Houston native, choreographer, actress and director Debbie Allen joined a jubilant reunion of cast members from A Different World on ABC’s The View on Wednesday morning (April 17). Allen, who directed 83 episodes of the beloved sitcom, joined Jasmine Guy (who played Whitley Gilbert), Kadeem Hardison (who played Dwayne Wayne), Darryl Bell (Ron Johnson), Cree Summer (Freddie Brooks), and Dawnn Lewis (Jaleesa Vinson) onstage for a discussion about the show and its impact.
During the chat, moderated in part by co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines, the cast reflected on the show and its cultural significance. Haines noted that A Different World (which ran from 1987-1993) was as topical as it was comedic, addressing hot-button topics like racism, homelessness, and domestic violence. She also pointed out that the show had an array of guest stars, including View co-host and Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg. She asked Allen what she remembered about working together.
“I remember especially the degree of difficulty, doing a show about AIDS,” Allen said. In the season four episode “If I Should Die Before I Wake,” Goldberg played a professor who asked the students in her public speaking class to write their own eulogies. One student named Josie (played by Tisha Campbell) reveals to the class that she is HIV-positive.
Allen recalled that getting the controversial episode greenlit was very difficult. She credited Goldberg for helping the show get made. “Whoopi Goldberg was our secret weapon,” she said. “She was someone that I knew; we were friends, and we all knew she was going to win that Oscar that year.” (Goldberg indeed won the best supporting actress Oscar that year for her work in Ghost. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest-starring role on Different World.) Allen asserted that “we were the first network television show to address AIDS after Magic Johnson made his announcement. I had to do something.”
Allen said she and lead writer & producer Susan Fales-Hill “put our heads together, and I said, ‘We gotta get a ‘big gun’ to make this happen.’ And Whoopi, I called her and she said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’ She was down. And it made it possible to save millions of lives,” Allen recalled. That support was crucial because “the advertisers were pulling out” — unwilling to air commercials during such a provocative episode. “We had never had to show a script to an advertiser,” she revealed. The topic was so sensitive that the actors couldn’t even show a condom onscreen. (Cree Summer recalled in an interview with Iman Shumpert that NBC network censors were so sensitive that actors were pointing to a purse that the condom was in.)
For all the off-screen drama, the episode ended up being the highest-rated of the season for the show, Allen said. And it fulfilled a longtime goal of hers. Allen, who grew up in Houston’s Third Ward, has advocated AIDS awareness for decades. In fact, she returned to Houston on Dec. 1 for Janet Jackson’s sold-out concert in honor of World AIDS Day. Allen introduced Jackson (who starred on Allen’s TV show Fame in the 1980s) with poignant remarks on the disease’s impact. “Over 40 million people have been lost,” she said. “Among those were my boys on Fame. I lost half my dance company to AIDS.” Monitors displayed a memorial video that paid tribute to legends who died from the virus: Arthur Ashe, Easy-E, Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, singer Sylvester, and Allen’s “Fame” co-star Gene Anthony Ray.
Allen added: “As we remember, let us not forget why we are here today — because we are here to celebrate the millions of people that are living and thriving with AIDS.”
Though HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence, it remains a serious disease that affects millions worldwide. And the impact is especially felt here at home: Texas ranks among the top five states with the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the country. For more information about HIV/AIDS or how to get tested, visit CDC.gov.
