Growing Up Urkel: How Jaleel White Is Owning His Legacy

The former ‘Family Matters’ nerd returns to the small screen with a co-starring role in CBS’ freshman comedy ‘Me, Myself and I,’ opposite Bobby Moynihan.
When you interview Jaleel White about his 36-year career in show business, there’s inevitably an elephant in the room — and it’s wearing suspenders.

For nine seasons, White played catchphrase-spouting supernerd Steve Urkel on ABC’s Family Matters, a character so beloved by audiences that it saved the then-struggling sitcom from an untimely cancelation. But since the show signed off after its nine-season run on ABC (and then CBS) in 1997, it has been a difficult legacy for White to shake. While this is in many ways a testament to how good he was in the role, it’s an association not every former child star would embrace.

Which is exactly why Dan Kopelman — creator of White’s new CBS comedy Me, Myself and I starring Bobby Moynihan — initially danced around the subject. “Not knowing too much about who Jaleel is as a person, I was a teeny bit wary of even bringing it up,” Kopelman tells The Hollywood Reporter. But a wardrobe fitting before shooting the pilot demonstrated just how willing the actor was to go there.
“I was on my phone looking at a photo of Jaleel and a bunch of different potential [outfits]. And one of them was, he had pulled his pants up to his chest a la Urkel,” Kopelman recalls. “And I was like, ‘OK, this guy has got a sense of humor about himself.’”

Which isn’t to say that White’s not protective: “I guard this character with my life,” he tells THR in an interview to promote the generation-spanning new series, which also stars John Larroquette and Jack Dylan Grazer as the older and younger versions of Moynihan’s character, respectively. “For me, it’s honestly like talking about someone who is revered and deceased. You’re not going to be disrespectful around me talking about the character.” (For the record, White “loved” Key & Peele’s pitch-black Family Matters sketch, which he calls “the greatest skit that’s ever been done about the character.”)

It’s a sentiment that wasn’t lost on viewers of Dancing With the Stars season 14. Following a rumba number inspired by Urkel’s ultra-smooth alter ego Stefan Urquelle, White burst into tears in front of the live studio audience. “Stefan Urquelle and Steve Urkel, that’s my Mickey Mouse,” he said at the time. It was a confusing moment for many viewers, but in context the analogy makes sense.

“If you go to talk to Disney about anything related to Mickey Mouse, if you can even get the meeting, you’re going to get 50 people in that room,” White says. “That is the crown jewel of their brand, and so they protect it. And so for better or worse, the crown jewel of my legacy still remains Steve Urkel and Stefan Urquelle.”
Me, Myself and I is White’s latest attempt to diversify that legacy. In the series he plays Darryl, business partner of present-day Alex (Moynihan), who pushes his friend to reinvigorate his waning career as an inventor. The character is a kind of anti-Urkel in that he plays “straight man” to Moynihan’s floundering sad sack, but it’s not like White has never played a conventional role before. Following the end of Family Matters and the failure of his single-season UPN sitcom Grown Ups (“The network doesn’t even exist anymore, so that explains it all right there, with that show,” he cracks), a “very high-ranking TV exec” told him he needed to try dramatic roles.

“I really chose a path after Grown Ups of doing different things that I hadn’t tried before, and just trying to take on those challenges,” White says. But none of those post-Family Matters projects took off, and to many it seemed as if he’d been doomed to the ninth circle of career hell reserved for former child stars. But White has in fact been working consistently during the past decade and a half; it’s just that most viewers haven’t noticed.

“In my 20s, that was tough to deal with, because I had people asking me, ‘Well, what are you up to these days?’” White says. “And it’s like, ‘You didn’t catch me playing my detective turn on Lifetime last week?’”