Janet Hubert confronts Will Smith about their fight at the Fresh Prince reunion

27 years have passed since Fresh Prince of Bel Air Co-stars Will Smith and OG’s Aunt Viv Janet Hubert have spoken, not since Hubert was reportedly fired from the show after its first three seasons and the budding superstar Smith did nothing to stop him, according to the actress.

So the two of them had a lot to catch up on when they sat down for the first time in nearly three decades.

Family gatherings are always a bit of a hassle – someone brings the wrong potato salad, says something politically incorrect, or delves into an unspoken secret. The same fragile formula applied to The meeting of the Prince of Bel-Air.

For the first 45 minutes of the special, everything was a memory and a rainbow, as Smith, Alfonso Ribeiro, Karyn Parsons, Tatyana Ali, Joseph Marcell, Daphne Maxwell Reid and DJ Jazzy Jeff gathered on the original set of the show to relive their best moments and reflect. on impact The fresh prince about popular culture.

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Of course, comedy’s beloved Uncle Phil was missing, played with all the great-uncle energy by actor James Avery, who died in 2013. His absence was deeply felt as the cast, sitting on the familiar beige sofas in the living room. be from the Banks. They burst into tears as they watched a montage of Avery on the screen.

“So as a family we have our things that we talk about and then we have our things that we don’t talk about,” Smith said in a slightly awkward transition. “We, um, never really, together, like to talk publicly about, um, Janet. And what happened. And, to me, I felt like I couldn’t celebrate 30 years of Fresh prince without finding a way to celebrate Janet. “

That transition led to a pre-recorded interview, perhaps out of fear of what might have gone wrong, during which Smith and Hubert worked it out.

Sitting side by side in the section of the comedy studio generally reserved for live audiences, the pair wasted very little time on pranks, rather than plunging headlong into the controversy of Hubert’s unceremonious departure from the show.

“I just wanted to know one thing: Why?” asked Hubert, who criticized Smith as selfish in his 2009 memoir Perfection is not a sitcom mom and called the A-list actors in an interview with TMZ in which he said he would never participate in a reunion. “You guys came so far,” he added. “I lost so much. How do we heal it?”

Smith then asked Hubert to tell his story.

During the third season of the show, which wrote Hubert’s own pregnancy in the plot, she was in an abusive marriage, had a new baby, and her husband was unemployed. She was struggling personally and the actress’s demeanor on set understandably changed. She withdrew from her co-stars. Subsequently, his contract for the following season reduced his role and his salary. She missed the opportunity to climb back up. “They never fired me,” he said.

“And I wasn’t unprofessional on set. I stopped talking to everyone because I didn’t know who to trust because they had banished me. And they said it was you who banished me. Because you were Will,” Hubert said. .

“I was 21 years old,” Smith explained. “Everything was a threat to me.”

Claiming a mea culpa, Smith admitted during the meeting that he made it difficult for Hubert, who never revealed his personal struggles to his co-workers. But Hubert, who was in his 30s at the time and had started his career in the original 1982 Broadway production of Cats took a step further, noting that the damage to his career reached far beyond Fresh prince set.

“But you took all that away from me, with your words. Words can kill. I lost everything. Reputation. Everything. And I understand that you could move on, but you already know those words, to call a black woman difficult in Hollywood, is the kiss of death. And it’s hard enough being a dark-skinned black woman in this business. “

Still, both parties were ready to move on. Hubert apologized for “tearing” Smith “apart in the press. And Smith, who praised Hubert for bringing” authenticity and dignity “to the role of Aunt Viv, offered his own apologies.

“The person I want to be is someone who protects you, not someone who lets go of dogs on you,” said the actor.

Hubert then made a surprise appearance at the royal reunion, which was filmed on September 10, 30 years after the day of the show’s original premiere date. There she met Daphne Maxwell Reid, the actress who replaced her on the show, for the first time.