Lydia Cornell From ‘Too Close for Comfort’ Chats Reboot, Favorite Memory & More! (Exclusive)
Lydia Cornell, who turns 72 today (July 23), is best known for her role as Sara Rush on all five seasons of the sitcom Too Close for Comfort, and has racked up over 250 film and TV credits throughout her career. A 1981 People’s Choice award winner for Favorite New TV Comedy Program, Too Close for Comfort originally aired on ABC from late 1980 to mid-1983, and later appeared in first-run syndication from 1984 to early 1987.
Cornell also earned an AFI Best Actress Award nomination and won a People’s Choice Award for her work. ReMIND caught up with her at the Hollywood Museum during their exhibit The Legends of Laughter: The Marx’s Brothers, where Cornell reminisced about her time on Too Close for Comfort and teased the idea of a possible reboot.
A roaring good time on the Too Close for Comfort set
“We had just a silly show. I remember Ted Knight just falling over the couch,” Cornell said. “It was silly, slapstick comedy, We had this lion episode [Season 1’s “The Location”] with a giant lion brought in. We had an animal trainer, [and] we all had to confront the lion. It could have been scary, I guess, but it was very silly.”
Credit: Mike Pingel
On her friendship with Jim J. Bullock
“Jim Bullock [who played Monroe Ficus] and I were best friends,” Cornell recalled. “He made me laugh so hard! He’d do this outrageous ‘big butt walk’ right before I went on stage. I’d come out giggling so much that we had to redo the scene… over and over and over again.”
A Too Close for Comfort reboot?
“[My writing partner] Larry and I wrote a Too Close for Comfort reboot,” Cornell revealed of the series, which was based on the British show Keep It in the Family. “It’s going really well — centering around a younger generation and maybe having Baby Andrew becomes the Ted Knight (Henry Rush) character. We bring our kids into the house.”
“It’s got a really diverse cast,” Cornell continues. “Monroe moves back in with his son and his husband. It’s just really fun. We got the IP [intellectual property] rights from [production manager] Don Taffner to go and create a new show.”
The Too Close legacy lives on
Credit: D.L. Taffner Syndication/ Everett Collection
“It’s been in syndication, like now it’s on Tubi, Pluto, Antenna, Flex, and on Peacock,” says Cornell of the original Too Close for Comfort. “It’s amazing how it got this longevity. The show is ageless.”
If you want to check out The Legends of Laughter: The Marx Brothers, it’s now on display at the Hollywood Museum, located at 1660 N. Highland Avenue (Hollywood Blvd. and N. Highland Ave.) and is open Wednesday-Sunday from 10am-5pm. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors (62+), $12 for students with ID and $5 for children under 5.
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Puzzler '80s Comedy Classics
Vol 1, Issue 6
This issue is packed with puzzles and trivia from all your favorite '80s sitcoms.
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