Red Table Talk, on Facebook Watch, has given us the A Different World reunion we’ve been anticipating since the series finale on May 8, 1993. (Full episode below.)
Like us, you probably tuned to NBC weekly to watch Denise Huxtable, Freddie Brooks, Dwayne Wayne, Jaleesa Vinson, Whitley Gilbert, Kim Reese, Ron Johnson, Maggie Lauten, Coach Walter Oakes, and, in later seasons, Lena James, Gina Deveraux, and Dorian Heywood bring hard-hitting topics to the forefront. If you were a Black kid growing up in the 1980s, A Different World, as well as Spike Lee’s School Daze, not only put HBCUs on your radar but also influenced you to dream of attending one. However, there’s a lot we fans of the groundbreaking series don’t know. Fortunately, Red Table Talk (RTT) has someone on the inside, as co-host Jada Pinkett Smith played Lena James for 47 episodes. Here is the behind-the-scenes information we learned from the RTT episode that featured director-producer Debbie Allen and co-stars Jasmine Guy (Whitley), Kadeem Hardison (Dwayne), Dawnn Lewis (Jaleesa), Darryl M. Bell (Ron), Charnele Brown (Kim), Cree Summer (Freddie), Glynn Turman (Col. Brad Taylor), Ajai Sanders (Gina), Karen Malina White, and surprise messages from Marisa Tomei (Maggie) and Patti LaBelle (Adele Wayne).
One aspect of A Different World that can’t be denied is Allen’s influence, but it was a very different series initially, one in which the actors say being disrespected was more commonplace than not.
“I mean, that’s why they brought me, actually. I had come from Fame, and then I get this call from Carsey Werner and Bill Cosby, ‘We need you to come over here and look at A Different World,’ explained Allen about how she was brought onto the series. “‘Cause I had gone to Howard, and I don’t know if anybody else had really gone to an HBCU. So I brought that experience and that reality, so we just had to put hot sauce on the table. We had to make it real, because the Black university college voice is strong.”
Before Allen joined A Different World, Guy quit the series because she and the rest of the cast routinely felt disrespected by the writers and producers.
“I gave my two-week notice during the first season,” Guy said to Pinkett Smith and RTT co-host Adrienne Banfield Norris.
Guy continued, “We were filming till 1:00 in the morning. I was like, ‘Why are we doing this again? I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong.’ Like, why are we just doing things over and over until the–if it was funny at any point, it was gone.”
Hardison recalled the tension on the set before Allen: “Oh, yeah, it was booty. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be in this anymore.’ And – and I didn’t like the way they were treating the cast and so I went in there, and I said, ‘Thank you so much for this opportunity, and I’ve – I’ve learned so much,’ and they were probably like, ‘OK, well, did something happen?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I feel like Lisa Bonet is disrespected in front of the audience.’ ‘Well, has it ever happened to you?’ I said, ‘If it happens to her, it happens to me.’ You are disrespecting the cast. You are disrespecting Sinbad (Coach Walter Oakes). It doesn’t have to happen to me, I felt like it was happening to me.”
Allen gave the cast a voice and career advice.
“This was a time where there was this separation between the writers and the actors,” explained Allen, who also advised Hardison to add writing and directing to his contract. “If they said ‘ooh’ instead of ‘ahh,’ they had to stop the cameras and do it again. I worked really hard to break down that barrier between the writers and the actors.”
Although A Different World managed to address heavy topics, like interpersonal violence and the police beating of Rodney King, the series was censored. Lewis remembered that they were not allowed to show a condom during an episode that discussed HIV/AIDS and safe sex.
“But half the stuff we did, as much as they let us push the envelope, they still kept a rein on everything,” said Lewis. “Like, the AIDS episode, we couldn’t show the condom. […] We had to refer to it in the purse.”
Allen, however, remained supportive of the cast.
“I was always going into the principal’s office taking y’all’s bullets,” she said. “So Murphy Brown gets to be on the cover of TIME magazine. For being– saying what she says about politics or abortion or whatever, but we can’t even do this? I said, ‘Guys, have you ever watched Saturday Night Live? Have you ever watched In Living Color? We’re a show that bridges that world. And that’s a good thing for y’all. Stop it already.’”
Pinkett Smith revealed that she initially auditioned for only a guest role, and Allen recalled the moment the two met, “The AIDS episode, she walked in – wait, let me just say this. She walked in. She already had all that. And I said, ‘Wow. You are – you are wonderful.
