Marissa Tomei is riding the wave of critical acclaim and commercial success of her latest film, Spider-Man: No Way Home. In an interview during the release of the second film, Spdider-Man: Far From Home Academy Award-winning actress Marisa Tomei is reflecting on her time on the classic 90s show A Different World.
For those unfamiliar, Tomei played Margaret “Maggie” Lauten one of the HBCU’s only non-Black students. The character, along with others, was written off after the show very notably went in a different direction after the first season.
“That was one of the most fun times in my life, that period,” Tomei said when asked about the series in a HipHollywood interview. She noted that she has been thinking about the show a lot, especially when doing the All in the Family live episode for ABC’s Live in Front of a Studio Audience.
When asked where her character would be, Tomei offered a surprising response: back at Hillman.
“She’d probably be a professor,” she explained confidently. “She’d probably be teaching … back there.”
In another recent interview earlier last year, A Different World stars Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison also talked about where they thought their characters would be.
Hardison said he think “they’d still be kicking it,” but Guy says they would have gone through a midlife crisis.
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She explained, “She may say, ‘This is the only man that I’ve ever known. I want to explore the world.’ Whereas Dwayne is more, ‘I’m finally where we’re stable, our kids raised, we’re in a good place.’ And just how we used to do on the show; when somebody is just in another lane and we’re missing each other, we need to intersect.”
“I kind of think…because Whitley still is a couple of years older than Dwayne and he’s the only man she’s ever loved…this is what happens to us when our kids leave us,” she continued. “We start looking at ourselves like, ‘OK, now what do I do?’ And so, I think it would make for an interesting exploration, and I have written a pilot for that…about how I think we would look 40 years later.“
