Despite her best efforts, Mayim Bialik says a planned revival of “Blossom” won’t be happening.
The five-time Emmy nominee shared the news in a lengthy post on her Substack, published Monday. In it, she recalls how she and original series creator Don Reo had discussed a modern take on the NBC sitcom after her stint on “The Big Bang Theory” came to an end in 2019.
Bialik says she and Reo presented their vision for a “Blossom” revival to executives at Disney, who “seemed to love it” and “understood what we wanted to do.”
Feeling “certain” that the revival “was moving forward,” Bialik went on to star in Fox’s “Call Me Kat” and serve as a co-host of “Jeopardy!” Once her schedule was clear at the conclusion of those stints, however, she says Disney put the nail in the new series’ coffin.
“For no particular reason, we were told ‘no.’ We asked for the rights so that we could let the market decide if audiences might want to see these characters all these years later,” she explained, per TV Line. “We were told Disney reserves the rights in case they ever want to do a reboot of ‘Blossom.’ The reboot we all wanted to do was now, with Don’s script.”
HuffPost reached out to Disney representatives seeking comment on Bialik’s remarks, but did not immediately hear back.
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“Blossom,” which aired on NBC from 1991 to 1995, followed Blossom Russo (played by Bialik), a spunky, wise-beyond-her-years teen who is adjusting to life with her newly single father, Nick (Ted Wass), and other brothers Tony (Michael Stoyanov) and Joey (Joey Lawrence).
The mostly lighthearted series was praised for its thoughtful take on a number of hot-button issues, including drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence and sexual assault.
For many fans, news of yet another revival getting scrapped may not come as a surprise, given the questionable quality and seemingly inevitable fate of other recent spinoff series. However, Bialik had been dropping hints about bringing “Blossom” back for some time. In 2021, she told Entertainment Weekly that she and Reo were at work on a “limited reboot,” but acknowledged the pair have “had a lot of trouble getting our network onboard.”
Two years later, she told Vanity Fair that plans for Blossom’s return were still on, but possibly in a different, non-comedic format.
“We want to bring back these interesting, deep characters — a child of divorce, a recovering drug addict, an alcoholic — to see them in a whole new way,” she said.
In her Substack post, Bialik said her “desire to continue to pursue on-camera roles has waned” since receiving the news.
“It’s not the industry Don and I grew up in, and ‘Blossom’ felt like my last attempt to try and assert myself as an actress,” she explained. “While it is possible no one wants a ‘Blossom’ reboot, I’m pretty certain Disney got this one wrong.”
She went on to note: “The sun is gonna surely shine. Maybe not the way Don and I intended, but this door closed. While we didn’t want it to, we are powerless over every aspect of it except what we know to be true: we loved this possibility with all that we have and we are so so sorry we couldn’t get it to happen.”
