VALENCIA. In 1986, the hip hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince triumphed on the American music charts with the song Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble. Jazzy Jeff – real name Jeff Townes – had met the rapper who called himself The Fresh Prince – real name Will Smith – by chance. One of Jeff’s vocalists failed to show up at a party and Prince replaced him at the ensuing performance. This is how Townes and Smith began making music together, achieving several important hits. During a promotional visit to an NBC show, one of the bosses told Will Smith if he would be interested in participating in a pilot for a series. The leading role seemed tailor-made for his self-confidence. The rapper accepted. Weeks later, the first chapter of a saga that became popular around the world was filmed. Thanks to her, starting in 1990, the African-American community became the protagonist of a sitcom, and millions of people laughed with a series of black characters who, chapter after chapter, also told us about their culture, their roots. , its social problems and its contradictions. With The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, black characters were no longer secondary or anecdotal. Even so, the scriptwriters tiptoed around issues such as the riots that took place in Los Angeles, after a jury exonerated the police officers who had beaten the young Roney King.
Portrait of a society
In the presentation of each chapter, the beginning of the story was told to the rhythm of hip hop. The thug Will Smith—his character is named after the actor—gets into trouble with a Philadelphia gang and, to avoid problems, his mother sends the teenager to live with his aunt and uncle in Los Angeles. The Banks are upper class, they have a butler and a father who works at a prestigious law firm. The arrival of nephew Will will be an unexpected shock for the clan, a conflict that highlights class differences within a traditionally segregated group.
Smith was afraid of going in front of a camera because he lacked dramatic experience, but he accepted, because the mismanagement of his income had generated a large debt with the treasury (70% of his salary during the first three seasons went directly to the coffers of the treasury). state). Medina passed the project on to his colleague Quincy Jones – producer, among other things, of Michael Jackson’s Thriller – and he put it in the hands of the screenwriting couple Andy and Susan Borowitz, who were inspired by Jones’ daughters to create the characters of Hilary and Ashley, the daughters of the Banks couple.
As happens to some extent in And Just Like That…, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air uses economically and socially privileged characters to reflect realities and situations of those who are not. Will’s street style is the antithesis of the pompous personality of his cousin Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro) and his sister Hilary (Karyn Parsons), obsessed with collaborating in actions in favor of the ozone layer, which allows him to rub shoulders with conscientious stars. like Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. As for the parents, James Avary played Philip Banks and Jane Hubert played his wife Vivian for the first three seasons—later Daphne Maxwell Reid. There are different versions of this change. One suggests that it was Will Smith who pressured Hubert to be fired, and another, that the actress was confrontational and that she had clashes with the producers over her working conditions. By then, the series, which had its audience peak in the third season, had begun to lose audiences. NBC wanted to cancel it at the end of the fourth season, but its followers did not allow it and began to send letters and send their complaints to the production company. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air continued on the air for two more seasons.
The end of the series was not only due to ratings, but was also precipitated by Joseph Marcell announcing his departure after getting tired of playing the butler Geoffrey Butler (butler in English means butler). His formal manner contrasted with Smith’s impudence and gave rise to very funny situations. Without Marcell, the series lost its charm, and Smith announced that he was leaving it as well. During its six years of life, The Prince of Beal-Air left priceless moments, such as when Uncle Phil introduces his nephew to his law firm partners, Firth, Wynn and Meyer, and he mistakes them for Earth, Wind &Fire. The parade of black guest stars was constant: Naomi Campbell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, BB King, Oprah Winfrey, Pam Grier and Tyra Banks, who played Jackie, Smith’s girlfriend. Even the baby the Banks had in the fourth season, Nicky, was named after the four members of the group Boyz II Men.
* This article was originally published in issue 108 (October 2023) of the magazine Plaza
2023-10-14 04:08:40
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