“The Facts of Life” star Mindy Cohn said a revival of the hit ABC sitcom was scuttled by a “greedy” co-star who quietly tried to set up her own spin-off instead. Cohn, 58, who played Natalie on the beloved comedy from 1979 to 1988, made a cameo in the popular “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” special in 2021. She said that executive producer Norman Lear , who died last December, told her and her co-stars at the time that he was astounded by the positive response to their appearance on the special and wondered if they would be interested in a reboot in its wake.
The actor and her surviving former castmates (Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields and Nancy McKeon) “had all never really talked about it, but we all started to consider it a little bit,” Cohn said Wednesday on Sirius XM’s “Jeff Lewis Live.” “We got into talks and we hired a writer, and the four of us got together on Zooms — this was during COVID — and we had meetings with Norman about it.” But, without naming names, Cohn said that “drama” ensued and it was “not cute,” cryptically suggesting sabotage by “one of them” behind the scenes.
“One of the girls ...
went behind our backs and tried to make a separate deal for a spinoff just for herself and devastated the rest of us,” she said. “For a 40-year friendship and sisterhood, there was tidal wave of emotion around it,” she said, agreeing with a co-panelist during the Sirius XM interview that the alleged culprit “was a greedy .