From the show’s layout to seating arrangements to the kitchen tablecloths, there’s a lot to know.
Last year, ABC Studios officially declared July 30 as Golden Girls Day—more than 30 years since the hit sitcom first premiered—which perfectly coincides with National Cheesecake Day. To celebrate the mark that The Golden Girls cast has made with their catchy theme song, unique sense of humor, and unabashed love of a good lanai, take a closer look at The Golden Girls’ kitchen.
Jim Colucci’s 2016 New York Times bestseller, Golden Girls Forever, gave GG fans insight into this specific room in the show’s Miami house, where viewers saw four women band together as a family. Whether loyal admirers wonder where The Golden Girls house is now, or want a bedspread like Blanche’s, or discover the show’s connection with another beloved sitcom, The Golden Girls’ kitchen has a rich history all its own.
1/ The kitchen messed up the entire show’s layout.
ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES / CONTRIBUTOR//GETTY IMAGESAvid watchers of The Golden Girls can agree that the show’s layout was confusing, and the set creators don’t deny it. Production designer Ed Stephenson came up the show’s layout over one weekend and made a model of the three rooms needed for the pilot episode: Blanche’s bedroom, the living room, and the lanai. The set was brought together seamlessly, but everything quickly changed when the script was revised, and it included a kitchen—a room that hadn’t been thought of yet.
Production designers came up with ways to get around this issue but since The Golden Girls’ kitchen was added last-minute, it caused a “ripple effect” of other changes, and ultimately, the layout of the house didn’t make sense. “The kitchen created issues no one could ever solve,” assistant art director Michael Hynes said to Jim Colucci in Golden Girls Forever. “We said, ‘Well, when we get through the pilot, we’ll fix it’—and then we never did.”
2/ The kitchen set was not original.
NBC / CONTRIBUTOR//GETTY IMAGESWhen the script for the pilot episode of The Golden Girls was revised and it included a kitchen, Ed turned to the TV sets he had tucked away in storage (more than 150!) from other shows. In the end, the kitchen of the short-lived sitcom, It Takes Two, was chosen.
“We took what had been the show’s kitchen and just spliced it right on to The Golden Girls’ living room,” Michael told Jim Colucci. “We took out the oven area and a couple of cabinets to make it a little smaller, but otherwise that was their wallpaper, their shelves, and their plants.”
Interestingly enough, an oven was never actually worked back into the kitchen set, and when a scene called for the use of the oven, the ladies had to fake taking food out of a non-existent appliance.
3/ The kitchen table only had three chairs.
NBC / CONTRIBUTOR//GETTY IMAGESFans of The Golden Girls can testify that although four ladies lived at 6151 Richmond Street in Miami, there were only three chairs surrounding the famous kitchen table, but this was a conscious decision. To avoid squeezing all four shoulder-to-shoulder and more importantly, to not have an actress with her back to the camera, only three women usually sat at the table.
According to assistant art director John Shaffner, having the fourth person sit on a stool—or cooking at the island nearby—gave viewers the feeling that they were seeing a play, making the experience more appealing.
4/ The characters’ seating was situation-dependent.
NBC / CONTRIBUTOR//GETTY IMAGESThe three Golden Girls who were chosen to sit on the kitchen table in each episode were also strategically placed, according to MentalFloss.com. The seating arrangements depended on two things: the particular situation and who needed to exit the kitchen during the scene. Actress Bea Arthur (Dorothy Zbornak) was always given the middle chair because of her height, and it was also the perfect spot for the camera to catch her unique face expressions.
5/ The kitchen tablecloths were important on set.
NBC / CONTRIBUTOR//GETTY IMAGESViewers may have also noticed that the kitchen table actually changed from the pilot episode—originally a glass top table—but there was another detail important on The Golden Girls’ set.
“The tablecloths quickly became a big deal on the show,” Michael told Jim Colucci. “Ed always wanted a pattern, but then after dress rehearsal, the producers would often note that the tablecloth clashed with someone’s dress, so we started collecting different options…We ended up with a whole rack of 50 to 60 tablecloths, which we kept right behind the refrigerator.”
