This is a list of characters from the NBC sitcom The Facts of Life.
Characters table +Main cast of The Facts of LifeActorCharacterSeasons 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Charlotte Rae Edna Garrett colspan="7" colspan="1" colspan="1" John Lawlor Steven Bradley colspan="1" colspan="8" Jenny O'Hara Emily Mahoney colspan="1" colspan="8" Lisa Whelchel Blair Warner colspan="9" Felice Schachter Nancy Olsen colspan="1" colspan="2" colspan="4" colspan="1" colspan="1" Julie Piekarski Sue Ann Weaver colspan="1" colspan="2" colspan="4" colspan="1" colspan="1" Kim Fields Tootie Ramsey colspan="9" Molly Ringwald Molly Parker colspan="1" colspan="1" colspan="7" Julie Anne Haddock Cindy Webster colspan="1" colspan="2" colspan="4" colspan="1" colspan="1" Mindy Cohn Natalie Green colspan="9" Nancy McKeon Jo Polniaczek colspan="1" colspan="8" Geri JewellCousin Geri Warner colspan="1" colspan="4" colspan="4" Pamela Segall Kelly Affinado colspan="4" colspan="1" colspan="4" Mackenzie Astin Andy Moffett colspan="5" colspan="1" colspan="3" George Clooney George Burnett colspan="6" colspan="1" colspan="1" colspan="1" Cloris Leachman Beverly Ann Stickle colspan="7" colspan="2" Sherrie Krenn Pippa McKenna colspan="8" colspan="1"
Main characters Edna Garrett
Edna Ann Garrett Gaines, known as Mrs. Garrett or Mrs. G, is played by the actress Charlotte Rae from 1978 to 1986. Garrett is the youngest child in a large family, born and raised on a farm near Appleton, Wisconsin. Her exact age is never disclosed during the series but on several occasions, it was hinted or implied that she was somewhere in her fifties. On Diff'rent Strokes, she was the housekeeper to the Drummond family in New York City after Willis and Arnold's mom Lucy (the Drummonds' original housekeeper) died. In season 1 of The Facts of Life, she is shown to have taken a job as house mother at the Eastland School for Girls in Peekskill, New York (Kimberly Drummond attended Eastland). Over the years, Mrs. Garrett's role on The Facts of Life changes. At first, she is merely a live-in supervisor for the girls of Eastland; in the second season she became their in-house dietitian who managed the school's cafeteria.
Mrs. Garrett's two marriages ended, respectively, in divorce and in her husband's death. One early episode centered around an unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation by her ex-husband, Robert Garrett, who was revealed to be a compulsive gambler; Edna concluded that his addiction would always be an obstacle. She had two sons by Robert: Alex (Tom Fitzsimmons), a singer/songwriter/carpenter born in 1953, and Raymond (Joel Brooks), an accountant who appeared in one Season 5 episode ("Edna's Edibles") to help her raise funds and lease space to open a gourmet food shop. The girls, who had previously lived with Mrs. Garrett at Eastland and worked with her in the kitchen to pay off various restitution-related expenses (see below), moved into the living space attached to the shop and continued to work for her there, this time as payrolled employees.
In season 7, Edna's Edibles was extensively damaged by fire; it was rebuilt as a gift shop called Over Our Heads. Since the insurance on Edna's Edibles was insufficient to rebuild it by the time of the fire, the girls contributed their insurance claim checks to help rebuild, effectively making Mrs. Garrett and the girls equal partners in the business. Edna Garrett was a mentor to the girls at Eastland, functioning in loco parentis. At times the girls would take her for granted and forget that Edna herself had problems. Many times Edna would lash out at the girls when they got careless with her. In one episode, she actually fires them from Edna's Edibles when their irresponsible behavior ends up costing her $500 in fines after a dismal health inspection. She hires them back the next day when the girls promise her that they will be more responsible at their jobs. She also fires George, when he falls behind on his work constructing Over Our Heads but they later make up. Mrs. Garrett is a Democrat. She is also against censorship, such as book banning.
Mrs. Garrett gets remarried in season 8. She and her new husband, Dr. Bruce Gaines (Robert Mandan), rejoin the Peace Corps to work in eastern Africa (Charlotte Rae's contract had expired and she did not want to continue with the series). Edna was replaced by her sister, Beverly Ann Stickle (Cloris Leachman), who needs a place to stay. However, in the reunion movie that aired in 2001, Mrs. Garrett reunites with Blair, Natalie, and Tootie (Jo has to work) at a Peekskill hotel owned by Blair, and which is run by Mrs. Garrett's son, Raymond. It is also revealed that Mrs. Garrett and Tootie are widows. It's revealed that Mrs. Garrett is in a romantic relationship with a ship captain.
Mrs. Garrett also appears on the Hello, Larry episode "The Trip", the first of three crossovers between the shows Diff'rent Strokes and Hello, Larry.
Blair Warner
Blair Warner is played by Lisa Whelchel. Blair is 14-years-old in the series' pilot episode; an episode in the 1985–1986 season centered on her 21st birthday.
