All about the Seavers! Alan Thicke, Kirk Cameron and their Growing Pains costars brought to life a TV family worth loving.
Thicke (Dr. Jason Seaver), Cameron (Mike Seaver), Joanna Kerns (Maggie Seaver), Tracey Gold (Carol Seaver), Jeremy Miller (Ben Seaver) and Ashley Johnson (Chrissy Seaver) portrayed the sitcom clan. The show ran from September 1985 to April 1992, over seven seasons and 166 episodes.
The cast had a special bond — especially Thicke and his fictional children, who paid tribute to the How I Met Your Mother alum after his death at 69 following a heart attack in December 2016.
“We were a family,” Cameron told Today.com after Thicke’s death. “We laughed and cried together, shared birthday celebrations, Christmas parties, holidays and worked together with the crew as a team to make a really special TV show. We weren’t just a TV family. In many ways, we were a real family.”
Cameron applauded his onscreen father’s presence at the time. “Alan was … a seasoned dad through and through,” he noted. “He was always available on set and off to talk with me, to listen and understand, to give advice, calm my teenage nerves and even share my excitement when something great happened … just like a good dad.”
He continued: “In an ever-changing world, my friendship with Alan was always a constant. Meeting up with Alan, even after years had passed since we’d seen each other — we’d just pick up the conversation where we’d left off.”
Gold paid similar respects to Thicke in February 2018 when she reunited with Cameron and Miller on the Today show. “It’s still surreal. It’s still hard to grasp, and when we’re together, it is a reminder,” she said. “Alan was kind of the constant in all of our lives. … Alan always kept in touch with all of us. He’s deeply missed.”
Miller agreed with his former costars. “What I miss the most is just being able to call him about anything. I mean, that was the case 25 years after the show. No matter what was going on, I could just pick up the phone to call him and tell him good news, call him to get advice, call him to just talk and see how he’s doing,” he told Us Weekly in June 2019. “He was my other dad and I miss that connection, and he was the most loving, warm, caring man I’ve ever known to everybody. I miss that desperately.”
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Scroll down to see where the Growing Pains cast ended up after the show.