The 1990s were a time when cordless phones were cutting edge technology,
and sitcom moms reflected a more diverse America than they ever had before. With that in mind,
let's check out what our favorite '90s sitcom matriarchs look like today.
For nearly a decade, viewers followed the exploits of the Conner family on ABC's Roseanne,
which ran from 1988 to 1997. The Conners were a blue-collar, working class clan,
unlike many of their wealthier TV contemporaries. The show was led by comedian Roseanne Barr,
who was allowed to play an overweight character without being the butt of constant jokes.
Roseanne was rebooted by ABC in 2018, but it was soon cancelled after Barr posted a
tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett, a former advisor to President Barack Obama to an
ape. Barr later apologized for her poor judgment, saying on a podcast,
"I don't want to run off and blather on with excuses. But I apologize to anyone who thought,
or felt offended, and who thought that I meant something that I,
in fact, did not mean to my own ignorance, and [...] there's no excuse for that ignorance."
Following the cancellation, ABC moved forward with
a spin-off show called The Conners starring the remaining cast members.
One of the most iconic 90s sitcoms was of course Full House,
which aired on ABC from 1987 to 1995. The show followed the exploits of widower Danny Tanner,
his brother-in-law Jesse, and his friend Joey as they banded together to raise
Danny's three young daughters. According to Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky,
the show's vibe was unsurprisingly super wholesome, as well as cute and funny.
"The morals are right, there's a message in every episode, you know, how to be a good person,
how to be a better person, right from wrong. It's a good message."
Unfortunately for Loughlin, people are probably less willing nowadays to look to either her or
Aunt Becky for lessons on moral conduct. That's because she and her husband were
among the 50 people charged with felony fraud as a result of the investigation known as
Operation Varsity Blues. The couple allegedly paid a $500,000 bribe in
order to have their two daughters admitted to the University of Southern California.
And that's definitely not wholesome. Whatever happened to predictability, indeed.
Brett Butler starred as Grace Kelly on Grace Under Fire, which ran on ABC from 1993 to 1998. The show
depicted Grace's daily life as a recovering alcoholic and a divorced mother of three.
She was someone a lot of people could identify with, given how common her situation can be.
In fact, Butler herself has had a very public struggle with substance abuse,
and it's something she had to work hard at to overcome.
In 2011, when she revisited the studio where the show was filmed,
it brought back some mixed feelings. She told Entertainment Tonight,
"[The pressure] was real unnerving and weird and it's very strange. … It's otherworldly.
I don't romance the past. ... It prevents me from looking ahead at new things."
After Grace Under Fire wrapped, Butler has continued working in front of the camera.
Her credits include such shows as How to Get Away with Murder and The Walking Dead.
She also offers her services as a psychic.
Just as the ranks of single moms on TV were growing in the 80s and 90s, so too
were adoptive mothers, like Lisa Landry Sims on Sister, Sister. The show ran from 1994 to 1999,
and it starred Jackée Harry as the adoptive mother of Tia Landry, as played by Tia Mowry. The show
would ultimately find a devoted fan base that's still passionate about the show today, though this
wasn't a part that Harry wanted initially. In a 2016 interview with The A.V. Club, she confessed,
"I never wanted to be a mother, and when I got the
show I was really upset. I was like, 'I'm not sexy anymore!'"
Fortunately, Harry now recognizes how misguided that line of thinking is. As she put it,
"The more you become a mom, you’re not sexy,
which, of course, is crap. But that’s the way actors look at it. Of course,
that’s not true now. But everybody expects you to look differently and act differently."
Looking back, Harry was a big part of the show's success,
and we think she looked great, and still does! She's continued to act steadily,
as evidenced by the approximately 100 credits she has on her IMDb page.
Home Improvement was a TV juggernaut that lit up American living rooms when it aired on ABC
from 1991 to 1999. Based on the stand-up comedy of Tim Allen, the show starred Allen as Tim
Taylor and Patricia Richardson as his wife Jill. As Richardson recalls it, her time on
the show was unsurprisingly full of laughs. In a 2018 interview with Closer Weekly, she revealed,
"Tim and I were always cracking each other up. We came up with so much of what you saw
on the set every day. [...] It was just a fun set, and we really were a family."
But as much as Richardson had fun on set, she didn't enjoy being a celebrity. As she put it,
"I really hated fame. [...] I didn’t do charity events, because I was desperate for time with
my kids and husband, who was always mad I was never home. Hence the divorce."
Richardson struggled especially with the hours spent away from her children. As she noted,
"Home Improvement had much longer days than most sitcoms. Because I was involved in all
the writing, I was away from them more than I wanted and felt I missed so many things."
To that end, when she left the show in 1999,
she passed up another gig so that she could spend more time at home. But she returned
to acting a few years later, and is still active in the business today.
