Writing The Facts of Life and A Different World | Margie Peters -- Part 2

Weirdy Weird. Eightiesley Han Sol Pretty Eighties, Into the City und the Man World. Welcome to eighties TV Ladies, where we look back in order to. Leap forward, and where we are currently enjoying a dive into the facts of life. You're your hosts, Susan Lambert HadAM and Sharon Johnson.

I'm Sharon Johnson and I'm Susan. Welcome to part two of our amazing conversation with Margie Peters about her time writing and producing eighties television. Let's go and So a bunch of us went to the Red Treatment Center's annual event. Planned Parenthood gave us the image jeweled and I get to keep that one. Okay, it is next to my television in the living room.

Did I go get it? Yes? This is the Maggie Award and it says Planned Parenthood, Federation of America, NBCTV, A Different World. No means no nineteen eighty nine. What did that mean to you?

Everything? Everything? Yeah, there are so many things about this episode that are so wonderful, not just you know, the friendship between Freddie and Dwayne, but the fact that Freddie before Duane gets there, is already basically saying stop, No, we're not doing this. She's taking taking try to take action. But also that conversation between Dwayne and Walter, I don't know that I've ever seen that before.

Since her two men are sitting there talking about and Walter unequivocally is saying no means no, you stop. You don't do anything she doesn't want to do. There is no. Coercion, is no getting her over. Yes, blew me away, Absolutely blew me away all these years later.

It's one of those things that was divinely inspired. I have to tell you and the writing staff that week was spectacular because when we needed a little joke or something, whether it was Sheryl Guard or Yvet Denis Lee or Susan Failes or Jeff Duteel or Thad or me, somebody came up with something that made the next moment work. Dan Mumperd was a huge baseball fan, and that's why we made him be the ball star. Kadema and his hero are playing like basketball together. That's one of my favorite scenes too in that script is toxic masculinity.

You can see toxic masculinity coming up against tonic masculinity, like, well, but is that how you should do, but he doesn't have it, he doesn't have the words, he doesn't he doesn't feel like he knows enough. And then he goes to this and that's characters. That's that really is. It's it's it's one of the best it is. It's it's men talking about rape.

Yes, because that was the whole point, is that if there's going to be a change, it has to be with men, okay, and so you know, yeah, and it. Shows how that that that attitude can be passed from generation to generation. As Garth is talking about, well, this is what my father said, which is probably what his father heard from his father and so on. I mean, you have to break it, right, you have to break the pattern exactly. You have how many brilliant things about it.

So thank you. I am so proud of that. I have to tell you, I am so very very very very proud of that. And I am very very proud of my time on a Different World because it really brought together who I was going to be next. After a Different World, I did a sabbatical and then I did a year and a half of development at Castle Rock.

And while I helped other people's scripts, nothing that I wrote when to production, and so they said, okay, we need that office. Now you can leave a month early. Go go, go. And I said to my husband that's it. I'm done.

We're moving back to Massachusetts. And what made you decide that? Was it? Just you were done? It was my home.

I needed to go home. We had bought a beach house, not on the beach, but like the third house in from the beach, and we used it as rental property. And what I said to Gil, that's my husband's name. I said to him, Gil, I want to buy this house, which was like about a fifth of what a house in LA would cost at the beach, maybe a seventh of whatever. I said, I want to buy this house.

I want to rent it out while we're in Mala. And when we had to hit the mattresses because I can't get hired because I'm too old, because I was watching that happen seriously. Then we will have that house that we can move into and sell the house in California and retire. And that's what I thought that I was going to do, is I was going to retire. I consulted long distance.

I even went out to La back and forth for another season on another show that didn't really anyway. I was bored. It doesn't sound like you. I was very bored, and I didn't know what to do. And I saw an and the newspaper for communications teacher at the local high school in our town, and it said, must be Massachusetts certified.

And do you know girls that when I graduated from college, I renewed my Massachusetts teacher certification every time it came up, just in case, just in. Case, you're on several hit shows, but you renewed your Massachusetts certification. And I became a seventh and eighth grade communications teacher at the local middle school. And I did that for two years, and then my mom got sick and I had to stop doing that. But I ended up teaching film history of American film and creative writing at Junior College for a couple of years, and then I got into community activism.

