Before girlbossing was a thing, there was The Baby-Sitters Club.
Based on Ann M. Martin’s beloved book series, the coming-of-age story follows seven preteen girls who open a day camp to expand their babysitting business while navigating crushes, family drama, friendship and responsibility (of course). Debuting on Aug. 18, 1995, the movie helped raise a generation by treating kids like real people and celebrating different versions of girlhood.
“Just the idea of kids being able to make their own money — have their own business — that’s powerful stuff,” Rachael Leigh Cook, who played Mary Anne, said in Vulture’s oral history of the film in July 2020. “It grabbed me as a kid, and I think it grabs people now.”
The young stars behind the club have gone on to pursue all types of paths since their BSC days, and Netflix has since adapted the story of these seven friends into an eponymous series starring Alicia Silverstone as Kristy’s (Sophie Grace) mom.
In honor of the film’s 30th anniversary, let’s check in with the OG cast who once got this unforgettable chant stuck in our heads: “the brain, the brain, the center of the chain.”
Schuyler Fisk as Kristy Thomas
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Type-A tomboy Kristy was played by Schuyler Fisk — the daughter of actress Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk, who was 11 years old working on her first major film role (and first credit without involvement from her parents).
“It was actually accidental how I got cast in Baby-Sitters Club,” Fisk told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2022. “My cousin was working for the director [Melanie Mayron], and they had their lead fall through. Randomly, he was like, ‘My cousin’s acting,’ so I put myself on tape and got the part. It was one of those random coincidences where things lined up for me.”
She added, “My parents let me do it — they weren’t going to ruin my career that much! But they also weren’t taking me out to auditions in L.A. and that whole thing.”
Following The Baby-Sitters Club, Fisk continued to act, appearing in Snow Day (2000), Orange County (2002), The Best of Me (2014) and Sam & Kate (2022). She has starred alongside Lea Thompson on Hallmark+’s The Chicken Sisters since 2024. In addition to acting, Fisk is also a folk singer, having released three studio albums and three EPs.
In 2012, Fisk married production designer Chapman Bullock.
Rachael Leigh Cook as Mary Anne Spier
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Cook made her acting debut in The Baby-Sitters Club as the smart but shy Mary Anne, a role she credits with launching her career.
“I loved those books, and I could not believe I got cast in that movie,” she said in her 2020 interview on Collider Ladies Night. “Honestly, if I hadn’t gotten that role, I don’t think we’d be talking today, ’cause I don’t think I would’ve gotten anywhere. So, I am beyond grateful for The Baby-Sitters Club.”
After playing Mary Anne, Cook had a recurring role on Dawson’s Creek in 1999 — playing the character inspired by Joey (Katie Holmes) in Dawson Leery’s (James Van Der Beek) film — and then starred alongside Freddie Prinze Jr. in the teen romance She’s All That that same year. Cook landed major parts in Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Antitrust (2001) and Nancy Drew (2007). She also appeared in Netflix’s 2021 reboot, He’s All That, starring Addison Rae.
No stranger to rom-coms and holiday films, the actress has starred in Netflix flicks such as Love, Guaranteed (2020) and A Tourist’s Guide to Love (2023), as well as Hallmark movies like A Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas (2019), Cross Country Christmas (2020), ‘Tis the Season to Be Merry (2021) and Rescuing Christmas (2023). Cook is set to reunite with former costar Prinze Jr. in 2025 in the upcoming holiday film The Christmas Affair.
In August 2004, Cook married The Vampire Diaries actor Daniel Gillies. She gave birth to her first child, Charlotte Easton Gillies, in September 2013, and a son, Theodore Vigo Sullivan Gillies, in April 2015. The pair separated after nearly 15 years of marriage in 2019 and finalized their divorce in 2021.
Larisa Oleynik as Dawn Schafer
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Of all the actresses to appear in The Baby-Sitters Club, Oleynik might have been the best-known when the movie first hit theaters in August 1995: She starred on the Nickelodeon series The Secret World of Alex Mack, which had debuted in October 1994. However, even with her rising star, the friendships she formed on the BSC set left a mark on the actress.
“I am on a text chain with all of the Baby-Sitters. I’ve made some lifelong friendships from The Baby-Sitters Club,” she said during a Netflix Family interview in July 2020. “I just remember that was a super magical summer for a lot of us.”
Oleynik would go on to play the love interest of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character on both 3rd Rock from the Sun and in the 1999 teen rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You. She has had recurring roles on series such as Pretty Little Liars, Hawaii Five-0, Mad Men, The Healing Powers of Dude, Trinkets and Eric & Aaron. Oleynik also voiced several characters on Winx Club.
