Her Role on Diff'rent Strokes Broke Barriers

Melanie Watson, who brought the wheelchair-using character Kathy Gordon to Diff'rent Strokes in the early 1980s, has died at 57, People reports. Her brother, Robert Watson, told TMZ that she died Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after she was hospitalized due to bleeding and her condition worsened. No additional details on her cause of death were reported. Watson was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic condition sometimes called brittle bone disease, and used a wheelchair throughout her life. The condition can cause bones to break easily and those with it can suffer from poor muscle tone and other issues, Page Six reports.

Watson appeared in four episodes of the NBC sitcom, which ran from 1978 to 1986 and starred the late Gary Coleman. Introduced in the third season, her character was featured prominently in the 1982 episode "Kathy" and the 1984 episode "Kathy's Olympics," remembered by fans for bringing a disabled child character into a prime-time family comedy at a time when such representation was rare. According to her IMDb biography, Watson was married to Robert Bernhardt from 1994 to 1996 and founded Train Rite, a program that prepares shelter dogs to assist people with disabilities.

In a 2020 interview with IndieWire, she credited Diff'rent Strokes producer Norman Lear for putting a disabled character on screen, saying she was "proud of Norman for going against the norm and doing something," and adding, "I didn't realize what a gift it was to be the first one out there. If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed in the business."