Did your students know that you had written for television? I did not tell them, but word got out because they would have been primed. You know, the thing is that when they hired me to do this, one of the principles was like, but she hasn't been in a classroom since nineteen seventy and it's like, no, she's been in a classroom for the past fifteen years to America. Okay. And they had this thing called remedial reading, and kids who didn't test at a certain level how to take remedial reading while their classmates who tested above that level took foreign language.

You want to talk about setting people up to fail? Okay, Well, remedial reading was not increasing their reading scores. Okay, it just wasn't working. So they decided to make this position communications. And I said, so, what would you like me to teach them?

And you said, well, that's really up to you. You're a creative person. And I said, well, uh huh. And they said, look, we'll give you for X amount of weeks, you can have this other teacher from another school guide you, because she's teaching communications in the Boston School. And so she got me the textbook and I showed her my lesson plans and she said, ooh, I'm going to take that lesson plan.

And I said, ooh, I'm taking your lesson plan. And so we worked together and I taught the kids, you know, team building, how to work as a team. When I would say to them, how are you today, I said okay, so how are you today? I'm fine, and I'm saying no, your body pasture, your facial expression and tone of voice by telling me you're not so fine, So what's going on? You know?

That kind of a thing. And I had a friend who had a board game company, and he gave me all the pieces of his games that were seconds and I had them work as a team to create board games. And then the kids, these are the kids that were supposed to be in remedial reading, by the way, Okay, the kids who were taking French were like, why can't we do things like that? So the next year everybody had half a year foreign language and everybody had Happy Year Communications. So, you know, agent of changed a little bit, you know.

And then my mom got six so that ended that. But I got involved with my communities No Place for Hate Committy. It was sponsored by the ADL, the Anti Defamation League, and it was to basically, you know, celebrate difference, but also educate about different cultures and you know why certain people are the way they are because it's cultural, you know, kind of a thing and respect and dignity. I got involved with that, and then I got my master's degree in multicultural education. And the rest is retirement.

Busy, busy retirement. You retire like my aunt retired. What if anything did you miss about Hollywood and the television business? And I missed having that creative teamwork of sitting around a table, I mean sitting at a table with bad Mumford and Susan Fails and ivette Denise Lee who you know she did? Oh was she the one that did living single?

Living single? Thank you? Yes? Yes, yes, yes, yes yes. And she was our term right on a different world the first year that I was there, and she absolutely rose.

I mean, she's very talent, very very very talented. What's a term writer? A term writter is the lowest, the lowest staff member on the writing staff of the sitcom at the time, and they got paid weeks salary and they did not get paid for the scripts they wrote unless they had earned their Yeah, I can't explain it exactly. It was sort of like intern but bigger than that, Like I mean staff writer, but when you were the lowest staff writer, yeah, lowest staff writer, and you had to make your bones and she did, you know, And working with Susan Fails was just a spectacular life experience. I just adore her.

I always will now. She said that Whitley was sort of modeled after her. They said that, well, I think that you know, Whitley came from Well, Susan came from Well. I would like to think that Susan wasn't quite as clueless, but maybe she was. I don't know.

I met her the second and thirty year of a Different World, so maybe the first year she was that clueless. I don't know. I think she's too smart to be that clueless. Quite frankly, she's one of the smartest young women I had ever met. I want to ask a little bit more about the show.

You don't want to talk about Karen's song because you also had a Coltta directed, but so did Bonnie Franklin. Yes, I'm curious about working with Bonnie Franklin, both on one day at a time, and then clearly. Bonnie Franklin was awesome too. Okay, Bonnie Franklin was just fine. But I have nothing bad to say about Bonnie Franklin ever.

Ever, she was terrific. Okay, I have left out the names of the people that I don't want to say good things about. Bonnie Franklin. Bonnie Franklin was was was just terrific. Well, One Day at a Time was one of my favorite shows back in the day.

So I'm I'm very always happy to hear that about performers and others that I that I admire, So that's great to hear. She was really, really, really good. And my mom was My mom was a single parent of two daughters. And for a while she looked a little bit like Bonnie Franklin, like she had the short kind of blonde red hair and well, you. Know, I'm not I'm not the end all and deal and you're the historians and all.

