When it comes to The Facts of Life, former star Mindy Cohn knows a thing or two, but when she stopped by the TV Insider and TV Guide Magazine offices to chat about her new Apple TV+ show Palm Royale, she couldn’t help but reflect on her relationship with the long-running publication.
“I remember the cover shoot and I remember being on the cover. It was so major,” Cohn recalls of the first time she and her Facts of Life costars graced the cover of TV Guide Magazine. “I mean, this was more important than an Emmy nom! This was like, ‘We made the cover of TV Guide. I think we’re doing okay kids!’” Cohn remembers.
TV Guide Magazine
“I remember the shoot, I remember our wardrobe being picked and us having a say about it.” According to the actress who played Natalie Green in the Norman Lear series, she and her costars were thrilled they didn’t have to wear school uniforms on the cover. “That was a big deal for us.”
Admittedly, Cohn says she’s still “astounded to this day. I don’t understand it. I asked Charlotte [Rae], ‘why did you pick me?’”
Cohn didn’t technically audition for her role in the show which followed a group of teen girls living under the care of a housemother and dietician at Eastland School, Mrs. Edna Garrett (Rae).
“It was, and still is so surreal and serendipitous,” Cohn shares of her casting story. “Norman Lear, his underling, Alan Horn, who went on to run a couple of studios like Warner Bros. and Walt Disney, and Charlotte came to the school I was attending, which was a college prep all-girls school… to try and talk to some students and authenticate scripts. And by the end of that meeting… Norman came up to me and said, ‘Charlotte has fallen madly in love with you. We want to write a part for you in our show. I’m going to call her Natalie.’”
See what else Cohn is opening up about ranging from her teen dream to find a boyfriend to the personal aspects of her first TV Guide Magazine feature in the full video, above, and don’t miss her in Apple TV+’s Palm Royale.
Palm Royale, now streaming, Apple TV+