NEED TO KNOW
- Mayim Bialik confirmed the fate of a Blossom reboot
- The actress claimed that Disney turned down the reboot and did not want to hand over the rights to herself and series creator Don Reo
- The show aired from 1991 to 1995
Mayim Bialik says that the Blossom reboot, which would have been produced at Disney, was canceled.
In a Substack post shared on Monday, Aug. 25, Bialik, 49, revealed that she and Don Reo, the creator of Blossom, approached Disney with the idea of reviving the 1990s sitcom. Since the show was a Disney-owned property, they could only reboot it with Disney at the helm, she said.
“We approached Disney as I was on the cusp of starting Call Me Kat; and was working on Jeopardy!” and we simply did not have the time to develop the show but tried to lock it in quickly,” Bialik wrote. “Time ran out and I did three seasons of Call Me Kat, 2 seasons as co-host of Jeopardy! and when both of those ended, Don and I could not let the possibility of revisiting Blossom go.”
“They seemed to love it, understood what we wanted to do, and Don and I felt comfortable to speak about it in the press,” Bialik wrote of their meeting with Disney. “We felt certain this was moving forward.”
After a series of company mergers and industry shakeups, Bialik and Reo re-pitched their reboot plan to a new team at the media giant.
Bialik wrote, “Unfortunately, and for no particular reason, we were told ‘no.’ ”
Bialik and Reo asked to obtain the rights to the show, she added, so that they may proceed with the reboot elsewhere. They wanted to “let the market decide if audiences might want to see these characters all these years later,” she wrote.
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Nonetheless, Disney was not willing to hand over the rights, she claims.
“We will likely never know (unless Disney or 20th Century Studios reads my Substack and feels compelled to chime in and comment) why they would not let us bring these beautiful stories to people who love 90s nostalgia and who have a special place in their hearts for Blossom,” she wrote.
Later on, Bialik wrote that Blossom Russo is the “role I want to play more than any other,” and since the project fell apart, “my desire to continue to pursue on-camera roles has waned.”
Near the end of her essay, Bialik said she was not reaching for sympathy, though. “I have had an incredible career and do not take it for granted,” she wrote. “And while it is possible no one wants a Blossom reboot, I’m certain Disney got this wrong.”
She went on, “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.”
PEOPLE reached out to Disney for comment.
Blossom originally aired on NBC. The pilot premiered in 1990, and the series later aired from 1991 to 1995. The show followed Blossom Russo (Bialik), an Italian-American teenager navigating the ups and downs of adolescence while adjusting to life in her male-dominated household with her single father and brothers after her mother leaves home to pursue her own career.
Joey Lawrence and Michael Stoyanov played Blossom’s older brothers. The series is unavailable on streaming subscription services, but episodes are available for purchase on Prime Video, Apple TV and YouTube.
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