But aside from Julia, which was Diane Carroll who played with his mother. Yes, she did, and she was Susan Bale's auntie Diane. Right, were there any single mother Alice? Alice yes, from the movie. And Linda Lavin just died last week, very sad, but did you see she was in No Good Deed.

Linda Lavin was the nosy neighbor that's on my to do list. Oh, it's really fun. She also had a small part in the Ted Danson show that was just on man of Yes, o man on the inside and on the inside. Yes, that was so charming, wasn't But you know else was in it. Sally Struthers, yes, yes, oh and Susan Rutam Yes, who was Arnie's secretary on.

L A Law Right, she's the one that was that stole was stealing all the stuff. Okay, don't tell me more. I haven't watched it all right. But it was nice to say women of a certain age working again. Okay, yes, yes, women that we haven't really seen that.

We're back, I know, well, yes, and you know the eighties ladies is getting kind of, you know, very very excited for that, Like the Palm Royal is bringing back some. Of those ladies. You know, Carol Burnette out there god working it. Say something else. Linda Lavender was working on a in the middle of working on another show that she still had a few more episodes to go unfortunately before before they finished.

So well, so we'll have one more chance, it looks like to see her after that, after. Her all that's good. Well, that is true. So we haven't talked about Valerie, which you worked on. We haven't talked about Valerie.

Valerie Harper was one of my idols. Okay. If I couldn't ripe for Mary Tyler Moore to write for Valerie Harper was wonderful. Jason Bateman played her oldest son, and I adore Jason Bateman. I will watch that young man because he's still young to me.

Read the phone Book. Okay. I watched Ozar religiously because he was in it. I just watched that movie about the guy carry on, carry on. Oh my god.

He was terrible, yes, wonderful, hard, but he still had that you know, Yes, he's got some much charm. He's got a lot of charm. He wasn't a straightforward villain. That was a villain with a smile. The other thing we haven't really talked about is Facts of Life goes to Paris.

Your involvement in the movie, which came at the end of season three. Yeah, maybe, yes, four and yes, Stuart Wolperton did your face dayed. Back in the US and manned the fort that was there? What is it there there? That was Their instructions were to hold the fort while we uh, Linda and i Aasade who directed it.

Of course, Jerry Mayer and Jack Ellenson went to France. Can you imagine working in Paris for three weeks only? Crap it was heaven honor and again a learning curve because we're all all done three camera or four camera live and this was filming single camera filming. And it was written by Wolperton, fay Ellenson and Mayer and marsh and Peters, and each of us had a chunk that we wrote. And I don't remember exactly whether it was like we did the Natalie Tudey thing and someone else did the Blair thing and someone did the joke.

I don't remember how we broke it up. But not only did we go to Paris, we flew first class to Paris because the writer's guilt said you can have the fly first class. So thank you writers guilt. And what was the story behind doing the movie though. The story behind doing the movie was that NBC said they wanted to do the MOVIEBC NBC said, we want the facts of life to go to Paris.

Oh, I have the best facts of life in Paris stories to tell you. Oh God, okay. So we got to just live in Paris. So that was great. But none of the girls have really traveled outside the United States.

And there they were, they were going to work and then what were they doing at night? So Margie said, I will take the girls on the Bato Mouche, which is the dinner boat that goes up and down the Sene River. Okay, and we'll go and I'll give them a night in Paris where they can see the part of Paris that were not filming on you know what I mean. And I'll just go out to dinner with the girls because Charlotte was there with her two sisters, I believe, so they were self contained and Jack Ellenson and Jerry Mayer took care of them. Okay, they took them out to dinner and stuff like that.

Okay, So I took the girls, not with Linda, not with a sade, just me. Oh, we go to the Batteau motion. People are recognizing them, but they're keeping a distance, and you know I was there. Thank excuse me, we're having dinner. Thank you.

We appreciate you. Keep watching the show. Thank you so much. And Lisa had lost a lot of weight before the from our hiatus of the filming of the series. Still we were going to Paris, and so she was like, I'm ordering fish.

