Valerie Harper, stricken with terminal brain cancer and apparently in her final months of life, will reunite with “Mary Tyler Moore” castmates Mary Tyler Moore, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Georgia Engel on TV Land’s sitcom “Hot In Cleveland,” on which White is a regular and Engel recurs.
The episode, shooting April 5, will see all five actresses play members of a former championship bowling team that gets back together following a long-ago acrimonious breakup.
Despite her condition, Harper seems very much like her old self, making the rounds in recent days on talk shows “Piers Morgan Live,” “The Jeff Probst Show,” “Katie,” “The Talk,” “The Doctors” and “Good Morning America.”
White co-stars in “Hot” with Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick and Jane Leeves.
Moore played a different character, cellmate to White’s character, in an earlier episode of “Hot.”
Moore and Harper, who played best friends Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern on the ‘70s sitcom, have reunited many times over the decades (notably in the 2000 TV-movie “Mary and Rhoda”), but this is the first time all five actresses have acted together since “Moore” closed shop.
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