Lara Jill Miller said this about Season 6!

[MrCleveland]

Changes May 'Break' Sitcom, Says Actress Lara Jill Miller
May 09, 1986|by SYLVIA LAWLER, The Morning Call
Allentown actress Lara Jill Miller thinks NBC made a mistake in writing her character out of its long-running comedy "Gimme a Break."

The network has made it official and announced that while the series starring Nell Carter has been renewed for the 1986-87 season, it would continue without the three teen-age daughters who have grown up on screen since the series premiered in 1981. Miller, along with Kari Michaelson and Lauri Hendler, will no longer be regular cast members "but may make occasional guest-starring appearances as scripts and availability require," said NBC.

"I'm sorry, but I think they made a big mistake," said Miller, who played Samantha, from her Allentown home this week. "With the show in syndication now, the girls are really popular. I think they (NBC) are going to lose the whole teen audience. Nell and Addy (Telma Hopkins) have the black audience and Joey (Lawrence) brought in some of the younger people, but the young kids really liked to watch the teen-age girls."

Miller says she doesn't really know where the elimination process began as the show's center began to focus more and more on Carter's character. "Over the last two years there were only occasional scripts about one of us girls," said Miller. "I don't know if it was the writers, or our own producers, and if NBC then said 'Look, they're not being used; they're not really needed.' Who knows where decisions on scripts first come from?"

NBC's explanation is that because the three actresses and their characters are now grown - Miller graduated from Allen High School last June - it made sense for Nell Carter's housekeeper character to undergo changes. "The girls have moved away and Nell will decide to join her best friend, Addy, when she gets a job and decides to move to an apartment in New York City," reads the official NBC word. The only characters to accompany her move are Grandpa Kaniski (John Hoyt), young Joey Donovan (Joey Lawrence), and anew cast member, Lawrence's real life younger brother Oliver. (The Lawrences are Montgomery County residents.)

Rumors she has heard about guest shots, said Miller, "supposedly are something like four, maybe the first two episodes, and then Christmas, and then one show about each of us." It's definite that Hendler's and Michaelson's characters of Katie and Julie will be staying in California, where the series had been set for the last five years, "but my character may be going to school in New York," said Miller. But that is so much conjecture, too, she added.

Not being under contract anymore means she can concentrate on moving her career along. "I stayed in Los Angeles an extra month for auditions and screen tests after the show was over," Miller said. "I would love to go back and do episodes if I'm free, but hopefully, I'll have another job." Now that she is back in Allentown, she is commuting almost daily to New York for auditions.

She is busy traveling around the country as a celebrity sponsor lining up volunteer aid for Hands Across America, and she'll be back in Los Angeles Memorial Day weekend to judge a pageant. If the screen test she had earlier this week pans out, she'll stay there. If she's in the first two transition episodes of "Gimme a Break," as unofficial word has it, she'll start in July.

"Otherwise, I'll go to school in September" until something comes along.

Though Miller was the only one to be seen on Season 6 of GAB...she was right that the show broke! And this was 30 years ago!

[DJM77]

The article called Matthew Lawrence "Oliver" for some reason.