List of Step By Step Characters - Production

Production

The series was created and executive produced by William Bickley and Michael Warren, and developed and executive produced by Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett. The series was produced by Bickley-Warren Productions, Miller-Boyett Productions in association with Lorimar Television (who produced the show from 1991 to 1993, when the show became produced by Warner Bros. Television). The casting of Patrick Duffy fulfilled a contract obligation Lorimar made to give him a new show after his previous one, Dallas (also produced by Lorimar), had ended its run. The show was created off of the idea of combining two of the most popular TV stars from the 1970s known for their good looks (Duffy and Somers) to star as parents to attract adult viewers with current teen celebrities (Keanan from My Two Dads and Going Places, Call from Baywatch and Mitchell from Dallas) to star as their children to attract kids and teen viewers.

Staci Keanan and Christopher Castile had previously appeared on the Miller-Boyett-produced ABC sitcom Going Places, which debuted the season prior to Step By Step. Keanan was the first of the two Going Places stars to join the development of Step By Step in the spring of 1991. Castile, who had played a gawky child on Going Places, brought the same character traits to the Mark Foster role, which was speculated to be Miller-Boyett's continued attempt to give the Family Matters character Steve Urkel a white counterpart.

When Step By Step was originally cast, child actor Jarrett Lennon had the role of Mark Foster. Lennon had been chosen by the producers after guest starring in the last original episode of the Miller-Boyett series The Hogan Family, produced in late 1990. After shooting the first pilot for Step By Step, which remains unaired, Lennon was dismissed from the role of Mark, leading to the producers replacing him with Castile (who had blonde hair like on-screen mother Somers, as opposed to Lennon having brown hair). Most of Lennon's pilot scenes were reshot with Castile, but during Step By Step's first season, footage of Lennon remained in the show's opening title sequence. Lennon only appeared in far away shots with the Lambert/Foster family or, in the case of Suzanne Somers' credit scene, fleetingly appearing at the bottom of camera view as the kids huddled around Somers. All traces of Lennon were edited out by season two. In 1996, these two actors had the tables turned on each other; Castile was the original voice of Eugene Horowitz on the Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold!, but after a few episodes was replaced by none other than Lennon, who voiced Eugene for the remainder of the first season.

The creators of Going Places, Howard Adler and Robert Griffard, would end up as the show's co-executive producers and writers until the fifth season of Step By Step; Adler and Griffard later wrote an episode as freelancers in the seventh season. Patrick Duffy directed several episodes of the series, starting with the second season. The house shown in establishing shots for scenes set at the Lambert-Foster house is located at 2011 Fletcher Ave. in South Pasadena, California though the series was actually filmed at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California.

Along with Family Matters, Step By Step moved to CBS in the fall of 1997, as that network attempted to build its own Friday night lineup of family-friendly situation comedies called "The CBS Block Party". The ratings, which had been declining for several seasons, continued to fall, and the show ended its run in June 1998. There was no official series finale, although the last show was about Frank and Carol considering selling the house.