Big news for fans nostalgic about TV shows from the 2000s that are, in turn, about being nostalgic about the 1970s, as THR reports that Netflix’s upcoming That ’90s Show has signed deals to bring back five out of the six main cast members of That ’70s Show, excepting only co-star Danny Masterson.
(Let’s take care of this in a sidebar, since it’s an unavoidable aspect of basically any That ’70s Show news story: Masterson has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault, with lawsuits pending against him regarding alleged efforts to use his connections with The Church Of Scientology to intimidate accusers into silence. Masterson has denied the allegations, but Netflix cut ties with him in 2017, firing him from his sitcom The Ranch at the time. He’s set to stand trial on three charges of rape in August of this year.)
Specifically, Topher Grace, Laura Prepon, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, and Wilmer Valderrama have all reportedly signed deals to appear on the streaming service-set sequel, reuniting them with fellow ’70s castmates Kurtwood Smith and Debra Jo Rupp, who were already part of the cast. The series stars Callie Haverda as Leia Forman, the daughter of Grace and Prepon’s characters, who comes to stay with her grandparents (Smith and Rupp) for a summer in the 1990s.
The deals reunite a cast that’s had a fairly enormous amount of success, collectively, with their post-’70s careers; Grace currently stars in Home Economics on ABC, Prepon had a long run on Orange Is the New Black, Valderrama is an NCIS stalwart, and married couple Kutcher and Kunis have both had successful runs in both film and TV. And now they’re all coming back to Point Place, Wisconsin, for the second attempted sequel or spin-off of the That ’_0s Show franchise, after the single-season That ’80s Show, whose entire run was eclipsed by that of its parent show back in 2002.