Anne Schedeen Dies at 77 After Playing Kate Tanner
anne schedeen, best known for playing Kate Tanner on ALF, has died at 77. Her official Facebook page said she “passed peacefully,” and agent Tom Markley also confirmed the news.
The page added that she leaves behind “an extraordinary legacy of creative energy” and urged readers to “Raise a margarita in her honor.” No cause of death was revealed. For a performer most closely tied to NBC’s late-1980s sitcom, the announcement closes the book on a TV career that reached viewers far beyond the show’s original run.
Kate Tanner and ALF
Schedeen was born Luanne Ruth Schedeen on Jan. 8, 1949, grew up on a farm outside Portland, Ore., and began acting at age 6 with teapots and flowers. She later studied at Portland State University and Fort Wright College in Spokane, Wash., after doing local theater in Hawaii and taking acting lessons at the Portland Civic Theater.
Before ALF, she appeared in Paper Dolls, Emergency!, Simon & Simon, and Marcus Welby, M.D. She said she sold clothes, modeled clothes, worked as a shoe model, played in summer stock, and did a commercial before landing a contract with Universal within a month. Her own account of that climb is blunt: “It was a long wait.”
From NBC to spinoffs
ALF aired on NBC from September 1986 to March 1990 and spawned several spinoffs, including an animated show. Schedeen said that when she read the script, “This is funny. It makes me laugh.”
She later gave a different account of the production itself, calling it a “technical nightmare — extremely slow, hot and tedious.” She added, “A 30-minute show took 20 to 25 hours to shoot.”
Those two views sit side by side in her story: the material made her laugh, but the work took grinding hours and, by her description, involved “a big, dysfunctional family.” That is the part of television history fans usually miss when they remember only the character and the alien.
Christopher Barrett and family
Schedeen is survived by her husband of 55 years, Christopher Barrett, daughter Tay Barrett, daughter-in-law Hilary Flynn, and sister Sarabeth Sche. The family’s statement centered less on credits than on the life around them, including “delight in her family,” “adoration for little dogs,” and “love for a good story.”
For viewers who remember Kate Tanner, the immediate takeaway is simple: one of the familiar faces of a long-running NBC sitcom is gone, and the record now rests on the work itself. The surviving family has already pointed readers toward remembrance, not speculation, and that is the right place to leave it.
