Alfonso Ribeiro opened up about how his role as Carlton Banks in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” temporarily hindered his career.
The 51-year-old played Banks, who was rich and considered the preppy and nerdy cousin of Will Smith’s character, from 1990 to 1996 in the hit NBC sitcom. Ribeiro shared during his appearance on “Today with Hoda and Jenna” last month that after his work on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “In the House,” opportunities ceased because he was “stereotyped to that role.”
While discussing his current jobs, such as the host of “America’s Funniest Videos” and co-host of “Dancing with the Stars,” Ribeiro jokingly said when asked about his busy schedule, “I’m Trinidadian you know we need 15 jobs. We just keep going. I spent too many years not working after ‘Fresh Prince’ and after ‘In the House.’ It was a period I wasn’t working. I’m making up for that time.”
When asked about how he felt during those moments, Ribeiro added, “It was always the reality I would always like to say that you get stereotyped to that role right. Imagine for a second you do such a great job that people say, ‘Nope, you can never be anybody else again. So you go through that period, when you’re resentful, you’re hurt and then all of a sudden ‘Dancing with the Stars’ came along and they were like, ‘Hey, you get to be you now.'”
Further in the conversation, Ribeiro was asked to elaborate on what he meant by being able to be himself again. He said, “They made me play a character, and I was very different from Carlton. I grew up in the Bronx. When you, all of a sudden, you’re this guy, a nerdy guy from Bel-Air, it’s like that’s not my life. That’s not who I am. But I get to be me. I get to be my personality, myself. I get to go on there. Whatever comes out of my brain, I get to say.”
As the discussion shifted to Banks’ iconic shuffle, Ribeiro claimed that despite refusing to do the dance, he could empathize with those who asked because his character was beloved.
He said, “You come to grips with the idea that that person existed and that reality for you existed and, for me, I’ve come to the realization that when people come up to me on the street and they’re like, ‘Do the dance,’ it’s like, ‘Really? You’re asking me to dance for you?’ But it’s really their experience and you learn to get that empathy where you can kind of say, ‘This is about you and what you had in your house and I can appreciate it.’ I’m still not dancing. But I get to appreciate other people’s experience with me as that character.”
Ribeiro wrapped up the discussion by revealing he keeps in touch with the cast of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, especially Will Smith, after the actor received massive backlash for slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars following his joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head.
The father of four said, “I always like to say, I keep those relationships my own and not for the world to have. But (I’m) always checking in on him. He’s a friend. He’s family. We do have an entire cast text chain and we all check in on each other and we are still that family that love each other, support each other and care for each other in the best way possible.”
Despite having a love-hate relationship with his Banks character and the iconic dance in the past, Ribeiro disclosed that he didn’t teach Smith how to do his signature shuffle during the “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” ‘s final episode because he wanted the star to look bad.
In a 2021 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, he said, “My goal was to let him look bad. If he had perfected it, it might have been The Will, and we couldn’t have that!”
