Melanie Watson Bernhardt’s role in Diff’rent Strokes marked one of the first times a disabled actor played a disabled character on television.
Melanie Watson Barnhart, the actress best known for her role as Cathy Gordon in “Diff’rent Strokes,” has died. She was 57 years old.
According to TMZ, Watson Barnhart’s brother, Rob Watson, confirmed that the actress passed away on Friday, December 26th in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The newspaper said she had recently been hospitalized for bleeding.
The actress was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disorder. Genetic diseases and collagen conditions weaken bones and cause associated complications such as short stature, bone deformities, and fractures.
Watson Barnhart uses a wheelchair, and her role as Kathy Gordon, the optimistic friend opposite Gary Coleman’s Arnold Jackson on the 1970s and 1980s sitcoms, provided true disability representation on television. She appeared in four episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes” from 1981 to 1984.
According to IndieWire, the role was written specifically for her. Two of the episodes are named after her character. In one episode, Kathy’s parents convince Arnold that he should encourage Arnold to walk with crutches, even though he does not want to do so.
“I didn’t want to do that,” she told the outlet, adding that an autumn a few years ago made her afraid to walk. “I remember saying, ‘This is someone else’s dream,’ but they explained to me that this was the premise of the episode.”
She said her mother asked her to do just that scene, which she did, but she became disillusioned with acting. But, she added, “I didn’t realize how amazing it would be to be the first person with a disability to play a character with a disability.” “If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed in this business.”
Coleman himself suffered from autoimmune kidney disease and was on medication, which caused him to be short at 4 feet 8 inches. He died in 2010 at the age of 42 after falling down the stairs at his home.
