This week marks the 20th anniversary of The Baby-Sitters Club movie. Remember it? Of course you do! The movie taught us all the importance of friendship, and being entrepreneurial, and not lying to your hot foreign-exchange-student boyfriend about your diabetes or to your friends when your flaky dad comes to town. If you’re like me, you’ve hoped for a BSC reunion since you were young enough to hope one of them (Claudia) would magically come babysit you.
To celebrate the greatest movie about teenage capitalism ever made (except maybe for Blank Check), most of the cast reunited for a Q&A at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse last night.
Most of the cast.
Sure, Rachael Leigh Cook (Mary Anne), Breand Blair (Stacey), Larisa Oleynik (Dawn), Schuyler Fisk (Kristy), Stacey Ramsower (who played Mallory and is now a Houston yoga teacher) were all there. But two important members of the BSC are missing from that photo: the actresses who played Jessi and Claudia (Zelda Harris and Tricia Joe respectively).
If this were the book world, it would totally make sense that those two would skip out on a reunion. Like, Kristy and Mary Anne and Mallory and Stacey might still be in Stony Brook, planning their reunion weekend. And sure they would probably convince Dawn to come back. But Claudia, now a famous artist in Berlin, and Jessi, the next Misty Copeland, could never return to that boring place. Jessi is past feeling like the token black club member, you know? It was really hard for her.
Jessi gets drinks with Claudia sometimes, when C’s in town to meet her agent, and they talked about it, but they both agreed that even though they really want to be there for Mary Ann while she’s dealing with the divorce and Logan and Dawn’s recent coupling, it’d probably be too weird. Plus, neither of them have really talked to Stacey since she left New York after that whole group-sex thing. (Claudia knows it’s her fault; she isn’t ready to face it; Stacey, stop calling.)
But, you know, this is real life — so where were Tricia Joe and Zelda Harris? Anyone who has information about their whereabouts, feel free to email me or else I’ll just keep convincing myself the above fantasy is true.