For millions of TV buffs, it's impossible to hear Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage"
without immediately thinking about Married... with Children, the iconic sitcom that aired on Fox from
1987 to 1997. The show followed the exploits of the Bundys, a dysfunctional and often crass family
of four who managed to find themselves repeatedly getting in trouble. Katey Sagal played family
matriarch Peg Bundy, who enjoyed nothing more than watching TV and going on shopping sprees.
Sagal was perfect in the part, as she was unforgettably dressed to the nines
in tight clothing and a giant red wig. During a 2017 interview on Nightline, she revealed,
"My take on her and that relationship between her and Al Bundy was that there had to be
something hot between the two of them to sustain this marriage for so many years."
"I just went into my audition all dolled up."
Some of the show's humor is clearly a product of its time,
and would probably be offensive by today's standards, but it was extremely popular during
its long run. As for Sagal, she's remained busy since Married… with Children ended,
including a starring role on Sons of Anarchy and a recurring gig on The Conners.
Full House wasn't the only show to showcase a blended family in the 90s. Nor was it the
only one to air on ABC. Step By Step starred Suzanne Somers and Patrick Duffy as two single
parents with children, who fall in love and get married while on vacation in Jamaica.
When Somers was offered the role of Carol Foster Lambert, she had to choose between it and starring
in a Broadway show, which wasn't an easy decision. Step by Step won out in the end, and Somers was
ultimately happy about it. In an an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, she recalled,
"I figured, I'd been off television for quite a while, I think my career needs to
put me out again. I think in retrospect it was absolutely the right decision."
Somers hasn't acted much since Step by Step, though she has been a guest on such shows as
Good Morning America and The Wendy Williams Show. She's also quite the prolific author,
having written such books as I'm Too Young for This! and A New Way to Age.
When it comes to shows that capture the flavor of a time and place perfectly,
The Wonder Years takes the cake. Set in the late 60s and early 70s,
the show satisfied baby boomers' appetite for nostalgia, and it gave younger viewers a glance
into the lives of their parents' generation. Alley Mills played Norma Arnold, a wholesome and
nurturing mother to Kevin, Wayne, and Karen, who stood in contrast to abrasive dad Jack.
The show ran on ABC from 1988 to 1993. It was popular and well-liked, but then it ended
abruptly after six seasons. According to Mills, that was because of some behind-the-scenes-strife
involving a lawsuit alleging harassment by the show's star, Fred Savage.
"Who was, like, the least
offensive, most wonderful, sweet human being that ever walked the face of the Earth."
Eventually the lawsuit was dropped and settled out of court, but The
Wonder Years was nonetheless over for good. Mills has continued to work in film and TV,
including a regular role on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.
One of the most unmistakable voices in TV history is the nasally cackle of Fran Drescher,
who starred as Fran Fine on The Nanny. Drescher co-created the show with her former husband,
Peter Marc Jacobson. Inspired by her youth growing up in Queens, New York, the show ran on CBS from
1993 to 1999. Fran doesn't start the show as a mother, but she eventually becomes a stepmother
after she and Maxwell Sheffield, the man she works for, finally get married after a long courtship.
Drescher still has an active career in front of the camera,
including a starring role on the 2020 NBC sitcom Indebted. Additionally,
she's hopeful that The Nanny will get picked up for a reboot, and she hopes it will star none
other than rapper Cardi B. As Drescher sees it, both of them have funny voices, after all.
"What kind of a great mother-daughter would we be? I mean, just amazing, I think."
Patricia Heaton is quite the busy TV actress, and she's probably best known for her work on
Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran on CBS from 1996 to 2005. She played Debra Barone,
the wife of everyman Raymond Barone, and together they had three children,
whom she did most of the caring for. Despite Debra's frustration with the
household duties she was responsible for, there was still time for plenty of tender moments.
The show resonated with plenty of viewers, who could easily relate to
its vision of domestic life. In a 2006 interview with ABC, Heaton revealed,
"I watched it recently at a friends house with a couple and they were chuckling,
but I could tell it was also hitting very close to home for them. They were kind of
serious as they were watching it. It’s the stuff people really deal with in their marriages."
No wonder the show ran for nearly a decade! Since Raymond, Heaton has gone on to play a couple of
more sitcom moms. First up was Frankie Heck on The Middle, which also ran for nine seasons,
and then she played Dr. Carol Kenney on Carol's Second Act, which only lasted one season.
Few famous faces are more recognizable than Phylicia Rasha, who played Clair Huxtable on The
Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. Despite the crimes of Bill Cosby that have come to light since then,
the impact that the show had on society, black viewers in particular, cannot be
overstated. That's because it was one of the first shows on TV to depict an upper-class,
well-educated black family, rather than just caricatures and stereotypes. The importance of
the show's legacy is not lost on Rashad, who's extremely thankful to have been a part of it.
"It is such a blessing, it is such a gift, it is such a privilege
to do work that means something to people."
Rashad still has an active career on stage and screen. She recently played Mary Anne Creed,
stepmother to Michael B. Jordan's titular boxer in Creed and Creed II,
and she's a regular on the OWN series David Makes Man.
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