Months after she aired out how Will Smith allegedly stopped her from obtaining work, Janet Hubert is returning to the TV screen.
The actress who starred as the original Aunt Vivian Banks on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” has booked a role on daytime soap opera “General Hospital,” Entertainment Weekly reported Sunday, Nov. 18.
(Photo by Johnny Nunez/WireImage)
Hubert is set to play Yvonne, a nursing home resident who is going to be romantically involved with Mike Corbin. Yvonne will also have some sort of connection with the residents of Port Charles on the long-running ABC series.
Her first episode for the recurring character will air Friday, Dec. 7.
This is the first major news of a new TV acting gig for Hubert since she blasted Smith for apparently blocking her from getting work. Following a pay dispute that caused her to leave “Fresh Prince” after season 3 in 1993, Hubert was replaced by Daphne Reid for the remainder of the show’s run.
“My life when you banished me and when you tainted me and when you put your poison in, you poisoned my entire world,” Hubert said in an August video, the last of which she said she’d ever make discussing Smith. “You poisoned my art, you poisoned people against me. The vomit that you spewed, I still reek of it every time I walk into a room, every time I try to have a meeting, every time I try to talk about an event, every time I try to call Oprah for help, Oprah’s people would say, ‘No she’s friends with will and Janet will never be on the show. I’m sorry, we can’t promote her. We can’t promote her on the show because she has a very deep, profound friendship with Will.’”
But Hubert, a former Broadway star, hasn’t completely fallen off from TV.
After leaving the NBC sitcom, she’s had appearances on other shows like “The Jamie Foxx Show,” NYPD Blue” and “All My Children” in the late ’90s. She also played on “The Bernie Mac Show” in the early aughts and “One Life to Live” and “House of Payne” at the end of the last decade. More recently in 2017, Hubert portrayed Diane on OWN’s “If Loving You Is Wrong.”
