“Family Matters ”creator says the “Perfect Strangers” spinoff was made for Reginald VelJohnson, not Jo Marie Payton

Raechal ShewfeltThu, August 6, 2026 at 12:08 AM UTC

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‘Family Matters’ stars Reginald VelJohnson and Jo Marie Payton as Carl and HarrietteCredit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via GettyKey Points -

William “Bill” Bickley, one of the creators of TV’s Family Matters, has explained that the show came about after Die Hard.

The sitcom wasn’t meant as a spinoff for Perfect Strangers actress Jo Marie Payton, he said in a new interview.

A rep for Payton declined to comment.

Weirdly, Family Matters wouldn’t been the same without Die Hard.

William “Bill” Bickley, who created the ‘90s sitcom with Robert L. Boyett and Thomas L. Miller, said the is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-Christmas-movie greatly influenced it by showcasing actor Reginald VelJohnson. He portrays the police officer who bonds with Bruce Willis’ main character, John McClane, as he fights the bad guys in the 1988 action hit.

He explained on a recent episode of the Keanan and Lakin Give You Déjà Vu podcast that Family Matters, which was famously the home of Winslow neighbor Steve Urkel (Jaleel White), was created for VelJohnson and not actress Jo Marie Payton, who played VelJohnson’s wife, Harriette.

“Perfect Strangers — it was not created for her, even though she says that to everybody,” Bickley said of Payton. “Reggie VelJohnson had just done Die Hard — you know, supporting character, small role, but a knockout.”

Bickley continued, “So Tom said, ‘let’s do a show for that guy.’”

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Miller, who died in 2020, had worked as an executive producer of another ABC sitcom, Perfect Strangers, which aired between 1986 and 1993. Payton had played Harriette Winslow on the odd-couple comedy beginning in its third season in 1987.

“So we did what was basically a spinoff from Perfect,” Bickley said, “which was about Reggie, and because Jo Marie was there, we said, ‘OK, we’ll team them up,’ and that’s how it came to be.”

A rep for Payton declined to comment.

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Bickley added that it was “kind of a hurry-up pilot because, again, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we tried to figure that out.”

They did something right.

Family Matters, about the ups and downs of a working-class Black family, became a favorite in ABC’s TGIF lineup.

It aired for nine seasons, from 1989 to 1998, although Payton left halfway through the last one. Her last episode aired Dec. 19, 1997. Harriette was played by actress Judyann Elder for the final nine shows.

The Winslows, played by Reginald VelJohnson and Jo Marie Payton, on ‘Family Matters’Credit: CBS via Getty

The original cast of the sitcom, which came to focus more and more on Urkel’s shenanigans in its later years, reunited for Entertainment Weekly in September 2017.

Payton said then that she considered leaving Family Matters behind two years earlier.

“I was unhappy about a lot of things; I was going through a divorce, I wasn’t happy on the show—it didn’t mean I did not want to perform as an actress or an artist,” Payton said. “The way I explain it is that, when you’re a baker, you don’t always want to bake cakes or cookies; you want to bake pies, you want to bake bread. I wanted to do something else.”

She didn’t regret leaving.

on Entertainment Weekly

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