The Fresh Prince Turns 25 The Shows Creators on Will Smith Reboots and Race
, How Will Smith became a star, Quincy Will had never acted before Fresh Prince, but after a 15-minute read through, we knew he was our guy. You could tell that there was no mountain too high for him, and I'm so proud of everything that he has achieved. But he was surrounded by an absolutely stellar cast, and a great writing staff and crew, and that should never be overlooked. Susan The network also would listen to Will. NBC wanted us to make Carlton Alfonso Ribeiro cool, and we said, "No, he's a great foil," and won on that because Will weighed in and said, "Absolutely not, this is what makes the comedy." The network didn't want to hire Joseph Marcell, who played Geoffrey the butler, because he wasn't a name. They wanted us to go with Ron Glass who was on Barney Miller. Luckily, Will said, "No, I like the British guy with the big nose.", How the show influenced pop culture, Quincy I think Fresh Prince and the success of the show was the final piece that cemented hip-hop into the pop culture lexicon. Throughout our history, African-American music and culture has always been a barometer for a coming social change in America  the Jazz Age in the 30's and 40's, be-bop in the 50's, rock-and-roll which is really the blues in the 60's, the empowerment movement of the 70's with Marvin Gaye, Aretha, James Brown and others, and hip-hop in the late 80's. I had a lot of the rappers on my album "Back on The Block" in 1989, so I was very aware of the shift that was happening with hip-hop and its genesis early on. It was the next evolution of our music. But you have to remember what was going on in the country at the time culturally. Hip-hop was blowing up, selling millions of albums a week. The kids, both black and white, had cloaked themselves in the culture. You had white kids in Iowa walking around with their baseball caps on backwards, but the establishment, as usual, was freaking out about the reality of the message in the music. You had C. Delores Tucker, Tipper Gore, and other groups doing everything possible to kill the music, but they couldn't. The kids had found a voice in hip-hop that spoke to them. Susan By the time we moved back to the East Coast, we'd hear white kids on the playground using these words we wrote into scripts, and it cracked us up  these wealthy Westchester white kids using "Yo, dawg." A lot of the language crossed over into white suburban culture. Some rappers were very angry Will had done this. They felt he had watered down their culture for this white middle class audience. , Andy I've seen the show referred to fondly as a "'90s time capsule" and the wardrobe described as "typical '90s fashions." I think both of those assessments are wrong. The show was extremely stylized and kind of inhabited a universe of its own. If you look at other sitcoms from that decade, they look nothing like Fresh Prince because everything in the show is so amped up  the huge mansion, the English butler, Carlton's dancing. Having said that, I'm sure there are kids who watch it now and think they're seeing what life was really like in the '90s. That's hilarious to me. How the show changed television, Quincy In business, particularly in Hollywood, success makes a lot of fear go away, and I think the success of Fresh Prince gave the networks permission to move in directions they may not have normally. We followed Fresh Prince with In The House which starred LL Cool J, and that show ran for three years. Andy I didn't see the show as being trailblazing, but it sort of turned out to be, since it was the first network show to feature a hip-hop star. That might not seem like a big deal in 2015, but in 1990 it was. At the time, the media were freaking out about controversial rappers like 2 Live Crew, and even though Will's rapping had zero in common with theirs, NBC was irrationally nervous about how the network audience would respond to a show starring a rapper. As it turned out, the show was the highest-rated new sitcom in its first season. In 1990 I had no idea that, 25 years later, it would still be on TV and people would still be enjoying it. Susan It was surprisingly forward-thinking. The show launched a lot of careers. It started a wave of black shows. Ironically, BET was harmful to mainstream black network shows because it became the place where black shows went when you'd pitch. It was very easy for networks to say, "This sounds more like a BET show than a network show." Then Shonda Rhimes comes along, earns her credit doing white shows, and then she's able to do How to Get Away with Murder. I have such respect for her. With Empire and Blackish, now apparently they're asking for black shows again. My fear about this newfound black programming is that the networks will say, "Great, so to repeat the success of Empire, what we have to have is an all black cast, shady dealings, and danger." But it may not be good. And to repeat Blackish? "What we need are more black family comedies." But they may not be good. And if these fail, they're just say, "Oh, I guess Blackish was a one-off, Empire was a one-off, so we're not going to do those anymore." They won't persist in actually broadening. How likely the chances of a Fresh Prince reboot are, Andy They're doing a fish-out-of-water show that's not a continuation of Fresh Prince in any way. I'm not involved with that show. As for actual TV reboots, which are all the rage right now, I oppose them on principle. I think the reboot of The Brady Bunch as The Brady Bunch Hour variety show in 1976 should be a cautionary tale for all of us. Susan I'd be interested to see how Will Smith would do a fish-out-of-water situation because things are so different in good ways and bad ways. In good ways, I think America recognizes now that there can be Ben Carsons and Kanye Wests, and I don't think people blink an eye, especially after Obama. The bad thing that's happened in America that I think would be a challenge for this show How do you talk about the black experience without dealing with Ferguson and police brutality? How do you do that in a comedy? It's one of the reasons I wouldn't be involved even if he asked me, because I would say I don't think this is a winningI don't think this is an easy thing to do. How The Fresh Prince would look if it premiered today , Susan Honestly, when I think about doing a reboot of this, it all becomes very schematic to me, like going backwards. Unless you do the Rachel Dolezal story. That's the modern thing  the person who is masquerading. Andy I guess if the show were premiering today, cousin Hilary would have a very active Instagram account and would be constantly taking selfies, and as I describe this  it sounds truly horrible. Why are you asking me to wreck Fresh Prince, Time magazine? Let's just stick with the 90s version, okay?