On July 9, 1993, Dwayne Cleofis Wayne (or shall we say Chipmunk?) bid an emotional farewell to his partner in crime, Ron Johnson, on the series finale of A Different World. After six years of Hillman adventures, from rush week to spring break vacations, it was time for the unstoppable duo’s next chapter, marking the end of a pioneering Black sitcom that was way ahead of its time.
See, A Different World didn’t just deliver laughs. It shed light on the Black college experience, which directly inspired a wave of Black students to pursue higher education. In 2010, Dr. Walter Kimbrough, Interim Executive Director at the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College, revealed in The New York Times that from 1984 (the debut of The Cosby Show) to 1993 (when A Different World ended), “historically Black colleges and universities grew by 24.3 percent—44 percent better than all of higher education.”) In addition to its higher ed impact, the series explored real issues that typically weren’t addressed on TV in the ’90s, like apartheid, the AIDS epidemic, censorship and police brutality.
But aside from its thoughtful approach to student life, the series introduced a phenomenal group of multi-layered characters. Among my personal favorites? Dwayne Wayne—the math-whiz-turned-engineer who made being intelligent cool.
To celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the show’s finale, PureWow sat down with actor Kadeem Hardison, who brought Dwayne to life throughout the show’s six-season run. What was meant to be a 20-minute interview, turned into a nearly-hour discussion about the show’s legacy, Dwayne’s evolution and how he’d fare in today’s climate.
PureWow: Can you believe it’s been nearly 30 years since the finale of A Different World? Where do you think the characters would be now if the show didn’t end? Where would Dwayne and Whitley be?
Kadeem Hardison: I think Dwayne and Whitley would still be together—Jasmine and I have talked about this, and her feelings are great. She loves the idea of a midlife crisis for Whitley because she’s known this one guy, she’s been with this one guy through all of this, and right about now, the child is about to go off to school. And maybe there’s some, you know, ‘What happened to me? I spent all this time doing this, this, and this. I was with him and then we had a baby before I could really get into my [career].’ You know, she was curating art for a minute. And that might drive her a little stir-crazy.
That is absolutely perfect because she was such an all-over-the-place kind of character, and now would be the time for her to really do some searching and find out you know, what is it that she missed? What is it that she wants? What’s going to fill her life now?
PureWow: That sounds accurate. And we imagine that Dwayne would be thriving at Konishiwa.
Hardison: Dwayne would still be trying to teach the kids, trying to impart knowledge. And I think Konishiwa was probably lucrative, and he might have made a good amount of money—maybe a boatload of money—and came back to doing what he really loved, which was teaching students. I think his success in business with Konishiwa would be the beginning of really intense video games or learning programs or AI, or whatever he was brought there to do. And then what he learned from it, he would bring that back to Hillman and teach the kids all he learned about business about being an executive.
And I always thought Dwayne would probably be rubbing Whitley’s feet with one hand and grading papers with his other hand, you know what I mean? Or on the computer, figuring something out. That would be his perfect night.
PureWow: As you’re speaking, we can already envision this as a spin-off series. There’s Dwayne and there’s Whitley, but then the show would focus on the next generation of Hillman students—including their child. Are there still talks of a potential reboot?
Hardison: Oh, we’ve been trying to get this going for at least 10 years, but the owners of the show don’t have the same interest. I guess they’re not fired up about it enough to say, ‘Okay, you think you can do it? Let’s see what you can put together.’ Because we know there’s a bunch of people out there that want it, that would love to be a part of bringing that back. But since we don’t own it, we can’t just do it. It’s really not up to the cast at all. We’ve all kind of, in our own way, said, ‘Sure, I’d be down.’ But, ‘I’d be down’ doesn’t really get it done.
PureWow: Going back to Dwayne’s character, we’ve seen him evolve from the quirky kid with a perfect math SAT score to the brilliant, well-rounded engineer and professor. Were you involved in the development of his story arc?