I don't think Lisa will mind me telling the story because Lush and I have talked over the years and she knows how I feel about her. I am just one of her biggest bands. I've heard is a human being and for comedic timing. Okay, So We're on the boat and Lisa says, I'm going to have the fish please. Well, it turns out that fish were little sardines and they all were like deep fried and they curled on the plate and she did not know what to make of them because they had heads and tins and tails on them, and she just kept moving it around in her plate.

It were. It was hysterical. So so where we get off the boat and we're walking back to our hotel and two school buses pull up and park on the street where we're walking along the Seine, and it's two bus loads of high school girls and there's the facts of life girls hors like, forget the Eiffel, forget soccer cour Okay, Mack's alive over here. And they're screening out the window of the bus and I'm saying, girls, just keep walking, just keep walking, and they jump off the bus and start running at us, and they're picking up their pace and they're picking up their pace and I said, you go ahead. I stop the other girls and I said, I'm sorry, but you can't chase them.

Okay, they're not going to stop and do autographs. They appreciate so much that you love their work. But they have to go back to their hotel now because they're shooting. If you go tomorrow, Chanseley say, you might see them walking down. I don't know what I said.

I don't know what kind of I projected, but they backed off. You saved the girl. I saved them. You save them. I just thought I was taking them on a boat ride, you know.

And we'd talk and we'd laugh. And I believe when I get a chance to go through my picture albums, I might have a picture of me and them on the batone Moche. So who do you stay in touch with? Asad and Linda and I talked two or three times a year, and is she still writing? No, she's retired.

Lisa and I communicate because she was in Texas and my sister's in Austin, and she and I communicated a couple of times and she said, if you come to Austin, I will come and I will see you. And the time I was going, she was in La Ever that purpose was but and I think Nancy has a place in near Wimberley and which is outside of Austin as well. And I when my sister and I went to Wimberley for a weekend, I kept looking around to see if I could see Nance. I could not find her. I could not see her.

She's pretty much, you know withdrawn from the Spotlight. Minty still does a lot of voice over work. M hm. And she's in the Palm Royale. Oh that's I mean they are picking up everybody.

They have a lot of eighties ladies. We're trying to get him. Oh that's right. Well, can I tell you something else? I wanted to just say, I have such affection for those young ladies.

I have because they not only had to be working women, women carrying one fourth or one fifth of a television show every week, that they had to have breakups and acne and wait issues. You know, there was a time where people were calling them the facts of life because the girls were you know, we're gaining weight, okay, because they were under and puberty and all of that. It was so cruel. It was so cruel, and they asked they the powers that the asked Linda and me to talk to the girls about it, and I said, We're not going to be able to talk to them about it. It is a fact.

Now, this is this some way that the company can help. And what the powers that be came up with, and that was above our level, it was at the corporate level, was that they had a dietitian come in and have better food around and stuff like that. But when Lisa Welcha lost her weight, it was all Lisa Welthough. Okay, you know, I mean the powers that be would say things to us like, you can't have a fat Blair. You know, it's okay if Natalie's heavy, you know, jeez.

I mean it doesn't surprise me. Yeah, well hey, yeah, yeah, Well I mean how many shows had all female cast talking about friendship? You know. We looked at designing women as well. Yeah, and talked to Linda Blood with Thomason and talked about the fat shaming that went on for.

Yeah, Delta Birke, the poor woman. Yeah, and You're like, I remember that. I remember that being the People magazine and all that stuff and being the biggest, most horrible thing a woman could do. Yeah, And then I'm watching these episodes and I'm like, she's She's not she's. A Kirby woman.

Yeah, and there it's I don't share about. Yeah, it was. But when she started out her career she was slender, yes, okay, And I think the pressures of her work, you know, there's a lot of pressure. Yeah, there is a lot of pressure. I wish, I wish actors.

Maybe it's more about that now that's happening, you know, there's more acceptance. First of all, of course it helps if you're heavy. They also be very funny. And then there are people that are into body positivity, and then there are people saying, yah, that's just an excuse for being that. You know, It's just it's still out there.

