‘7th Heaven’ was a moralizing drama with ‘the least cool teens.’ But it was also a hit

In early 2023, millennial comedian Rob Anderson was working on his book when he needed a break. He settled on streaming an episode of “7th Heaven,” a show he hadn’t seen since childhood, with a friend.

The plot made his jaw drop: Teenager Mary Camden (played by Jessica Biel) steals a glass from a diner as part of a basketball team hazing ritual. When her father, who is a reverend, finds the glass at home, Mary’s older brother Matt takes the rap and agrees to return it to the diner and apologize. But the diner manager presses charges against Matt, and a court case ensues. Eventually, Mary comes clean, and a bevy of local teens shows up in court with various stolen diner items in an act of mass repentance.

“I looked at my friend and said, ‘This is absolutely insane,’” Anderson recalled in an interview. “‘There is just no way it’s this ridiculous.’”

Anderson posted a humorous recap of that Season 1 episode on TikTok, where he quickly found an audience hungry to relive the absurdity of the themes in “7th Heaven” along with him.

A scene from “Goodbye & Thank You,” the two-part Season 10 finale of the WB’s “7th Heaven,” originally slated to be the series finale. The show was picked up for an 11th and final season.

(Danny Feld / The WB)

Fortunately, the glass theft was just one of hundreds of melodramatic plotlines in the series about a Protestant minister, his wife and their five — later, seven — children. Over the course of a whopping 11 seasons, the pious Camden clan dealt with everything from spray paint huffing to alcoholism, gangs, caffeine addiction, bulimia, hickies, homelessness and, in one particularly memorable episode, the matriarch’s devastating admission that she had once smoked marijuana.

When the series premiered in 1996, it became a surprise hit for the WB, then a fledgling network that had launched only a year earlier. But unlike other popular series from the 1990s and 2000s, “7th Heaven,” which is available to stream on Prime Video, hasn’t seen much of a nostalgic revival.

Part of that is due to its overarching Very Special Episode tone and moralizing treatment of various issues. It is also due in part to the public downfall of actor Stephen Collins, who played the show’s patriarch, Rev. Eric Camden. In 2014 Collins admitted to sexual misconduct with three preteen and teen girls in the years before “7th Heaven.”

But now, three of the former “7th Heaven” child actors are sharing their side of the “7th Heaven” story.

Beverley Mitchell (middle Camden daughter Lucy), David Gallagher (younger son Simon) and Mackenzie Rosman (youngest daughter Ruthie) launched a new podcast called “Catching Up With the Camdens” in July, in which they detail their experiences growing up on the series. In a recent video interview with The Times, the three actors crammed onto a couch at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home, where they record. A framed “7th Heaven” poster rested on the mantel behind them.

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“It really, genuinely feels like reconnecting with your family members,” said 34-year-old Rosman, who was just 7 when she was cast on the show. “It has felt so nourishing for all of our hearts.”

Podcasting their memories

The idea for the podcast came after the trio, along with Catherine Hicks (who played their mom, Annie) and Barry Watson (who played eldest son Matt), reunited in March to attend ’90s Con — a fan convention featuring panels and meet-and-greets with pop culture figures of that decade.

“What I saw at ’90s Con was people who loved my work, who were like, ‘Where have you been, and how come we haven’t seen you? We miss you,’” said Gallagher, 39. “I was able to see that our audience isn’t this jaded, negative internet hole that we’re going to fall into and never crawl back out of. It seemed like something positive.”

“We just wanted to share our memories,” said Beverley Mitchell about the podcast she co-hosts alongside her former “7th Heaven” co-stars David Gallagher and Mackenzie Rosman.

(Willy Sanjuan / Invision / AP)

Mitchell “wrangled” the gang back together to make the podcast happen, Rosman said, and the three actors — who look nearly identical to how “7th Heaven” viewers may remember them, apart from Gallagher’s bald head and bushy beard — now routinely gather to record the show in batches. Watson has appeared as a guest and upcoming episodes will feature commentary from Hicks and “7th Heaven” guest star Ashlee Simpson. They also hope to welcome Biel and other personalities in the future.

Early podcast episodes have the rowdy energy of eavesdropping on a dinner table conversation: chaotic, comforting and not entirely productive. Following listener feedback, future episodes, which arrive biweekly, will stick to a more structured episodic rewatch format.

“We just wanted to share our memories,” Mitchell, 43, said. “Then, everybody really wanted us to relive all of these embarrassing moments, so we begrudgingly started rewatching.”

‘The least cool teens in a generation’

“7th Heaven,” which was executive produced by TV titan Aaron Spelling, was not a “cool” show. It lacked the edge of its WB contemporaries like “Dawson’s Creek,” “Felicity” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and its storylines usually involved the reverend gravely imparting biblical lessons to his family.

But despite featuring what Spin magazine dubbed “the least cool teens in a generation,” “7th Heaven” was the most popular show on the WB by its third season, and in 1999, 12.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the birth of the Camden twins, giving the network its highest episodic ratings of all time.

