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"I'll do anything for ten dollars.
—Laurie[src]

Lauren "Laurie" Anne Forman is Eric's evil, manipulative older sister, the older of the Forman children and the only daughter. Eric's lookalike father Red spoils her and obviously favors her over Eric, often giving her money, while her mother Kitty favors Eric, as she knows exactly how bad her lookalike daughter is.

Character

"Red: What did I tell you about calling your sister The devil?
Eric: That it's offensive to the devil?
—Red and Eric when discussing Laurie

Laurie is extremely promiscuous and is seen with many different men, getting involved with her college psychology professor and then beginning a relationship with Michael Kelso. During his relationship with Jackie Burkhart, Kelso cheats with Laurie, and Laurie is an object of fantasy for Fez, whom she slept with and marries so he can get a green card in the final episode of Season 5.

Torturous, evil, bullying and a tattle-tale around Eric but manipulatively sweet with her parents, her raunchiness often gives her lookalike mother Kitty because for concern. One example of this is when she tries to seduce the local youth minister Pastor Dave after Kitty invites him over to try to get the kids interested in attending church services. Red, however, seems to be oblivious to her true nature, and sees her as his "perfect little princess", favoring her over Eric and giving her whatever she asks for, up until the episode "Laurie Moves Out", when she moves to an apartment with a married man. When Eric and Red come to visit and find out, he is shocked and storms out, proclaiming to Eric and Kitty that Laurie is not his daughter anymore. Kitty calms him down, helping him realize that Laurie is now a young woman and is "far from perfect". Red forgives her and she moves back in by the end of the episode (explaining unapologetically to her mother that the man she was living with dumped her and went back home to his wife). Ironically, although Red seems to be disappointed in Eric and is always getting mad at him for his or his friends shenanigans, it is Laurie who gives him an almost fatal heart attack when she announces that she married Fez so he could get a Green Card at the end of season 5.

Despite her disagreeable personality to Eric, she also showed off a maternal instinct as seen when she babysat for her mother's friend and got so attached to the baby that she refused to give it back; she only relented after Kitty threatened to submerge her beloved hair dryer in water. She also showed genuine sympathy towards her brother when he was traumatized after seeing their parents having sex by holding him close to her and telling him it'll be okay.

Laurie's most noticeable attribute is her distinctly Farrah Fawcett-style wavy blonde hair, which along with her innocent face belie her "vixen" status. Eric, Steven Hyde and Donna Pinciotti often mock her promiscuity, and Eric several times refers to her as "the devil" and "a bitch". Jackie usually refers to her as a "cheap slut," at one point getting into a catfight with her over Kelso.

Laurie's parents express belief that she will accidentally become pregnant. Kitty's reason for telling people about Fez and Laurie's marriage is that "I never thought I'd be able to say 'Laurie got married' without adding 'and the baby came early!'". Also, when Kitty expresses her desire for a baby, Red remarks that Laurie probably has "a few" secret children. They laugh for a moment and then a serious expression comes to each of their faces. Eric believes that this has already happened (more than once), when he tells Laurie "I'm sure whatever bastard children you've had have been adopted by now" when Laurie says she wants to make up for her past mistakes. Laurie is shown to be (partially) good with kids in "Baby Fever", but it quickly becomes clear that she values materials more (exchanging her hair-dryer for the baby).

Biography

Laurie appeared in a brief, recurring role in Season One. Despite being in a committed relationship with Jackie, Kelso flirted with (and attempted to seduce) Laurie. Laurie rejected his weak advances, but began flirting with him, and the two made out in "A New Hope", beginning their season-long affair.

In the second season, Laurie seduces Kelso into cheating on Jackie and they have sex in Kelso's van and soon everyone but Jackie knew. Kelso attempted to end what he had with Laurie multiple times, only to be threatened that she would tell Jackie everything if he ended it. Then when he tried to end it again, Laurie agreed, as long as he gave her one last kiss, which he did, little did he know Jackie was standing right behind him causing Kelso and Jackie to break up.

During the third season, she was dating Kelso, although they were only seen together making out or leaving the basement to "do it." After talking with Red, she discovered what she wanted to do in life and soon enrolled in a beauty school. Kelso retained feelings for Jackie, and the relationship was clearly only sexual. Later, on Valentine's Day, Kelso caught another man leaving Laurie's room. Crushed, Kelso ended the relationship.

During the fifth season, Laurie returned for Thanksgiving and was mentioned to be now living in Chicago and after accidentally letting it slip she hadn't changed her promiscuous ways, she lost her spot as the favorite child. Later in the season, she returned with a supposed new outlook on life, wanting to correct all the mistakes she had made in the past and become closer to Eric and her family. She goes with the gang on the camping trip they take to celebrate graduation and there sleeps with Fez and calls the encounter okay. Fez, threatened with deportation due to his visa expiring, marries her so he can stay in the country and when she shares this with her parents, it causes Red to have a heart attack.