It is still, Yes, it is. It's not out there, it's here. It's heah, you know. So. But I have to tell you that the fifteen years that I worked in Hollywood were among the most stressful of my life, Okay, because you realize that you're responsible for three quarters of a million to a million record dollars worth of money that week, Like, is the show going to be worth airing?

Okay? In a different world that would call me eleven o'clock Peters because we'd go to the stage and I have to tell you, Debbie Allen has amazing instincts learned. I learned a lot from her, and I want to tell you about that in a minute. But we'd go to the stage and we would see what wasn't working, and then would go back and Debbie would come in the room with us and we would talk about how to fix it, and then we would stay up all night rewriting, and oftentimes I would just sit there and listen, and I would listen to what was going on in the room and what people were saying and how to fix it. And you know, when you're doing dialogue one if you takes one character and the other one, if you takes the other character, and you you know, you spar and see what comes out, okay.

And I would sit there and I would listen, and I would say, can we stop for a minute. I don't think we're on the right path here. And I'd say, but Jeff said this other thing a little while ago, and I think that we could build on that. And then the stuff that you guys are doing here that's making me laugh while I'm sitting in the room, I think that we can build it into it. And I remember once we had Gladys Night.

We had Gladys Night on the show. Yes, I remember that episode. I love that episode, okay, And it was like, who's going to be one of Gladys's backup singers? Okay, so that he could be true to the show, to the characters in the show and still have Gladys Knight be on your show. Right, script stocked?

It just go up, I mean, Bud. And so we're sitting there, it's eleven o'clock at night, and that mumfret is just gone on and on and he's saying the funniest stuff, and then Denise Leeth starts sparring with him, and then Susan Fales jumps in and I said, stop, that's what the character should be doing. That is exactly what you guys are saying and how you're ragging on each other. That's what our characters have to be doing. And do you know, within an hour we had fixed the script and it was one of the best shows that we ever did.

And we listened to each other, you know, and I listened to the back and forth that was going on in the room. And that was one of my skills, Okay, one of my skills was wait a minute. What you just said is a good jumping off thing. Can we put that in a scriptancy where that will take us? And that was one of my you know, skills, was to say, you know, that's not working.

This is funny, but it's not really gonna be funny, and we're better than that. So let's let's just do better, you know, let's just do better. Okay, we'll continue, but first we have to take a break. I'm just so curious about the young you watching TV and coming up with scenarios and then later being in the middle of it all. Did you ever have a.

Moment where you were like, I'm here doing this, yeah, living the dream. Yeah? Well, I sent you the picture of me and my cowgirl up oh yanks. Okay. Our son and daughter in law gave us this thing called story War, and they gave us prompts every every week and I'd have to write.

Okay, so per year I wrote every week. I was writing again, and and I wrote an essay about what did you want to be when you grow up? I wanted to be a cowgirl, you know. I wanted to be Dale Evans, I wanted to be Annie Oakley and uh behnko and yeah, my mother actually listened to me and bought me that outfit, and boy, I was the happiest girl in the world. So that's what I mean when I say I was a television baby.

Is you know, I didn't know how. I didn't know the girls couldn't even do that. I did not even know as a young person that girls could even do that. And what brought it to my attention absolutely was the Mary Tyler MooShell that girls could star, that girls could do this. And so yeah, I you know, I don't know where I got the huts, but I think I could actually do this.

But I was really lucky. I had Bernie Ornstein and then I had Linda marsh and it was alchemy. I you know, her talents and my talent they were different. But and are I was like the earthy one and she was the esoteric one. Except I got to know her better and saw that she was kind of earthy herself, you know, but you know she was more sophist sticated, you know.

I remember we once went to a one day at a time Christmas party or end of season party or whatever, and I said to Linda, I mean, there's gonna be all these actors there and all these writers and producers and writt just newes on the block. I said, I don't know what to converse with them about. I can't talk about recipes. I can't talk about my kid. I can't you know what out my garden, my vegetable garden.

What do I talk to them about? He said, Margie, ask them about themselves, work, click at charm every time Hollywood, come on, what are you up to? Is exactly right? That's exactly right. Ye.

