Inside Farrah Fawcett's Relationship With Her 'Charlie's Angels' Co-Stars
In 1976, Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jackson made their unforgettable television debut together as an all-female team of detectives who took assignments from their mysterious employer, Charlie Townsend, a disembodied voice on the phone who also directed their missions. The show, of course, was Charlie's Angels, and it went on to become a cult classic, spawning several feature films, including a forthcoming project directed by Elizabeth Banks.
The original Angels shared an extremely close bond both onscreen and off, Smith reveals in a new ABC documentary dedicated to Fawcett's legacy. In an exclusive ELLE.com preview of the network's This Is Farrah Fawcett, airing May 23 at 8 P.M. ET, Smith says that even when Fawcett left the show after just one season in 1977, the trio retained a close friendship that only got stronger when she was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006.
"In my mind, what Charlie's Angels was about was the bond of the girls," she says in the clip, "having each other's backs. We were very, very close."
The hit series got a big screen reboot treatment in 2003, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu starring as the Angels. In July 2018, it was announced that Elizabeth Banks would direct a new Charlie's Angels (described as a "legacy sequel" by Forbes), and her cast includes Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska.
“You take a story that’s usually kind of, for lack of a better word, not silly, but just kind of funny, campy,” Stewart told ET about the project. “The movie should still be fun but, like, if you ground it and make it about women that really know how to help each other, it’ll be perfect to release now. Like, we’re all together and strong.”
@EntertainmentWeekly has your first look at #CharliesAngels - click the link in bio for more. 😇❤️🎉
A post shared by Charlie's Angels (@charliesangels) on Apr 11, 2019 at 9:46am PDT
In ABC's new documentary, which comes nearly 10 years after Fawcett's death, Smith says the original Angels' unbreakable real-life bond was strengthened during the final days of Fawcett's life in 2009.
"That's what's interesting about friendship-once somebody is really in your heart, you can go all these different ways," Smith says, "but when you come back together...we came back together really strongly at the end of her life."
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