Growing Pains (TV)/Trivia

• Billing Displacement: After the success of Titanic, commercials for the show on Disney Channel focused almost entirely on Luke (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), despite being on the show for only a season.
• Directed by Cast Member: Joanna Kerns' first directing assignment came on one of the last episodes.
• Enforced Method Acting
• The Other Marty: Carol.
• Real Life Relative: Inverted. Kate, Mike's girlfriend, was played by Chelsea Noble who would later marry Kirk Cameron.
• Screwed by the Network: For Just the Ten of Us. Despite earning decent ratings as part of ABC's TGIF block and frequently winning its time slot, the show was abruptly cancelled in the spring of 1990, due to ABC wanting all shows in the TGIF block to be packaged by Miller-Boyett Productions, as was the case with fellow programs Full House, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers.
• Troubled Production: Kirk Cameron reportedly caused many problems after becoming a born-again Christian. He refused to act in plots that he thought had the least bit of sexual innuendo.
• Wag the Director: After converting to Christianity, Kirk Cameron became a Moral Guardian and started forcing his views onto the production. He also was partially responsible for getting actress Julie McCullough fired from the show because she posed for Playboy, and at one point he called up then ABC Entertainment president Lewis Erlicht and accused executive producers Dan Guntzelman, Mike Sullivan, and Steve Marshall of being pornographers (really). The executive producers couldn't fire the guy, since it was his mug in all the teen magazines, so they simply quit the show.
  • Years later, Cameron admitted that his behavior was immature and inappropriate.
  • Even more ironic, Steve Marshall would actually be arrested for child pornography in 2010.