THIS JUST IN! The story just broke today, and I just about peed myself with excitement! According to the exclusive article at People.com by Octavia Akoulitchev:
The Facts of Life Cast Reunites for Lifetime's Holiday Special You Light Up My Christmas
Kim Fields asked Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, and Nancy McKeon to get involved with the upcoming Christmas movie and they all "enthusiastically jumped on board"
The stars of The Facts of Life are coming back together, just in time for Christmas!
Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn and Nancy McKeon will reunite in the Christmas movie You Light Up My Christmas, premiering Dec. 1 on Lifetime as part of the channel’s “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” programming.
The holiday movie’s executive producer and star Kim Fields — who describes these cast members as her “sisters” — is the one who invited her fellow child actresses to get on board.
“It’s been amazing to work together again and have the ladies’ input on their characters from their wardrobe to names, as well as provide fun inside jokes for fans,” Fields, 50, tells PEOPLE in a statement. “I also had the production name the ice-skating rink in the movie after our dear friend, Charlotte Rae, who passed away last year (and played Edna Garrett on both The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes). We truly are a family so it was great to work together on something new!”
You Light Up My Christmas, inspired by true events, tells the story of Emma (Fields), who returns to her hometown, built around her family’s pioneer Christmas factory, two weeks before Christmas.
To her horror, she finds that the lights in the once festive town have gone dim — prompting her to reconnect with a former flame (Adrian Holmes) and reignite the town with holiday cheer.
The Facts of Life ran from 1979-1988 and followed a group of girls living at an all-female boarding school: Blair (Whelchel), Tootie (Fields), Natalie (Cohn) and Jo (McKeon).
Lifetime’s annual all-day holiday programming event — “It’s a Wonderful Lifetime” — begins on Oct. 25 and continues through Dec. 25.
It features a holiday special and 30 holiday-themed movie premieres.
[ end of article ]
***** UPDATE 10/22/19 *****
Mindy Cohn has set the record straight that the involvement of the FOL girls will only be cameos (read her tweet below).
