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You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have... nine seasons and over 200 episodes of one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. Spun out of NBC's other wildly popular series "Diff'rent Strokes," "The Facts of Life" followed the goings-on at a girl's boarding school in upstate New York. The series became a fast hit, thanks to its chipper tone and uplifting sense of humor, as well as the performances from its cast of talented young actors -- many of whom went on to achieve major success in the film and television industry.

Whether they only stayed in the main cast during its experimental first season, joined as a replacement of sorts in the final installments, or played a part in all of its 200-plus episodes, the actors embarked on a range of professional journeys. Some retired immediately afterward, pursuing careers ranging from music and...

Exclusive: Multi-hyphenate actress and comedian Lisa Ann Walter has signed with Gersh for representation.

Walter, one of the stars of ABC’s Emmy-winning comedy series Abbott Elementary, has earned a Peabody award and shares a SAG award for her role as Melissa Schemmenti on the show which is entering its fourth season. Her other credits include creator and star of ABC’s Life’s Work comedy and a starring role in Breaking News. She also has appeared on shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Las Vegas, Nip/Tuck, Glow, Grey’s Anatomy and 9-1-1. She also created and executive produced Dance Your Ass Off and has won celebrity editions of The Weakest Link and Jeopardy.

Walter’s film work includes The Parent Trap, alongside Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson; Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds; Bruce Almighty, alongside Jim Carrey; and Shall We Dance, alongside Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci.

For the last three decades, the multi-hyphenate Lisa Ann Walter, who began her career in stand-up comedy, made her mark as a character actor in films such as Bruce Almighty, Eddie and Shall We Dance? However, for most millennials, Walter is best known for playing Chessy, the beloved nanny in Nancy Meyer’s The Parent Trap. These days, nearly a quarter of a century later, Walter has emerged in the spotlight on ABC’s award-winning mockumentary Abbott Elementary, where she plays the Italian-American spitfire Melissa Schemmenti, a second and third-grade teacher at an underfunded Philadelphia public school. Here, she discusses the joys of playing the elementary school teacher and her own educational upbringing.

Deadline: You’ve returned to doing stand-up recently. How has it been going back on stage versus being behind the camera on Abbott Elementary?

Lisa Ann Walter: I was a stage actress first in musicals and plays.

The cast of Abbott Elementary has been working hard at Willard R. Abbott Elementary, but no one more than second-grade teacher Janine Teagues.

The main cast has remained mostly the same since the comedy's inception.

Quinta Brunson stepped in a different light as we saw her work in her new role as a temporary fellowship in the school district.

This gave Season 3 a little twist, following her trying to adjust to bureaucracy and her co-workers' happenings.

The cast brings mightier humor to our TV screens each new season.

Meet Abbott Elementary Season 4 cast and characters:

Quinta Brunson (Janine Teagues)

Janine Teagues is the main character of Abbott Elementary and a second-grade teacher. She always remains optimistic despite the school's underfunding and lack of essentials.

In season 3, she was offered a temporary fellowship at the school district.

Her mission is to help the lives of her students, and her cheeriness can...

Some of the best episodes of TV were written before the writer was even hired. The staff that writes great television like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" usually starts out by writing a spec script — in plain English, they script an original episode of the series within the framework laid out by the series creator and the writers. Some of the most memorable moments of the entire show have originated this way, including Giles getting thrown out of the Watchers' council. The spec script that got David Fury hired as the main writer of the season 3 episode "Helpless." However, not everything from his initial pitch made its way into the episode.

In the 12th episode of the season that follows Buffy's final year as a student at Sunnydale High, she starts to grapple with the authority figures in her life in a new way — her final boss is the town mayor,...

This story about Sheryl Lee Ralph, Lisa Ann Walter, Tyler James Williams and “Abbott Elementary” first appeared in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

If Quinta Brunson is the heart of “Abbott Elementary,” the Emmy-winning ABC comedy she exec-produces, writes and stars in, the show’s supporting cast is its soul. Set in a struggling Philadelphia public school, the series has been praised for its realistic depiction of America’s education system, while also finding humor and hope hiding in plain sight.

The show’s first two seasons worked hard to elucidate the plight of the American schoolteacher, but that’s far from the only lesson that “Abbott Elementary” has been serving up to viewers. Forget about English, say “see you later” to math, because according to its cast, the series is all about chemistry.

“Chemistry is an amazing thing. Either you have it or you don’t,...

“Abbott Elementary” star Lisa Ann Walter has been ready for this moment. And actually, as someone who has been covering the TV business for a few decades, I’ve been waiting for Lisa Ann Walter to have this moment as well.

When I arrived in Los Angeles and first started covering television, it was summer 1996. I was a young 22-year-old kid suddenly thrust into reporting at events like the Television Critics Association press tour, where nearly everyone else around me was a crusty newspaper journo twice my age.

That first TCA was a boot camp in learning how new TV shows are launched, and I still vividly remember that freshman crop of fall 1996 series. In those hopeful months before September premieres, anyone has the chance to break out and go the distance. One of those sitcoms was ABC’s “Life’s Work,” starring a promising, brash, hysterical comic named, you guessed it,...

Exclusive: The story of one of America’s most beloved TV personalities, Johnny Carson, may finally be coming to the screen. A high-profile series, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Carson, written by Deadwood creator David Milch and to be directed by Jay Roach, was recently taken out and has been heating up the premium marketplace. The project, titled King Of Late Night, is a co-production between wiip and Anonymous Content.

The series will follow the life and career of late-night TV pioneer Johnny Carson from New York to Los Angeles to the Las Vegas strip. King Of Late Night will reveal how Johnny’s diehard connection to his audience overlapped with his lifelong desire for a basic quality of life, and how his beloved on-screen persona came into conflict with the more colorful aspects of his personal life.

Carson, who grew up in Nebraska and served in the Navy in World...

Mubarak Ali

Everything That Rises Must Converge: Some Notes on "Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis"

David Cairns

The Forgotten: Night and Fog

The Forgotten: Hey, Pluto!

Ce n'est pas une pipe: "The Illusionist" (Sylvain Chomet, UK)

The Forgotten: Messing About in Boats

Johnny Got His Gun: "Caterpillar" (Koji Wakamatsu, Japan)

Life's Work: "And Everything is Going Fine" (Steven Soderbergh, Us)

The Forgotten: Bad Words

Taking Fire: "Restrepo" (Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger, Us)

Adrian Curry

Movie Posters of the Week: The Films of Agnès Varda

Movie Posters of the Week: Early Dreyer

Movie Poster of the Week: "The American"

Movie Poster of the Week: "Dogtooth"

Doug Dibbern

Mann Power: The Director as Worker

The Ferroni Brigade

The Golden Donkey Cannes 2010: The French Connection

Jean-Luc Godard

Quote of the Day

Daniel Kasman

Now on DVD: Shapeshifting Songs of Sex

At the Cinematheque: "Nightfall" (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

Video Sundays: Cinema...