HAPPY MOTHERS DAY:  TOP TV MOMS

Every generation has their favorite Mom from television that they adored watching every week.  

Ever wonder what happened to them?  Well…let me hip you to what they are up to now…

PHYLICIA RASHAD -THE COSBY SHOW

As Clair Huxtable, the attorney mom of five, Rashad charmed us with her wholesome brand of comedy. Rashad and her actress daughter, Condola Rashad, 29, recently costarred in the Lifetime Movie Network remake of Steel Magnolias. And, of course, no one could lay a glove on Rashad as a boxer’s mom in last year’s Creed. Oh, and let’s not forget Rashad becoming the First African-American woman to win a Best Actress in a Play Tony Award.  You can catch her on Off- Broadway right now in Head of Passes.

MEREDITH BAXTER -FAMILY TIES

Ex-hippie Elyse Keaton (Baxter) beautifully played off her Reaganite son, sweater-vested Alex (Michael J. Fox). A single mother of two by age 24, Baxter had three more kids with second husband David Birney, got sober in 1989, survived breast cancer in 1999 and married a woman in 2013. She has three grandkids. 

JUDITH LIGHT -WHO’S THE BOSS

On Who’s the Boss? Light played driven, divorced and thoroughly undomesticated ad exec Angela Bower, who hires a male live-in housekeeper (Tony Danza). Later roles found her playing the mother of an HIV-positive teenager (The Ryan White Story) or battling for control of a family business (Ugly Betty). Now she’s changing the TV landscape by starring as the ex-wife of a man (Jeffrey Tambor) transitioning to a woman on Amazon Studios’ Transparent.

JOANNA KERNS – GROWING PAINS

Opposite work-at-home husband Alan Thicke on the Mr. Mom-inflected Growing Pains, she played a journalist with shoulder pads and three kids. The show kicked off a rich career for Kerns as a television director, including episodes of Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

MEL HARRIS – THIRTY SOMETHING

In a prime-time soap that defined yuppie angst, Harris was beautiful and believable as Hope Steadman, a young woman who disrupts her career, her sleep and her friendships to stay home and raise her daughter. Harris — herself the mother of a toddler at the time — later starred as double divorcée Carly Davis on the comedy series Something So Right and as an “ascended being” named Oma Desala on Stargate SG-1.

KATEY SAGAL – MARRIED WITH CHILDREN

Sagal has had one mother of a career — from louche Peg Bundy on Married With Children to levelheaded Cate Hennessy on 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter to loose-screw biker matriarch Gemma Teller Morrow on Sons of Anarchy. A former backup singer for Bob Dylan and Bette Midler, Sagal voiced one-eyed Turanga Leela on 124 episodes of far-out Futurama (1999-2013) and has released two solo albums. 

ALLEY MILLS – THE WONDER YEARS

I modeled my character on my best friend’s mom,” Alley Mills says about The Wonder Years’ Norma Arnold, the warm, nurturing mother she played on the 1960s-set dramedy. “My audition scene was a kitchen argument with Jack [actor Dan Lauria]. The other actresses really fought, but I tried to calm Dan down…because I knew family harmony would be Norma’s goal.” Mills has played “bipolar baddie” Pamela Douglas on the enduring daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful since 2006.

ROSEANNE BARR – ROSEANNE

This nine-year backlash against the perfect TV moms of yore showcased comedian Barr as an overweight blue-collar worker raising three kids with her husband, Dan, in fictional Lanford, Ill.  Barr’s fearless embrace of social issues made the show a smash during its first season. Suffering from glaucoma and macular degeneration today, Barr, 63, is opening a marijuana dispensary, Roseanne’s Joint, in 2016.  Oh yeah…and let’s not forget she ran for POTUS in this last election.

PATRICIA RICHARDSON – HOME IMPROVEMENT 

 Those perfect sitcom wives of the 1950s and ’60s made me feel inadequate… so when I came onto Home Improvement, I was like, ‘I want to be irritable! I want to have a temper! I want to be shown trying to get my kids and my husband to help with the housework!’ ” Richardson’s battles to make Jill Taylor true to life should come in handy in May and June, when she plays scrappy M’Lynn Eatenton in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Playhouse production of Steel Magnolias.