Will Smith gathers 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' cast for first reunion on Snapchat show and shares a secret
Cast of the popular 90s comedy 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' came together once again, but not for a reboot of the show. The stars all appeared for the finale of Will Smith's Snapchat show, 'Will At Home'.
Tatyana Ali, Alfonso Ribiero, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Karyn Parsons, Janet Hubert, and Joseph Marcell will all be featuring in the two-part finale, which will release on the social media platform this Wednesday, April 29, and Thursday, April 30.
In previews posted on YouTube, Smith recalled how it was because of advice he received from Ribiero, who played Carlton Banks on the show, that he decided to use his real name for his character on the sitcom.
"It was such a deep insight that you had," Smith said. "Because people are going to call you that for the rest of your life."
It also saw DJ Jazzy Jeff, who played the recurring character of Jazz, and Smith recalled with fondness the famous handshake they used to greet each other with on the show.
"Any of you have a problem feeling stuck in the world expecting you to be your character?" Smith asked his guests.
"I got really, really annoyed that everybody wanted to do the handshake," Jeff responded, prompting Smith to let out a hearty laugh. "You would see in people's eyes when they were about to sneak the handshake and I would just grab their hand and hold it, so besides that I'm good."
Jeff had previously appeared on the show to share how he suspected that he had caught the coronavirus.
"I came home from my trip. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m coming down with something’ and got into bed, and I don’t remember the next 10 days. I had a temperature that reached 103. I had the chills. I lost sense of smell. I lost sense of taste," he had revealed.
"They gave me a flu test. And when I went and got the chest X-ray, she came in and said, ‘You have pneumonia in both your lungs,'" he added.
The only star missing from the original cast was James Avery, who died aged 68 in 2013 after suffering from complications from open-heart surgery. Smith will be paying homage to him in his two-part finale.
The 51-year-old actor had launched the show amid the coronavirus pandemic so he could share his experiences of self-isolation with his family.
Snap head of original content Sean Mills revealed that the idea for it came out of conversations between Snapchat and Smith's production company, Westbrook Media, about how the constraints imposed by the global shutdown would birth "new forms of creativity and new ways to tell stories."
"Will was feeling a lot of pent up creative energy and was excited to do something with it in a new and different way," he added.
Over the course of its 10 episodes, the show hosted the likes of supermodel Tyra Banks, as well as Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute Of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been at the forefront of the country's response to the pandemic.