Did You Know Jessie Spano Is From Farmington Hills

The other day, a friend of mine and I were talking about Saved by the Bell, and whether they watched the show growing up. During the conversation, the character of Jessie Spano came up, and I couldn’t quite recall the name of the actress who played her.

It was on the tip of my tongue, so I had to go and look up who I would eventually discover to be Elizabeth Berkeley. Just as soon as I saw her name, I also saw something that completely took me by surprise, which is that Elizabeth grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

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In fact, she was born there and spent most of her childhood in Michigan, as at age 4, she had taken jazz and tap lessons at a dance center in Detroit, and later did ballet at Dance Detroit.

Detroit seemed to be kind of a breakout city for her, as she eventually performed the New York City Ballet version of The Nutcracker in Detroit.

In 1988, her family had to relocate to Los Angeles while she was still attending North Farmington High School because she was pursuing a modeling career. It was only a year after moving that she ended up landing the role as Jessie Spano, even though she tried to try out for the part of Kelly Kapowski.

Most recently, Elizabeth starred as Moon Taylor's mom, Winnie, in Cobra Kai.

I’m curious if she has ever returned home since making it big. I’m just glad that the addiction to caffeine pills wasn’t a real thing, because that could’ve been a serious tragedy to a great career.