So I want to talk about your husband for a minute, because he support He also supported this dream and okay, the family joke was this, he would say, because he was working as the UPI sports editor for New England. Okay, and that would mean and that would mean that on a Sunday he would go to the Celtics game, the basketball game at Boston Garden in the afternoon and then go write his story and send it out to all the New England subscribers, okay, and get back in time that they would take up the parquet floor from the basketball game, and the ice was underneath it because the Bruins were playing that night. So I would not see him on a Sunday, Okay, because he would be at the garden for the whole day and night, all right, and he was working sixty hours a week.

And the joke was, if Margie could ever earn as much as I'm I earn, I'll stay home and she didn't go to work, How was I going to earn two hundred and fifty dollars a week? How in the on God's Greener? And then I wrote that thing and Bernie called and when he flew me out to La he told me that I was going to get five in addition to my playing fair and staying with him and Barbara okay, that I was going to get five hundred dollars. And then the Writer's Guild got involved because while Ria Cohan, who was the wife of Buzzy Cohen who does a lot of the awards shows or did back in the day, she was a friend of the Turtle Toobs, so she was a writer, Linda Marsh was brought in because she was a friend of Barbara Rhodes Orenstein, and I was brought in because of my connection to Bernie that way, and we created this These Women first show that they were calling the Five Women Okay, and it was eventually called oh, thirteen Queens Boulevard.

Okay, Oh, I Tham Brennan was one of the stars. Helen Page Camp. Oh were they journalists? What were they were? All on Queen's Helen.

Helen was a widow and had a daughter named Jill, a younger daughter, so that was like the twenty and below young woman. And then Aileen Brennan was the quintessential like Martha's uity type before Martha Steward. Yeah, can I can make can you you want to meet Gil? Yes? Please?

The King scooch down, vibe spooch down so they can see this skill. The same he can't hear us, but we're saying hello, the same Hello, but you can't hear Themerry van Dyke okay, Yeah, So Jerry van Dyke was brought in to play Eileen Brennan's husband because the producers were really worried about their only being women on the show. Oh, John for pitch, how to bring Jerry Van Dyke kidky. Because postosterone, and so we did. I think they shot five episodes and they were put on it ten thirty at night.

The Ropers were on from ten about from ten to ten thirty, and then we were on from ten thirty to eleven. Okay, So that did not happen, all right, it did. It did not happen. But the thing was is that if you're writing a show about women, you damn well better have some women on the staff. So and Linda wrote a script on her own that they actually ended up using.

And I said, oh, she's talented, and I think she said, oh, she's got hut spat. Okay. So we were good together. We filled in each other's blanks. Did you see did you see it?

Like? You know? Because on Facts of Life were there a lot of other women in the writer's room. Well, Joel Kimmel and Anne Gibbs okay, who had worked for the company in the past. They were on our first season, and then Dedra did draw dire and Stuart Walpert are right.

There were another you know, male female couple, uh who were on the show, Sally Sussman. I don't know if you're familiar with her. I don't even know what actually happened with her, but she was uh like a secretary on the show, and then she became a term writer and then I don't know she created her own show or what The other people that were brought in were male. Martin Rips and Joseph Sterretsky were males. They still are probably, but you know, you get to show like a different world.

You have Julisa Dunn Lewis, you have Whitley Jasmine Guy, you have Freddie pre summer. You have. Jim Jim. Thank you can't thank you, thank you, thank you, Kim. And you know you have four women regulars to two guys and you know sometimes Simbad sometimes whatever.

So you need female writer, I mean, and you have an executive named Marcy Larcy Okay, she made her bones at ABC. She was the head of their I think the head of their comedy department. Well yeah, and she and Tom worked together at ABC, so you get a Marcy Carci in there. Well. Yeah, a while back, when we were talking about a different World, you said you were going to come back.

You wanted to come back and talk some more about Debbie Allen. Oh god, I look, I'm of Debbie Allen before she became Debbie Allen. Okay, and she lived in my neighborhood in Santa Monica, So we did actually have yeah, yeah, yeah, my husband was rilled with her husband, Norm Nixon because the sports thing, right, right, but anyway, Three Girls three, look it up, Three Girls three. Debbie Allen was one of the three girls who wanted to have a career I think on Broadway and in my late teens somewhere. I don't know exactly when that show was made, but Debbie was one of the stars of that then teen seventy seven.

