Like so many people watching this, Danica McKellar will always feel warm in her heart the Wonder Years And as for Vinnie Cooper, the sweet character he played on the show for six seasons from 1988 to 1993. McKellar was just a teenager.
“I feel very close to him,” the actress told Yahoo Entertainment. “It’s representative of a big part of my childhood.”
Now 48, McKellar noted that the dramedy — which was rebooted in 2021 — stuck with audiences for a reason.
“It was a show that really spoke to universal themes and issues that all kids go through,” she says. “And what really impressed me about this show is that… I’m pretty sure it was the first of its kind, that respected the feelings of kids on a sitcom. Like a lot of shows really I would be about the adults and them. The kids were there too, and they’d be there with a punchline or a ‘How cute!’ And they run in, they run in. But the Wonder Years Said no, no, the feelings, emotions that children have are valid and deserve to be seen and respected.
McKellar and the rest of the cast continue to promote the show regularly, like she will this weekend who is the 90s in Hartford, Conn. His co-star Olivia d’Abo will also be there from the TV show and movies as well Cheat, Beverly Hills, 90210, saved by the Bell, and full house,
The latter means that McKellar’s “really good friend” Candace Cameron Bure will be on site.
Candace Cameron Bure Connection
McKellar most fondly remembers meeting Bure in the ’90s, when they were both teenagers on the ABC show.
“I think it was bop magazine… like, teen beat, all the magazines like that… They used to organize parties and invite all the kids who were on TV shows at the time. We’d all go, and then he’d take lots of pictures, and then he’d have material for his magazines. We would have fun and be friends with people,” McKellar shared. “And apparently she was dating (growing pains actor) Jeremy Miller at the time, and I didn’t know it. And Jeremy asked me to be his girlfriend that night, and I said yes. I came to know later that they were going out at that time. It was a whole big drama.”
When McKellar and Bure both competed dancing with the Stars In 2014, Bure finally (and jokingly) confronted McKellar,
“And that’s when he told me they were dating. I was like, what?!”
McKellar and Burr became close after that. They even started working together again.
“Candace, at that point, was already doing Hallmark Channel movies. And I’ve always been skeptical … because it was shortly after that Hallmark called me the first time, and I ended up doing 17 movies for that channel. Gave,” says McKellar. “And I’ve always thought, Oh, they were looking because Candace was on, and then they went, ‘Wait a minute, Danica fits perfectly for this type of movie too. Let’s hire her. Are.'”
Last year, both McKellar and Burr left Hallmark for the new network Great American Family, headed by a former boss from Hallmark’s parent company. Burr faced backlash for saying in November that, “I think the great American family will center the traditional marriage (between a man and a woman).” McKellar defended her at the time. “When she was talking about the portrayal of heterosexual couples in films, she began the sentence with ‘I think,’ which is not certain, and she ended it with ‘at its core,’ which means Not particularly,” she notes, adding that she supports the LGBTQ community.
Behind the Scenes of ‘Camp Cucamonga’
But long before the ladies appeared in those romantic comedies or vacation stories, the two co-starred in a very different kind of TV movie, a 1990 teen movie called camp cucamonga, which was full of TV stars. Some of the other artists: McKellar the Wonder Years co-star John Saviano; Chad Allen (our home, Jaleel White (family Matters, Sherman Helmsley (so be it, John Ratzenberger (encourage, and a pre-Friend Jennifer Aniston.
McKellar remembers it fondly… and vividly!
“We shot it during the summer and so I didn’t have to do any school work. Because you always, as a child actor, go back and forth between school rooms and then do a scene,” she She says “You can do, like, the emotional crying scene and then come back and do the last 20 minutes of your math test and then go back. You learn how to compartmentalize. But it was such a luxury to go back to my trailer for scenes.” and going like, ‘I can just hang out.'”
There was a cassette player in her trailer—after all, it was the ’80s—and Billy Joel, whom she had just discovered, was playing on repeat. (Okay, she rewinded and played the tape over and over again.) White, who is also a friend and McKellar’s co-star on a few Lifetime movies, made everyone laugh. And breakin’ mayor, still a few years away no news, nicknamed McKellar Ika. She plans to ask him about it at ’90s Con, since he’ll be there too.
his favourite wonder years episode
Mostly, though, the focus will be on McKellar. the Wonder Years at the convention, which aired its first episode on January 31, 1988, in the prime post-Super Bowl time slot. Audiences are introduced to junior high student Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and yes, his crush, McKellar K Cooper, who has just learned that his older brother has been killed in the Vietnam War. In a classic TV moment, the two share their first kiss as “When a Man Loves a Woman” plays.
The moving episode is always going to be McKellar’s favorite of the series’ total of 115.
“I think it’s the best television ever,” she says. “It took us 10 days to shoot 22 minutes of TV. It’s really amazing to see back the love that was put into that first episode.”
And the fans are still giving the love back.
some stamps from the 90s are still available on the official website.
