Lisa Whelchel Says She “Forgot” She Kissed George Clooney In Epic ‘Facts Of Life’ Reunion On ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’

Drew Barrymore celebrated her 49th birthday on this morning’s episode of her self-titled daytime talk show, where she was gifted a surprise reunion with The Facts of Life stars Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon and Mindy Cohn.

At one point in the nostalgic Drew Barrymore Show interview, Barrymore and co-host Ross Mathews asked Whelchel about the time she “forgot” she kissed her co-star George Clooney in an episode of the hit ’80s sitcom.

“I was being interviewed and somebody said, ‘What was it like to kiss George Clooney?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. We didn’t play girlfriend-boyfriend on the show.’ They said, ‘Yeah, you did.’ I said, ‘If I kissed George Clooney, I think I would remember it.’ And they rolled the tape,” she recalled.

Whelchel noted that her character was actually “pretending” to be his girlfriend when they smooched, before adding, “But that is not any commentary on his kissing ability, I’m sure.”

Like Clooney, the actress is a self-proclaimed “practical joker.” In fact, she recalled the time she tricked everyone into thinking The Brady Bunch star Eve Plumb gave her a black eye while rehearsing a fight scene.

“There was a fist fight and we were rehearsing it and she accidentally hit me,” Whelchel said. “So the next morning I came to the set early and I asked the makeup people to put a black eye to make it look like she really hit me. And then they had to scramble to figure out what they were gonna do. Just silly.”

However, this wasn’t the only time Whelchel had faked an injury.

“There was also a time I went to Disneyland and got a fake cast and pretended I had a cast and made them scramble to figure out what they were gonna do,” she remembered.

Whelchel starred alongside McKeon, Cohn and Kim Fields in the hit sitcom, which ran for nine seasons from 1979 to 1988. The show follows Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae), who becomes the housemother of an all-girls private school in New York.

According to Barrymore, the show gave her a “blueprint that made [her] life feel better.”

“I saw myself with you guys because you were raising yourselves, you were raising each other,” she said. “Mrs. Garrett was like at the helm of that and it made more sense to the life I was living than any other environment.”

Barrymore added, “What I was learning was to be a strong, independent female who could take care of themselves and value female friendship and know that there was someone there who was watching out for them — Mrs. Garrett. That was my life.”

The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays on CBS. You can check the website for local airtimes.