“Before ‘7th Heaven,’ you always had family shows that were staples on TV, like ‘The Brady Bunch’ and ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” Gallagher said. “We had come after this long pedigree of family shows, and, in a way, we were kind of the capstone of that style.”

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1. Beverly Mitchell with Wade Carpenter, who played recurring character Jordan Johansen on the series. (The WB) 2. David Gallagher as Simon Camden, left, with Barry Watson as Matt Camden. (Paul McCallum / The WB)

Creator and executive producer Brenda Hampton often imbued the Camden kids with elements of their real-life counterparts’ personalities, but the actors learned about many of the social issues the show tackled for the first time when they became storylines.

Mitchell, for example, was unaware that cutting was a form of self-harm until there was a Season 3 episode about it. And Gallagher had never been drunk, on the show or in real life, when a Season 6 episode required him to act out the consequences of Simon overindulging. (A producer instructed Gallagher to study the 1981 comedy “Arthur” to deliver a believably tipsy performance.) All three actors had their first kisses on the show.

“Pretty much all of those big life experiences we learned about for the first time when the scripts were handed to us,” Rosman said.

Growing pains

Acting on a wholesome family series also came with certain expectations. Biel, who was cast as Mary at 14 and is actually a year younger than Mitchell, has said she “butted up against” the “limitations” of being on “7th Heaven” as she became the series’ breakout star.

She rebelled by cutting and dyeing her hair (moves she said were not permitted in her contract), and at posed for a racy Gear magazine cover shoot, for which she had to apologize to Spelling. Biel eventually left “7th Heaven” after Season 5 and reprised her role only periodically for the remainder of the series.

Jessica Biel, left, with Adam LaVorgna and Stephen Collins in a scene from “7th Heaven.” Biel left the series after Season 5.

(Jerry Wolfe / The WB)

While Mitchell, Gallagher and Rosman said they sometimes wished they could have been on an edgier show and that they experienced similar pangs of wanting to break free from their squeaky-clean TV images during production, they never followed through the way Biel did.

“She had more balls than the rest of us,” Mitchell said with a laugh. “No matter how hard I wanted to pretend like I could be like the bad girl, there’s not one ounce of that in my being. I definitely would not survive on ‘Dawson’s Creek.’”

A clouded legacy

On their podcast, the trio often mention memories with Collins, but an hour into this interview, no one had uttered their former TV dad’s name. And what had been a bubbly, laughter-filled discussion took on a much tenser tone when I broached the subject of the actor and his sexual misconduct revelations.

“We were equally as surprised as everyone else,” Rosman said quietly.

Collins is not part of a group chat that includes many of their former “7th Heaven” co-stars, she added. And Gallagher said the discovery of Collins’ behavior — which has led to multiple networks removing “7th Heaven” from syndication — is a “shame.”

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Actor Stephen Collins admits sexual misconduct with three girls

Actor Stephen Collins has publicly admitted that he engaged in sexual misconduct with three girls decades ago, calling his actions “inexcusable” and saying he was “deeply remorseful about what happened,” according to People magazine.

Dec. 17, 2014

“It colored the way that we all look back on the show negatively,” he said. “What else can you say about that besides it’s unpleasant and not great.”

Yet the younger actors’ memories from filming “7th Heaven” are “as pure and wonderful as they seem,” Mitchell stressed. “We all had a really great experience. So that’s the only thing we can speak to — we can speak our truth.”

In his TikToks, Anderson frequently throws in a punchline alluding to Collins’ transgressions, but he is also adamant that the actor’s actions shouldn’t negate the legacy of “7th Heaven.”

Just because one element of the series is “gross,” Anderson said, “doesn’t mean that we need to wash away this entire thing that everybody has grown up on. But we do need to acknowledge it.”

Life after ‘7th Heaven’

Now, Mitchell, Gallagher and Rosman are all parents themselves. Mitchell has three children, while Gallagher and Rosman have one each. Focusing on their own families has been a priority in the post-“7th Heaven” years and “puts the show in a new light,” Gallagher said.

Mitchell was the only “7th Heaven” kid to stay through the series’ entire run, from 1996 to 2007, and she eventually joined the cast of Hampton’s subsequent ABC Family show “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” In recent years, the actor has appeared in several TV Christmas movies — and one of Anderson’s TikToks — and relocated to Colorado.

Gallagher left “7th Heaven” full-time during its eighth season to study film at USC, and Rosman also departed the series early and now resides in Maryland, where she focuses on riding and training horses. (“I love to go fast — cars, motorcycles, horses. Anything you could break your neck doing, I’m in,” she said.)

The trio, along with Hicks and Watson, are slated to attend another ’90s Con in September. And while Gallagher said there was a time when a “7th Heaven” reboot was “seriously” discussed, that time has passed.

“Right now, just be happy with what you got, which is our podcast,” Mitchell said. “You’re stuck with us.”