Their Age During The Show’s Premiere
During the show’s premiere, Kim Fields was 10, Lisa Whelchel was 16, and Mindy Cohn was 13. (Nancy McKeon didn’t join until season two, but she’s the same age as Cohn.) In the first season, one of the reasons Tootie was always on roller skates was to hide her tiny stature from the other girls.
Their Age During The Show’s Premiere
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A Quick Spinoff
In the late 1970s, NBC was floundering. In the 1977–78 season, 15 of the top 30 network shows were on ABC, 11 on CBS, and only four on NBC (Little House on the Prairie, Project U.F.O., and the Sunday and Monday night movies). When Diff’rent Strokes premiered in the fall of 1978 and became a hit (ranking 27th for the season), NBC jumped at the chance to cash in.
A Quick Spinoff