Juliet Mills recently looked back on her 1970s sitcom, Nanny and the Professor.
The beloved actress who starred on the short-lived ABC series from 1970 to 1971, told ReMind magazine that out of the three child actors from those series, only two are living, but that she has only seen one of them at recent reunion events.
Mills, 84, starred opposite the late Richard Long for three seasons, playing the mystical, magical “Nanny” Phoebe Figalilly and Professor Harold Everett, respectively. The widowed professor’s kids were played by David Doremus (Hal), Trent Lehman (Butch), and Kim Richards (Prudence).
Mills told ReMind she had “great fun” on the show and loved Long, who died in 1974 at age 47. She also addressed the tragic suicide death of Lehman at age 20 in 1982. “I was very, very sad about that,” she shared in the interview published in March 2026. “[He] was my favorite. He was the best actor of all of them, and he was just a lovely boy.”
Photo by ABC Photo Archives on Getty Images
The British American actress, who went on to star in the film Avanti! and a long-running role on NBC’s Passions, admitted she hasn’t seen Richards lately. The former child star continued to act into the 1980s and was an original cast member on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She posed with Mills at The Hollywood Show held at the Westin LAX Hotel in April 2016, shortly after her exit from the Bravo reality show amid her struggles with alcohol.
“I haven’t run into Kim,” Mills revealed in the new interview. “We were supposed to do an autograph show…I have seen David Doremus in the last year. He’s not in the business anymore.”
Photo by Albert L. Ortega on Getty Images
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The cast was shocked when the series ended
Mills previously revealed that the cast members were surprised when Nanny and the Professor unexpectedly ended in 1971.
“I think we were all shocked, actually, and not ready to move on,” she told Closer Weekly in a 2019 interview. “Disappointed, because it wasn’t like the numbers and ratings and all that wasn’t good or anything. But suddenly it was over.”
Of the child actors on the series, she added, “They were wonderful, really, very professional and very good. I particularly liked Trent Lehman, who was Butch… David Doremus was good, but he wasn’t that committed in the way that Trent would have been had he gone on. And little Prudence, Kim Richards, was a spoiled little girl, but still very sweet.”
The actress added that she was saddened that Lehman and Richards both struggled in the aftermath of their childhood fame.
She also expressed one regret about the Nanny and the Professor series. “They made a mistake in not allowing a romance [between Nanny and the professor]. They were so prudish in those days,” she said. “Towards the end of the show, people were constantly saying, ‘When are you and the Professor going to get together? You’re so great together.’ It was absolutely a network decision.”
“It was also obvious that they really liked each other and had a lot in common as far as humor and everything,” the Nanny and the Professor star added. “And with the kids, it was like a husband and wife looking after them in a way, so it was a natural progression that wasn’t allowed.”
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