Okay, then you have fang Ah forget it. Oh yeah, that's where Debbie honed her persona. Okay. And so by the time A Different Worldbbie Allen was Debbie Alan and oh I have a funny Wiellen story. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, all right.

So I had written a lie in my very first script for a Different World where Dwyane was gonna go home but they were going home for Thanksgiving. Okay. I think it was called if you like Pilgrim Colades. Yes, it was season two, episode six, Dick anyway, and I had Dwayne say something, and Dwayne on the stage they felt that my line was limp. Okay, So Kadeem says, I got to get home because I get a date with big butt Brenda, and I was so offended, and I went to Marcy Carsey, and I said, Marcie, I can't say that this is part of the education of Margie Peters.

Okay, he says, I have a date with big butt Brenda. Well, I know that when I was in high school, before I met Bill, I went out with a guy who dumped me to go out with a fat girl because she was gonna put out, and I felt rejecting my life onto it. Okay, that Dwayne was going to get get some because he was with a fat girl. Debbie Allen sat me down and very kindly and lovingly explained to me that in African American culture, having a bit but was a good thing, not a bad thing. Okay, I didn't know this.

Well when I know this about Okay, And that when Duayde says he's got a date with big butt Brenda, he's wearing that like a five star endorsement of his awesomeness. Okay, that she's awesome, but he's even more awesome because he's got to date with her. And let me tell you, they said it in front of a live audience, and Kadeem gave it his Kadeem thing. And I got a date with big butt Brenda, and the audience went wild. And so I learned something there, okay, that you don't judge by your own yardstick, that there's more than one fricking yardstick, okay, And that there are things in one culture that are appropriate and in another culture are inappropriate, and you learn to value that, and you say, I'm going to stay on this learning curve.

Thank you very much, thank you very much. So Debby, when I told her what my thought was, she says, oh, Margie, just such a rude And I said to her, no, it might just be that I'm white. Dad, I don't know, you know. She laughed and we laughed, and he said, I'm going to call you the lion nun. And I said, oh, don't do that to me.

Please, don't do that to me. She says, on Margie, you just don't understand that certain things in black culture are different than they are in white culture. And like you're going to learn. Well. For the rep Party, I had the costume department find one of those lying none things that Sally Field wore.

It was from that show. Yes, I showed up at dinner that night put that on. She almost split a gut. I said, a flying nune is here babe, and she just was hysterical about back. So, oh gosh, that's awesome, that's fantastic if we can't laugh at ourselves right absolutely, But I do want to say the thing I missed the most besides the money, is sitting down with a team and coming up with something way bigger than the sum of the parts.

One of the one days of the time that we wrote, by the way, was there was a guy named Bob who was sort of like a brother figure to Julie and Barbara, and he was played by Jean Stapleton's son, Bob Putch. The story idea that we came up with was that Barbara didn't want him dating this girl because she was the town pump, okay. And what she had to come to was, he knows who she is, he's enjoying her company, he's treating her like a gentleman, she's behaving like a lady. Leave them alone, okay. And so Barbara had to learn not to judge and not to try to break them up, and not to try to change his mind.

And Barbara had to not be the villain in this romance, do you know what I mean? And again it was the similar thing of the girls on the facts of life, advocating for each other. Well, Barbara has to learn if she's not going to advocate for her, the least she can do is get out of the way. Is that girl with the past? Yes, what are you doing?

I've got I've got a computer girl in the past. Yes, Season five, episode twenty. I am so excited that we got a chance to talk with you too. It's you know, and Melissa. Will a test.

You were on my list from almost the beginning of a story show. Geez wow. I did pay attention to credits. I did pay attention to women in the field, and in particular that was sort of who had these pretty amazing careers, which you had. I had fifteen years, Yeah, all back to back work and really big, huge, impressive shows.

Yeah. Well they you know, they were in the top twenty so yeah. Yeah. If I wouldn't have thought that that was going to be my life. I fantasized about it, but I never really thought it would, you know what I mean.

