This is the story all about how HBO Max remains firmly in the business of staging starry television reunions. On the heels of planned specials with the original casts of Friends and The West Wing, the nascent streaming platform will bring together Will Smith and the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for that show’s 30th anniversary. The news was announced Monday by the Hollywood trades.
For the reunion, Smith will be joined by actors Tatyana Ali, Joseph Marcell, Karyn Parsons, Daphne Maxwell Reid, and Alfonso Ribeiro, plus his longtime friend and costar, DJ Jazzy Jeff. It’s expected the Fresh Prince special will tape on September 10, the actual 30th anniversary of the show’s premiere on NBC, before a debut on HBO Max in November.
For fans of the coming-of-age comedy, 2020 has provided ample opportunity to reminisce about the show’s legacy. In addition to all 148 original episodes being available to stream on HBO Max, Smith and the cast reunited in April on the actor’s Snapchat channel. Last month, meanwhile, it was revealed Smith and filmmaker Morgan Cooper were developing a reboot of Fresh Prince based on Cooper’s viral 2019 trailer that reframed the sitcom as a more serious drama.
“As funny as the episodes are, there was a whole other layer you couldn’t do,” Smith told Cooper in a 2019 interview. “Like in a one-hour drama, you could do eight-episode arcs. … The dramatic version of these ideas means that you can use existing storylines, but it’s not going to seem like you’re redoing an episode because the storylines are going to be brand-new from the dramatic perspective.”
Two people closely associated with the show won’t be at the reunion: James Avery, who played Uncle Phil on the series and died in 2014, and Janet Hubert, the original Aunt Viv. Hubert left the series after season three and was replaced by Reid for the remaining episodes. For years, she has blamed Smith and the show’s producers for her ouster. (In 2011, she called Smith an “asshole” in an interview with TMZ.) When the cast last reunited in April, Hubert did not participate.
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