With the streaming wars heating up and content at a total premium, different outfits are getting more and more creative about how to engineer specials in order to bring about new versions of old things. Sometimes reboots and remakes aren’t in the cards and one show is making its bones on reenactments of old favorites. That’s going to be happening again with a Facts of Life reenactment going down with some pretty big names attached. The Hollywood Reporter has it that Jennifer Aniston and Kathryn Hahn have joined Gabrielle Union and Ann Dowd in the production.
The Facts of Life reenactment will be pretty much what it sounds like, a new production that will take an episode from the 80s sitcom and bring new faces to the older characters. Jennifer Aniston will be playing Blair Warner, the rich and spoiled daddy’s girl played originally by Lisa Whelchel. Kathryn Hahn will play the rebellious Jo Polniaczek. Nancy McKeon played the character the first time around. The rest of the group will have Gabrielle Union as Tootie Ramsey and Allison Tolman will play Natalie Green. Of course, who could forget Edna Garrett, the matriarch of the group? Ann Dowd will take that role over from Charlotte Rae.
This new reenactment starring Jennifer Aniston, Gabrielle Union, and Kathryn Hahn is another feature from Live In Front of a Studio Audience. It’s a production from Jimmy Kimmel and others that has reenacted single episodes of sitcoms from yesteryear. So far, they have done four in total with two episodes of All in the Family, one of Good Times and one of The Jeffersons. There is also a Different Strokes episode in the works as well. That one will include Kevin Hart, Damon Wayans, and John Lithgow.
Jennifer Aniston joins the production which will reenact the sitcom that ran for eight seasons in total. It was a spin-off of Different Strokes and followed a group of students at the private boarding school Eastland in Upstate New York. The show was classic fare for the time, purposefully putting a group of very different girls into one spot together and letting their over-the-top personalities play off each other in sometimes hokey fashion. Famously, Molly Ringwald was part of the original cast, but the series saw an overhaul after its pilot season and they trimmed the cast mostly down to the characters listed above.
It’s easy to see why stars like Jennifer Aniston, Kathryn Hahn, and Gabrielle Union among others would want to take part in these one-offs. The overall nostalgic feel of the reenactments combined with the sort of unintentional comedy they bring from seeing very different people playing classic and iconic roles is good enough almost on its face. There’s a reason the first few episodes have worked so well. They combine star power with familiar stories. That’s a really winning formula. It will be awesome to see what they bring for this Facts of Life reenactment. It is set to air on ABC on December 7th of this year.
