As he turned 79 this week, Family Ties star Michael Gross raised a glass to toast his co-star Meredith Baxter, who shares the same birthday as him. Gross, who played the Keaton family patriarch on the beloved NBC sitcom, marked their special shared occasion with a social media tribute.
Shared Birthday Tribute
“79 years ago today, baby Michael was born in the Central Time Zone and baby Meredith in the Pacific Time Zone,” Gross shared. “Thirty-five years later, the two of them met and played husband and wife on @nbc’s Family Ties. @familytiescentral #fans already know this, but for those who don’t, Happy Birthday, Meredith Baxter!!!”
On the sitcom, which ran for seven seasons from 1982 to 1989, Gross and Baxter played Steven and Elyse Keaton, onetime 1960s radicals adjusting to life in the suburbs with their kids: Ronald Reagan-loving son Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox), fashion-obsessed daughter Mallory (Justine Bateman), smart-mouthed Jennifer (Tina Yothers), and their precocious youngest child Andy (Brian Bonsall).
Reunion and Reboot Talk
When Gross and Baxter reunited onstage for a 2018 stage production of Love Letters at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania, the two dismissed talk of a possible reboot. “Too much time has passed,” Baxter said in an interview with the Call Me Adam blog. “There is no talk and I very much doubt that will happen,” Gross added. “You know our head guru, Gary David Goldberg has passed away, the man who really was at the heart and soul of our show. There is not a lot of interest from our original writers. They’ve have gone on to do other things … I think it’s best left the way we remember (the Keaton family) …fondly.”
How They Landed Their Roles
Playing Steven and Elyse proved to be career-making roles for Gross and Baxter, but they got the parts thanks to two lucky breaks. Speaking at a virtual reunion in 2020, Gross said he landed the role of Steven after executive producer and creator Gary David Goldberg’s daughter, Shana, saw his audition tape and said to her dad, “‘Oh, I like that guy!'”
Baxter, who came out as a lesbian in 2009, said she got the job after meeting Goldberg and his wife at dinner arranged by her then-husband. “Gary Goldberg and his wife, Diana, came to our house for dinner many months before the actual casting of the show. So they were talking to a fellow I was married to at the time about a project. And then some months later, they called me and asked if I would like to be in Family Ties. I had no idea what they saw or what happened, but I got the job and he didn’t,” she said.
Behind-the-Scenes Harmony
Gross also said there was no behind-the-scenes drama while the cast was shooting the Emmy-winning series. “I think I took some of how great we were together for granted,” he said. “I didn’t know how contrary some shows could be and how some casts quarreled the way they did. I mean, I just thought it was all perfection the way ours was and I didn’t really understand that things don’t always go this particularly well — that there was no controversy, not a lot of problems.”
