Forty-five years later, Geri Jewell is aware of for a reality which episode was her favourite.
The actress, 68, starred as Blair Warner’s cousin, Geri Tyler, on the enduring ’80s sitcom “Facts of Life,” and he or she nonetheless seems to be again at her time on the present with the fondest of recollections.
“Out of all the episodes I did, my favorite one was the first one,” Jewell solely advised The Publish throughout the Jonathan Basis Fundraiser final Saturday.
“The very first one that I did,” expressed the comic, whose first episode was Season 2, Episode 5, titled “Cousin Geri.”
“It was written for me. It was tailored for me.”
Jewell, who has cerebral palsy, a situation that impacts motion and posture, introduced consciousness to these with disabilities by being the primary disabled actress to have a recurring position on a primetime tv present.
The actress, who starred within the hit TV sequence alongside Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, Kim Fields, Nancy McKeon and Charlotte Rae, landed the position due to one of many present’s govt producers, Norman Lear.
“Norman Lear had seen me perform, and he came up to me after the show to introduce himself. In fact, Charlotte Rae was in the audience that night,” she recounted to The Publish. “And he introduced himself and said, ‘You know, you’re really funny, kid, but you’re way before your time.’ And I said, ‘So? So wait a couple months!’ He couldn’t believe my response, and two months later, he asked me on ‘Facts.’”
She appeared on “Facts of Life” for twelve episodes from 1980 till 1984.
“I have been blessed with so many people who have been there for me and guided me,” Jewell gushed. “Norman Lear, David Milch. How lucky can you get?”
Whereas her “Facts of Life” days are behind her, she’s nonetheless tight with one forged member.
The stand-up comedian revealed she’s nonetheless in contact with Whelchel, 61, who performed Blair Warner within the sequence, including that they’re “very close.”
“I meet people all the time, and they say, ‘I saw you on ‘Facts of Life,’ and you really changed my life,” Jewell recalled. “I think I created a sensitivity about people with disabilities that wasn’t quite there before — and humor. That was very rare back then. And now there are so many comedians with cerebral palsy!”
Jewell has needed to modify how she takes care of her physique, explaining she soothes herself via “pain management.”
“And I get two vials of Botox injected in my neck, shoulders and back every three months for chronic pain,” Jewell added. “I’ve been on Botox since ’99. I have the neck of a 12-year-old!”
Jewell has gotten candid previously about her titanium neck, sharing on Steve Kmetko’s “Still Here Hollywood” podcast that she offers with the challenges by having “a sense of humor.”
“It’s challenging because now I have other issues with aging. Walking isn’t as easy as it used to be,” Jewell detailed in March. “I’ve had a certain gait, but my balance is not near as good. My hearing is impaired even more, and I get very, very frustrated.”
She broke her neck in 1999, which required emergency surgical procedure.
“My neck is now 45% titanium, and it’s pretty strong. But this cerebral palsy still wants to move my head all over the place,” the trailblazer confessed, “and my neck is going, ‘No. I can’t do that.’”
“I have dystonia, which I always had, but I never realized it,” Jewell mentioned in regards to the muscle dysfunction — which creates involuntary contractions.
It additionally causes her “neck [to be] pulled to one side.”
“I have a titanium neck. I know when the Botox is wearing off because it’s pulling even farther,” mentioned Jewell. “So I have a lot of issues, but so does everybody else when they age.”
Regardless of the hurdles, the Hollywood vet famous: “I’m very blessed.”
“All the challenges that I’ve had — that everybody has in life — it’s a sense of humor that’s gonna get us through it,” she continued. “Because if I couldn’t laugh once a while I’d be in a loony bin. I have to laugh. You have to.”
“Facts of Life” adopted a bunch of ladies on the prestigious Eastland Faculty for Younger Girls and was one in every of NBC’s highest-rated exhibits within the Nineteen Eighties.
Regardless of rumors of a reboot swirling within the many years since, Cohn, 59, alleged final yr that any plans they’d fell via attributable to a “greedy bitch.”
“We were all very, very disappointed that it didn’t work,” Whelchel confessed to Nearer Weekly in April.
Though the particular person in query has remained unnamed, the “Collector’s Call” alum added, “We’d been trying to find a way to work together in some capacity for probably the last 10 years.”
“So, when it looked like this was going to happen, we were all really excited. The contracts were signed and then the writers’ strike happened, the actors’ strike happened, and then, unfortunately, Pa [Charlotte Rae] and Norman Lear passed. After that, it just kind of dissolved.”
Whelchel pressed, “We were all quite disappointed.”
Rae, who starred as housemother Mrs. Garrett, died at age 92 in 2018, 5 years earlier than Lear handed away in 2023 at 101.
In 2001, the actresses got here collectively in “The Facts of Life Reunion,” which noticed their characters reunite in Peekskill, NY, for Thanksgiving with Mrs. Garrett.
Regardless that a reboot would possibly by no means come to fruition, the actors nonetheless handle to remain shut in actual life. Final summer time, Jewell and Whelchel posed collectively for a candy shot on social media.
“We aren’t technically family but since we played one on TV (Cousin Geri) and we’ve known each other for almost a half a century, it sure feels like it!” Whelchel captioned the Instagram photograph. “So good to catch up with the funny and wise and deep and talented, Geri Jewell!”
