The Rise and CRUEL Ending of The Facts of Life | The 12-Year-Old They FIRED Became a SUPERSTAR.

When The Facts of Life premiered on NBC in 1979, it finished its first season ranked 74th out of 79 shows — the lowest-rated series on the entire network. The fix was brutal. Over one summer, producers fired four of the seven girls, including a twelve-year-old who had already been told she was staying. The retool worked. The show climbed to 26th, then 24th, and ran nine seasons and more than 200 episodes. Four years after being cut, that twelve-year-old was the biggest teenage movie star in America. This is the full story: the backdoor pilot that launched it, the mass firing that saved it, the character who was quietly taken apart and rebuilt, why Charlotte Rae handed the show to her oldest friend, and what happened to all of them afterward. This is the Rise and Cruel Ending The Facts of Life. #thefactsoflife #mollyringwald #80s #retrotv #sitcomhistory #georgeclooney