aunt Pat drove me home, and I had dinner with my mom. I had posters of Todd Bridges and Michael Jackson on my bedroom walls. I watched Wonder Woman. I was not overly protected or sheltered, per se, but I worked and so I had very little awareness of the impact Facts of Life was having on girls across the country or that I was becoming a role model for other little black girls, until about three-quarters of the way through the second season.
Suddenly the fan mail the network delivered to me increased from a few letters to a box to several large bags full. Of course, this reflected the show’s rise in the ratings. Facts climbed from number seventy-four to twenty-nine and was NBC’s highest-rated comedy and the second-most-popular show on their 1980–1981 schedule. The changes the network made to the show had worked. We were a hit, but for whatever reason, I never felt like it. I think the other girls shared my sentiments. We were just there, chugging away.
Outside, beyond the studio gates, we were recognized, which took getting used to. I got scared when Todd Bridges and I were riding in the Watts Christmas Parade as co–grand marshals, and screaming girls tried to pull him out of the car. But I just got screams. “Tootie! Tootie! I love you.” The love was amazing. My mom kept me grounded though. When I first booked The Facts of Life and then at the start of every season, she stood in front of me like a coach at the start of football season and gave me a mini-lecture.
“Baby, you start at one hundred percent,” she said, pointing her right arm straight up to twelve o’clock. “Every day that you are on the set or out in public interacting with people, you can either stay at one hundred percent or you can do or say things that chip away at that number.” She let her arm drop a bit, first to two o’clock and then to four. “It’s all about the way you behave, the way you speak to other people, the way you treat other people. It’s very easy to slip.
“But it’s even easier to stay at one hundred percent. Remember that your entire life. It’s up to you.”
She was right.
4
Growing Up
Wow, look at you.”
That was the greeting I got from everyone when I showed up to start the show’s third season. The same was even more true for others. Lisa was closing in on twenty years old and without makeup and a school uniform, she looked more like the gorgeous young woman she was than a high school student. Mindy and Nancy were no longer kids, and lest anyone wonder the status of cute little Tootie, well, the obvious was tackled in the opening scene of the season premiere when she flashes her braces and declares, “I’m a teenager.”
Though in real life I
was not yet a teenager, I was, like my cast mates, exhibiting the signs of burgeoning young adulthood. At the end of the previous season, my mom had bought me a training bra—bright pink! But there was no training those girls. We were barely back to work on season three when one of the show’s female producers came into the wardrobe room and said they wanted to hide my boobs. The suggestion of “taping me down” came up but was vetoed fairly quickly.
Honestly, I had a harder time with those horrific sweaters and strange gauchos they had me wear to make me look young and perky. I wanted to look cool—and knew I didn’t.
Going through puberty on television was not fun. I handled getting braces no problem. But the emotional swings of changing hormones, getting my period, and looking in the mirror and seeing boobs and curves that were not there the previous week, or the previous day, all the while knowing I had to spend the day in front of a camera took getting used to. Looking back, I can say growing up is a task and I was just starting.
As I emerged from this cocoon of being a little kid, Nancy was still my go-to. We were together in studio school, but she was in high school and already handling womanhood. She was dating and learning how to drive. I sat in the backseat of her car while she went through driver’s education. I called her for advice the day I decided to shave my legs for the first time. My mom and I had moved to a little house in Burbank, and I was in the bathroom, holding a pink razor in one hand and a portable phone in the other. Nancy talked me through both legs.
My costars were a great bunch. There was no fighting, pulling pranks, no egos run amok or sneaking behind the soundstage for a cigarette, and there was a reason for that. The people who were part of our lives during those years, our parents and extended families of grandmas, aunts, and uncles, were all good people who made sure that we developed into good people, too.
Aunt Pat was my guardian on set until I was eighteen. Every year my mother made sure I never allowed anyone to overlook her. “People get caught up in satisfying the star,” she said. “You’ll ask for a piece of gum and they’ll bring you a plate with fourteen different flavors because they have to make you happy. Everyone’s job is tied to the show, and the kid has to be happy. But that production assistant or producer doesn’t think about getting lunch for the person taking care of the kid. They don’t consider that the kid doesn’t drive themselves to the set.”
As my mom talked, she inched closer to me, her voice growing softer, until she was right in my face. “Baby, make sure you never let them overlook Aunt Pat. When people are introduced to you, a lot of times they will only see the famous kid on the TV show. It’s on you to say, ‘This is my Aunt Pat.’”
I understood. When I guested on Diff’rent Strokes, I saw firsthand the show’s star, Gary Coleman, go off on the director and thought, Oh, this is what my mother means when she says how not to act. I heard grownups describe Gary as rude—and worse. Dana Plato, God bless her, one of that show’s other child stars, was difficult in a whole other way. Once she came to work with her hair dyed pink, which caused issues when it could not be washed out. I remember thinking, Honey, you’re on a TV show. What are you doing?
If my mother heard even a hint of attitude in my voice, she put her hand up like a traffic cop and said, “You’re walking around like your behind weighs a ton.” I’m often asked how I stayed sane and grounded growing up a child actor. My answer? My mom. She never stopped being a parent. One time I didn’t clean my room and when she sent me back to clean it, I asked, “Isn’t that why we have a housekeeper?” My mom immediately got Facts of Life executive producer (and parent) Al Burton on the phone and said, “Kim will no longer be part of your TV show because she doesn’t know how to handle it.” He played along and I fell in line.
