kitano0 asked:
I thought Bonnie Franklin was so cute during One Day at a Time. Ken, can you tell us more about her?
We used Bonnie on two episodes of ALMOST PERFECT, playing the mother of Kim’s (Nancy Travis) boyfriend (Kevin Kilner).
She was an absolute delight. I was also lucky enough to direct those episodes (okay, full disclosure, I assigned them to myself).
But Bonnie was the consummate professional with a fun positive attitude. Her character disliked Nancy’s character at the beginning and eventually comes to appreciate her. So she had a real arc to play. There’s a long scene where the two are stuck together in an elevator and with cameras rolling before a studio audience they both nailed it in one take.
She was also a good sport because the actor hired to play her husband broke his contract and took a pilot after filming the first half of our two-parter. Yes, he was an asshole and so were his agents. (That’s a whole ‘other story.) So to film his later scenes we had to shoot out of order on different days and Bonnie accommodated us (which was not in her contract).
A few years later I put together a reading of a screenplay I had written. I got Bonnie to graciously play one of the parts. She was absolutely hilarious and it was a very different character than you’ve ever seen her play.
Her character had the world's foulest mouth, and hearing those words come out of Bonnie Franklin was a riot. One of my writer friends who attended said the highlight was seeing Bonnie Franklin swear.
She left us too soon. I loved Bonnie Franklin.
from By Ken Levine
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