In season one, Blair is portrayed as a rich and rebellious girl from a blue blood background. She is seen smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and enjoying great popularity with boys. Unlike many of her classmates, she is looking to lose her virginity. When the show was retooled in the second season, all instances of her rebellion were either dropped or given to the new character of Jo Polniaczek. Blair was rewritten as an extremely wealthy and unashamedly spoiled "daddy's girl" and socialite from Manhattan
Throughout the show, Blair is shown to be intelligent, scoring barely below Jo on the Eastland entrance exam. At Eastland, she wins most awards and is seen to be a talented artist. At Langley College, she passes her law school LSATs with only one weekend of studying. Blair is often characterized as vain, arrogant, and shallow, with her self-interest regularly played for laughs. However, especially by the later seasons of the show, she is shown to be funny, emotional, generous, and loving to Mrs. Garrett and her friends, especially Jo Polniaczek.
Blair's chief foil is Jo, who appears in the show's second season. At first, the two are portrayed as rivals and complete opposites, with Blair from her privileged background, and Jo as a street-smart Bronx native. Once Jo arrives at Eastland, her witty verbal sparring matches and arguments with Blair are a regular feature on the show, especially in the first few seasons. However, as the episodes continue, viewers quickly see Blair begin sticking up for and standing by Jo in her time of need (and vice versa), with their relationship evolving into a dueling sisters dynamic. In the second episode of season two, Jo can already be seen defending Blair from someone who attempts to steal her expensive watch while the girls are in a holding cell. Later in the same season, Blair nearly attacks an old boyfriend when she learns he tried to assault Jo and, in other episodes, she tries to stop Jo from going through with a teenage marriage.
As the show progresses, Jo and Blair develop a close friendship, although they continue to trade wisecracks and sarcastic comments, usually good-naturedly. In the ninth season episode "Down and Out in Malibu: Part 1", Jo introduces Blair as her best friend. She later asks Blair to be her maid of honor.
Jo and Blair experience many emotionally charged moments throughout the series, highlighting the complexity and back-and-forth nature of their friendship. In other episodes, Blair's former step sister Meg (played by Eve Plumb) visits Eastland to tell Blair that she is going to become a nun. In “Best Sister Part 1" and “Best Sister Part 2" it's revealed that Blair is an atheist because when she asked God to not allow her parents' divorce to become final, her prayer wasn't answered. In "Best Sister Part 2," Blair and Jo get into a fight when Blair's stepsister inspires Jo to consider becoming a nun, too. Worried she'll ruin her life, and also angry by her personal disbelief in religion, Blair lashes out at Jo, who hits her in response. The episode ends with Jo apologizing to Blair and promising she'll never do that again.
In the season nine episode, "Less Than Perfect", Blair is in a car accident and reveals her fears regarding her scars only to Jo, who goes into her hospital room after hours in order to see that she's okay. This moment marked a turning point for how Blair viewed herself and her desire to be perfect. Initially, Blair felt she needed to be seen as perfect, because she is the heiress to her father's multimillion-dollar business, Warner Textile Mills. In the hospital, she privately tells Jo a story from her childhood to illustrate how her mother had insisted she be perfect from a young age. In the uncut version of the episode that was released on the DVD sets, Jo is shown having a conversation with Casey, Blair's then-boyfriend, while waiting in the hospital waiting room. Casey asks Jo why they care so much about Blair, despite her vanity and shallowness. Jo tells Casey, "Because she's Blair, and there's nobody else like her."
In the season four episode "Magnificent Obsession," Jo stays up all night with Blair in an attempt to keep her from calling an emotionally abusive boyfriend, in another moment where Blair worries about her need to be seen as a perfect by a guy who talked only about her flaws.
However, Blair's delusions of grandeur are usually played for laughs as Natalie, Tootie, or Jo make sarcastic remarks about her "beauty," "perfect" personality," or "naturally blonde hair." Any crisis at Eastland would usually prompt a suggested solution from Blair, preceded by her catch phrase: "I just had another one of my brilliant ideas!" More often than not, though, her "brilliant ideas" were actually quite the opposite, although on at least two occasions they turned out to actually be good (In the episode "Growing Pains", it was her idea to have Mrs. Garrett punish them after Tootie gets drunk on wine that Blair, Jo and Natalie were responsible for instead of going to the headmaster, which would have resulted in all of them being expelled. In "The Four Musketeers", it was her idea to move back into the room and work in the kitchen to pay off the debt incurred when she and the other girls get into a paint fight while painting the room.). She also says this on occasion to be sarcastic, particularly with Jo. For example, she said her catchphrase once while Jo was distractedly mopping the cafeteria floor and followed it up with "if you move your feet around while mopping, we just might be done by lunchtime."
Blair's parents (played by Nicolas Coster and Marj Dusay) are shown to be divorced, and although she doesn't usually show it, Blair wishes to have a nuclear family like all of her friends. Later in the series, her mother remarries (for the fourth time) and gives birth to a baby girl (Bailey) fathered by her most recent ex-husband. Originally, Blair's mother did not want to go through with the pregnancy, which upset Blair, who was excited about being a sister. She becomes her mother's labor coach when Bailey is born on Christmas Day.
A secret Blair originally kept from her friends was that her cousin Geri (played by comedian Geri Jewell) had cerebral palsy. She is not embarrassed by her cousin, but rather jealous of her, since Blair is used to being the center of attention. Mrs. Garrett tells Blair not to lash out against Geri because of her jealousy and Blair joins Geri, a successful comedian, onstage at an impromptu comedy show Geri throws at Eastland Academy.