All of a sudden, there we were I was flying out to LA and my house was sold and everything was in the truck and we were moving out to LA and living in Santa Monica and Holy Cow. And at the end of the fifteen years, what I said to my husband is, I don't want to be begging for work. I don't want to have to. You have to earn a certain amount of money to live in la And I had seen too many writers who had been on other shows who wouldn't get arrested, you know, who was struggling, and like people who they had worked would throw them a bone and give them an assignment so that they could keep their writers guilt insurance. I did not want that to be my fate, you know.

I did not want that to be my faith. So after fifteen years, I turned to my husband and I said, honey, we got enough. I know what enough is. We got enough we can move back into the little house in Massachusetts and lived at the beach. And we got enough as long as you get a job.

And he had. Once our son went off to college, he went back and got his drug and alcohol counseling certificate from UCLA, And then when we moved back to Massachusetts, he worked at a detox and got his master's degree. He set up a dual diagnosis program in a hospital, and then he went and got his degree a master's degree, and then he went into private practice counseling people with drug and alcohol problems as a therapist and did that for several years. If I could tell you the Facts of Life was spectacular. Okay, it was hard work, and it was spectacular.

And working with Linda Marsh is one of the best things. I mean, it was the best. And working with a stock Collader was a pure joy. And the two years on a different world were life changing for me. They absolutely were life changing for me.

And I mean that in the best possible way, in the best possible way. So I'm a pretty lucky woman. Now, are you the funniest one in your family? Because you're very funny. Oh thanks, But my husband says, yes, my son's pretty funny too.

Our son. Actually he he wrote for Mary as Wild as Police videos, and then he did a lot of stuff for the Travel Channel, and then he wrote two books for mid grade readers, The Unforgettable Logan Boster in the Shadow of Doubt. And so he goes around schools showing kids how to create their own superheroes and showing them how they can be superheroes in their own lives. O wonderful. But he's he works.

He's a creative director for an advertising agency in Massachusetts. And Kevin, our sound guy, just messaged me to tell me Boston makes a lot of funny people. You know, in the cold weather, you know, in the winter, you gotta do something. So, oh, where did you go to school. In Hudson?

I grew up in Hudson, mass. Oh on Hudson Mouse Okay, my family's in Holliston, Okay and. Milis Country, gotcha. Yeah, it's been a Doyle listening to you, and your accent and vernacular are very familiar to me, and I like it so thank you. You think I have an accent, it's like modge.

Don't call me mid Okay, I do not like the only person who has ever gotten away with calling me Midge is Marcy Carsey. Okay, and she'ld go okay, maj Just just make Dwayne the hero. That's all you have to Doge, Make Dwayne the hero. We can't thank you for taking the time sharing, and Melissa and Susan and Kevin thank you so very much. And if you have any nine to fourteen year olds in your family, check out have to wants mother for God?

Yeah, for sure, Logan foster. Get the logan foster. He's on the spectrum. I love a foster child. He's adopted by this couple named Gill and Margie.

And it turns out that they're superheroes. Oh, I love it. That's fantastic. I will get it for my nephew, Micah, who's just a little baby now that he'll grow into it. All right, Well you guys, thank you so very much.

Thank you you now I know why Adad said, yeah, Margie, you want to do this. I want. I'm so glad. Yes, we are too, very grateful. All right, we'll have a wonderful rest of your Sunday and uh we and one beautiful week.

Thank you for your toment Keevin. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you. Take care. I'm going to sign off as soon as I find out where it is down there, leave or today's audioography.

Find out more about Margie Peters at IMDb. The link will be in our description. You can watch the Facts of Life for free on the Roku channel and two B, although they don't have every season so you might have to go to Amazon and pay for it like some of us, and be sure to check out the two books her Sun Route on Logan Foster. The link will be in our description. What do you want to know?

Who should we talk to? What should we talk about? Send us your thoughts and questions at Eightiestvladies dot com or email us at Eighties TV Ladies at gmail dot com. Meanwhile, please take care of yourselves out there, take care of your friends and family. Look for joy, spread kindness, stay active, stay curious.

As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will bring us closer to being amazing ladies of the twenty first century. Eighties sounds like hand so pretty, into the city, treat a good things, God hard the money Man world eighty DA