In the sixth season, Fez tries to trick Laurie into "doing it" again as he is the only person to date that she has turned down. Meanwhile, Red and Kitty force the two into a divorce but when they start to receive wedding presents (such as a buzz saw and a Kenmore microwave) that they do not want, they decide to give them to her parents and they quickly decide for them that they should stay married so they can keep getting the unwanted presents.

After season six, Laurie was never seen on-screen again but was mentioned in passing many times over the next two seasons. These ranged from explaining what she was doing at that point in time (such as moving to Canada), to her past in Point Place (such as who her godparents are). Laurie's last screen reference is in the finale, where Kitty, after stating heartfelt reasons why she loved everyone in the room, including telling Donna that she loved her like a daughter, asks "Speaking of daughters... has anyone seen Laurie?"

Laurie appears to still lack contact with her parents by the 1990s. In the summer of 1996, when Kitty gives Sherri and Otis a parental advice she mentions to them that she used to yell a lot at Laurie when she was a teenager, and if only she could, she would take all those moments back. In the scene, the looks on both Kitty and Red's faces suggest that despite what Laurie is like, they do really miss her.

Episodes

That '70s Show

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8

That '90s Show

Season 1

Season 2

Trivia

  • Laurie's date of birth was at first said to be July 15, 1958. In the Season 2 episode "Laurie Moves Out" she was said to be 20, and the year was 1977. But this is skewed by the fact that when Red and Kitty had Halloween in 1957 in a flashback, Kitty discovers that she's pregnant with Laurie, which would make her birthday 1958. Further complicating this is the fact that if Eric's birthday is said to be in May, 1959, he's barely 9 months younger than Laurie - while possible, it would have meant that Kitty got pregnant almost immediately after delivering Laurie, a possible, but unlikely, occurrence. Though in a season 3 episode, it's stated that Eric was an accidental child. But Laurie is 2 years older than Eric (she is in college and he is a Junior in High School). If Laurie were conceived in '57 and born in '58, Eric would have been born in 1960.
  • Laurie was born with a tail (a reference to her actually being the Devil), but her "tail" was cut off (Jackie Moves On).
  • In the Season 6 episode I'm Free, Eric jokes that Laurie has probably been in jail before asking where she has been the last two years (though in the story, it's 1978 which is one year after season three was set in. Also, Laurie was missing for three years, not two by this point).
  • She is at least two years older than Eric and his friends, except Kelso who is she is older than by a year.
  • While playing a game of poker, Laurie lays down 666, a reference to how she is extremely, sometimes, demonically evil. After that, the priest present at the Forman's residence in that episode leaves the house (Hunting).
  • She has slept with two male members of the gang, Kelso and Fez.
  • Eric at 13 mentions finding Laurie's "mints" (which they were actually birth control pills), which means Laurie was sexually active at age 15.
  • After Lisa Robin Kelly left the show in 2001, Laurie was removed entirely from the show and didn't appear for 47 episodes and wasn't mentioned once for 43 episodes. Kelso and Laurie broke up off-screen because Kelly was no longer involved with the show.
  • Laurie has only appeared in one scene transition throughout the show.[1]
  • Laurie was originally meant to appear in 13 episodes of the sixth season and be re-inserted into the opening credits, but once the role was recast, the number was reduced to 6 and she was not added into the credits.
  • In the season 2 episode Halloween Red has a flashback to Halloween 1957 when Kitty tells Red she's pregnant with Laurie, meaning Laurie was born in 1958. (But this is unlikely, since she was born in July of 1957 in season 1. It was later changed to '58 seeing the creators pushing the teens' birth back a year).
  • Laurie is the second member of the Forman family to have the same middle name: Anne. The first being her mother Kitty and the third being her niece Leia.
  • As seen in Holy Crap!, Laurie is left-handed, like Red.
  • July 15, 1958 was a weekday on Tuesday.
  • Laurie would be 36-37 years old during the first season of That '90s Show. Her birthday is on July 15, which would have occurred during the first season's storyline.
  • However, with Eric's birth year being retconned to 1957 by way of Donna mentioning Eric is 38 in "That '90s Pilot" set in 1995, hers should've been retconned to 1955, making her 39-40 years old during the first season of That '90s Show.
  • Similar to Hyde, Laurie's current status as of That '90s Show is unknown. While there were zero references to Hyde, Laurie was indirectly mentioned once in the first season; in the Season 1 episode "Dirty Double Booker", Red mentions how he "only wanted one kid", and then Kitty talked him into having Eric.
    • Laurie would be properly mentioned in the Season 2 episode "Baby-Baby-Baby", when Kitty goes upstairs to bring Nikki a pregnancy test and she tells her she has many of them, as her daughter Laurie was quite sociable in her high school days.
    • In Part 3 episode "Life Is a Highway", Kitty mentions that Laurie robbed a Kmart with her pastor. This could imply that Laurie is in jail.

Photos

Laurie Forman/Gallery

References

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