Luckily, I was a good kid: even-tempered, obedient, respectful, and happy. In fact, in the episode that season where Mrs. Garrett tells Tootie she cannot go to Jermaine Jackson’s concert after he personally invited her, I had to be coached on how to talk back and lose my temper. My mom actually helped me with that script. Today, that seems funny and obviously ironic: going to your mom to learn how to be impertinent. I always went to Mom for coaching on more demanding material like working on the TV movie Children of Divorce as an alcoholic gymnast. She worked with me until she sensed I was at the right place and then said, “Okay, you got it?”
That was our groove. She never wanted me to be one of those cute, precocious child stars who smiled and said lines that were beyond their years in that annoying, unkind way. She took her craft seriously and wanted me to embrace it in the same way. I tried—and I tried—and hoped to be at her level one day.
* * *
I was nearly thirteen when my mom let me know there was going to be a major change in our lives. “We’re going to have a baby,” she said as her boyfriend, John, stood with his arm around her, both of them watching my reaction. I screamed with excitement and hugged them as hard as I could. I had been an only child for my entire life and was thrilled at the prospect of being someone’s big sister.
She worked throughout her pregnancy and looked to be all belly—the same, my Aunt Pat said, as when she carried me. On the night she went into labor, we were watching a Lakers basketball game on TV. “Is it time?” John and I kept asking; after several hours, my mom finally said, “It’s time!” I remember a discussion on whether to put plastic garbage bags in the front seat of John’s car in case Mom’s water broke; it didn’t. I went to work the next morning and was between scenes when Aunt Pat said it was time to go to the hospital.
At the Tarzana Medical Center, I pitched a hot-as-fish-grease fit when the nurse said I was too young to be in the delivery room. “Why does John get to be in there with all the doctors and nurses and not me?” I said. “I’m the sister!” But all was forgotten later that afternoon, March 1, 1982, with the arrival of a beautiful baby girl named Alexis. I was immediately ushered in to meet my sister, whose perfect face and tiny little hands and feet inspired me to gush, “She’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Two months later, I officially became a teenager. For my thirteenth birthday, my mother surprised me with a talent show–themed celebration. Mindy Cohen did stand-up comedy, and Michael Damien, the new heartthrob on The Young and the Restless, got down on one knee and sang a romantic ballad directly to me. Then, during the instrumental break, he took my hand, pulled me close, and slow danced me around the room. You could have bought me for a penny and asked for change.
The party ended when One Day at a Time actor Glenn Scarpelli, one of my dear friends, did a riotously funny striptease down to his boxers to Olivia Newton-John’s hit “Physical.” My favorite gift? An alarm clock from my friend and crush, Todd Bridges. He was a cool, laid-back guy, without an ounce of jerk in him, and my idea of wow, he’s perfect. We had known each other for years. We posed together for the cover of Right On! magazine. For my twelfth birthday, he gave me a Rick James album, and a year later, when I unwrapped his gift and found an alarm clock and saw it was already wound, I thought, Oh God, he loves me!
Like Lenny, Todd flung me into the dreaded and disappointing friend zone. At work, my older costars were dating and trading stories about boys, causing me to literally ache for someone special to notice me in the same way. Love was in the air that summer when we spent three weeks in Paris, shooting a Facts of Life TV movie. I remember Lisa coming back from a walk through the Tuileries and telling a reporter that she wished her boyfriend were there to share it all with her. Me, I had my Walkman with me, and Rick Springfield in my ears, and a question in my head: When would I have that special boy in my life?
It happened later that fall. His name was Harold “P” Pruitt, and he was my first real but very innocent boyfriend. I met him through my mom’s repertory company. A proponent of giving back, she always looked for empty theaters in the community or a rec center where she could hold classes and put up a show. “P” was a kid in one of her classes. Malcolm-Jamal Warner was also in this repertory company. I wouldn�
��t know until decades later that at that time, Malcolm had a crush on me.
P and I went to the movies. He was my first kiss, my first let’s-take-a-walk-and-hold-hands, and the first boy I needed to call at night to tell him what had happened in my day. Starting the fourth season, The Facts of Life moved to the Universal Studios lot, where I was given my own dressing room trailer, which I decorated with posters of Todd Bridges and Michael Jackson, and several times P visited me on the set. During breaks, we strolled around the studio lot, holding hands as we peeked inside the storied soundstages.
Ah, yes, that first boyfriend, those first kisses—like a smile that lasted all day. It was fun.
* * *
Not so fun for the Facts of Life cast was being a target of parodies and cheap humor. We did not appreciate Mad magazine’s satire, “The Yaks of Life.” The six-page spread, in the December 1982 issue of the humor magazine, seemed mean, though not nearly as mean as comedian Joan Rivers when she mocked us as “the Fats of Life.” Given that she was raising her own teenage daughter, Joan should have known better than to make fun of young, developing women that way.
I was dealing with sensitive weight and body issues, and putting it out there as she did was unnecessary and hurtful on many levels. Apparently somebody with influence heard the comedian and decided she had a point. One day we returned from a break and found the chips and cookies and yummy snack food at the craft services table had been replaced with celery, carrots, jicama, and other vegetables. They brought in a scale and made us all weigh in each week. Lisa was also sent to several so-called fat camps and someone from the network suggested I see a therapist. When I asked why, I was told, “Because of your eating.”