Those over 30 remember the pain: that jump scare of dialing a phone number only to be met with the piercing sounds of a fax machine answer tone — the uninvited cousin of the dial-up modem.
That’s exactly what The Wonder Years star Fred Savage heard every time he tried to call Alicia Silverstone after they met filming an episode of his family sitcom in 1992.
The Wonder Years season 5, episode 11 was Silverstone’s first on-screen role. In the episode, “Fred Savage’s character [Kevin Arnold] asks me on a date and I say, ‘Pick me up at seven,’ or something,” Silverstone tells Entertainment Weekly. “And that’s what makes him decide he needs to get on it and learn how to drive.”
Savage hoped to connect with Silverstone after filming. “Fred asked me for my number, which was really sweet, ’cause I was 14. My home phone number was also [used for] a fax machine of my dad’s work. So he had tried calling that a few times, and it just went straight to fax. So he thought I gave him a fake number or something.”
Silverstone — who recently graced the cover of EW’s ’90s Issue — says they have “since corrected the situation.”
But not all her Wonder Years connections were missed. The Clueless alum (who will reprise her role as Cher Horowitz in an upcoming sequel series) says she and Josh Saviano, who played Kevin’s best friend Paul on all six seasons of the ABC series, “became very good friends.”
“I don’t know how our exchange of numbers worked,” she says with a laugh, “but that worked.”
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Silverstone shared the fax machine anecdote as part of a larger cruise down Memory Lane, looking back at her iconic ’90s roles, including The Crush, Batman & Robin, Blast from the Past, and more. You can also watch the video interview in full above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
