The Real Reason Molly Ringwald Was Fired From The Facts Of Life

If the characters of Sue Ann and Molly don't ring a bell when it comes to reminiscing about "The Facts of Life," it's because the first season of the show was very different from the eight seasons that followed. In the first season, the cast of characters was much larger and included many girls. According to the series' oral history from Entertainment Weekly, the rhythm of the show quickly proved to work best when the plot lines focused on life in the dorms with Mrs. Garrett as a mothering figure rather than switching back and forth between classroom and dorm scenes. Furthermore, per show writer Sally Sussman Morina, "They continued to try focusing on all of the girls in their own stories at one time or another — there were episodes that featured Molly, Cindy, Sue Ann, and Nancy — but the only ones that really got to pop were the three that they ended up keeping for season two: Blair, Natalie, and Tootie." 

Season two introduced the character of Jo, played by Nancy McKeon, and the rest of the series followed Blair, Natalie, Tootie, and Jo (shown above in 1987's season seven) as they graduated from both high school and college and went on to open a store together, remaining a quartet even after the character of Mrs. Garrett was written off. NBC executive Fred Silverman told Entertainment Weekly, "We did cut the number down, because some of the girls were just kind of faces in the crowd." 

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