Alyssa Milano Reveals Inspiration Behind 10-Year-Old Sam on “Who's the Boss?” as Show Marks 40th Anniversary (Exclusive)

The actress talked remaining close with costars Tony Danza, Judith Light and Danny Pintauro

Four decades after Who’s the Boss? premiered, Alyssa Milano is looking back at her “formative years” on the beloved sitcom.

Milano was just 11 years old when she was cast opposite Tony Danza, Judith Light, Danny Pintauro and the late Katherine Helmond in Who’s the Boss?, which premiered on Sept. 20, 1984. At a recent press event ahead of her Sept. 16 Broadway debut starring in Chicago, PEOPLE showed Milano several photos from her early days on the show to see what the 51-year-old actress remembered.

Related: Alyssa Milano Takes Son Milo to See Her 'TV Dad' Tony Danza’s L.A. Show: 'Tonight Was Very Special'

“So, this is the first season where I had just come from theater. So, you can tell I’m not yet a sitcom kid,” Milano, who got her start at 7 in the national touring production of Annie, recalled of the image above.

“I’m very demure,” she added of the photo — referencing TikTok star Jools Lebron’s viral catchphrase.

Milano said she was told early on to “sitcom kid it up a little bit,” advice she said influenced the next photo (below).

Milano said she wasn’t given much “outward say” in shaping her character’s style. “But a lot of Sam was based on who I was as a kid,” she explained, “which was someone who loved sports, a tomboy, someone who loved her family, tough, scrappy, and everything that kind of went on in my adolescence.”

“Like, I remember when I started developing breasts, I walked in the next week and there was a script called ‘Sam’s First Bra,’ ” she continued. “So it was like, everything that happened in my life, they wrote it in the show.”

Milano has remained close with Danza, Light and Pintauro over the last 40 years. Her Who’s the Boss? costars, she said, became like family over the show’s eight-season run on ABC.

Related: The Cast of Who's the Boss?: Where Are They Now?

“No one else understands that experience but us,” she told PEOPLE. “It was a really special cast.”

“When you’re on a show for eight years, in those formative years from 11 to 19 … what you saw on TV was our family unit,” she explained. “We were a family, and I love them very much and they will always hold a really big place in forming who I am as a woman.”

Milano added that she’d just spoken to Danza — who last appeared on Broadway in the original cast of the 2014 musical adaptation of Honeymoon in Vegas and wraps his Sinatra & Stories performances at New York City's Café Carlyle on Sep. 21 — just days before her own debut in Chicago. (Milano even caught his Sept. 18 performance!)

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“Tony said to me, ‘I wanna be on Broadway again so bad,’ ” she recounted. “I was like, ‘You’d be a great Billy Flynn!’ ”

Here’s hoping for a reunion that would surely be packed with the old razzle dazzle!

Who's the Boss is now streaming on Hulu.

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