For its 30th anniversary, Oleynik appeared on the Pod Meets World podcast in June 2025 and discussed how some of the film adaptation’s storylines have translated in modern times, including the love story and age gap of Bre Blair’s Stacey and Christian Oliver’s Luca. According to Oleynik, Blair was actually 14 at the time, too, and Oliver felt bad about “having to kiss” her for their scene.
“He [Oliver] was like 19,” Oleynik said during the episode. “He and I had worked on something together recently, and he was like, ‘I was so uncomfortable. Being like a 19-year-old man amidst all of these 13-year-old girls.’ ”
On the plotline and age difference, Oleynik continued, “That’s the one huge hole. It really is. I’m like, wow. I don’t think we can dig ourselves out of that one,” before describing her former BSC costar Cook as “the coolest.”
“She felt like a teenager to me,” Oleynik said of Cook, who was 15 at the time of filming.
Tricia Joe as Claudia Kishi
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Tricia Joe, who played fashion maven Claudia, quit acting after The Baby-Sitters Club, having only appeared on-screen in three works before. According to her Facebook, Joe earned a degree in dance from Fullerton College in 1999.
Bre Blair as Stacey McGill
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Blair played sophisticated big-city girl Stacey and ended up growing close with her castmates off-screen, which mirrored the film’s main focus on female friendship.
“There was a lot of bonding happening, and we were all very different, mind you … just as people. We were all very different personalities,” the Canadian actress told Vulture in 2020. “In most movies, you can’t find a scene where two girls talk about something other than a boy, right? But in The Baby-Sitters Club, you could. In a weird way, these candy-colored G-rated books, somehow, were really relatable to women, even as adults.”
Since then, Blair has appeared in a handful of movies, including 1999’s Cherry Falls and 2025’s Gunslingers and has had an extensive TV career with appearances on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, What About Brian, The Unit, Brothers & Sisters, 90210, Make It or Break It, Game of Silence, Station 19, Alert: Missing Persons Unit and S.W.A.T.
Stacy Linn Ramsower as Mallory Pike
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Stacy Linn Ramsower had a big year in 1995: Not only did she appear in the post-apocalyptic comic-book adaptation Tank Girl and the Western The Quick and the Dead, but she also brought the bookish Mallory to life on-screen in The Baby-Sitters Club.
Looking back, she told Vulture in 2020 that the cast’s real-life connection helped fuel the story’s heart: “Through every scene, we were becoming closer — becoming these characters who were driven and excited and struggling and just really loved each other.”
Beyond 1995, however, Ramsower has only one minor movie credit.
She has left show business for a career as a doula in Tucson, Ariz., according to her website, Dark Art Mother Studio. Ramsower has two children.
Zelda Harris as Jessi Ramsey
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Unlike most of her former costars, Zelda Harris had appeared in major films before and after the premiere of The Baby-Sitters Club. She previously starred as Troy in Spike Lee’s 1994 film Crooklyn before taking on the role of ballet dancer Jessi — a character she admits was far from her natural type.
“I am so different from Jessi. She’s very prim and proper, very collected. In a lot of ways, she’s the opposite of who I am,” Harris told Vulture in 2020. “But I remember [thinking]: How do I explain that I’m perfect to play Jessi because I’m a girl who believes in herself? I’m a girl with a can-do attitude. I think that’s the spirit behind these books and the corresponding fandom.”
Following BSC, she appeared on ABC’s Second Noah in the mid-’90s and in Lee’s 1998 film He Got Game.
Harris later graduated from Princeton in 2007. She told The Cut in 2021 that she now works as a teacher.
Marla Sokoloff as Cokie Mason
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Importantly, Marla Sokoloff’s character was not part of the Baby-Sitters Club. Cokie served as an antagonist for the club members, and Sokoloff had the mean-girl cred for the role: She’d previously played Gia, Stephanie Tanner’s (Candace Cameron Bure) bully-turned-buddy on Full House.
Since then, Sokoloff appeared in a slew of TV movies and films like Whatever It Takes (2000), Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) and The Merry Gentlemen (2024), as well as on episodes of Party of Five, The Practice, Desperate Housewives, Big Day, The Fosters and Grey’s Anatomy. She also reprised Gia on 11 episodes of Fuller House.
Sokoloff married musician Alec Puro in 2009. In 2022, they welcomed their third child, daughter Harper Bea, who joined sisters Elliotte Anne and Olive Mae.
Sokoloff has also blogged about parenting for PEOPLE, interviewing fellow Baby-Sitters Club star Cook about motherhood in 2013.
“I can’t wait to make our kids watch The Baby-Sitters Club with us someday and try to make them understand that we were young once, too,” Cook told Sokoloff.
