Jasmine Guy sat down for an interview with 107.5 WBLS host Déjà Vu Parker on March 19, and the “A Different World” actress revealed that producer Debbie Allen was responsible for many of the serious issues discussed on the sitcom after joining the show.
Guy has been part of an HBCU tour the cast members of the show are currently on, and the 62-year-old said that the students she’s met on the tour wanted real information from the cast about life and issues like self-identity and self-esteem and not so much about things that happened on the show. However, she revealed some of the behind-the-scenes drama during the WBLS interview, including the show’s shakeup after the first season.
“A Different World” was a spinoff of NBC’s “The Cosby Show” featuring Lisa Bonet. Bonet played Bill Cosby’s daughter on both shows, and “A Different World” was about her experiences as she went off to college. However, she reportedly was written off the show after one season because she was pregnant with daughter Zoë Kravitz. Guy’s character Whitley eventually became one of the main characters along with Kadeem Hardison’s character Dwayne Wayne, but the actress said at the beginning they were only given six episodes and weren’t even sure they’d be offered more episodes because of all the uncertainty on the show.
Guy noted that “Waiting to Exhale” actress Loretta Devine played the dorm mother during the first season and implied that she was fired. However, other reports suggest that Devine left to pursue other opportunities.
“People were getting fired. If you remember who our first our dorm mother was. It was Loretta Devine,” said Guy. “She had a little boy. Where did she go? Before that, I mean it wasn’t just us, that everybody was walking on eggshells.”
Guy agreed after Parker noted that the show was still trying to find its identity when Allen came on board.
“Debbie Allen came in and found our identity, and she went to Howard, and she sent all our — we had about, I would say 10 writers. Two of them were Black.”
The “Harlem Nights” actress added that Allen sent all the writers to Black colleges to study the students because their writing wasn’t ringing true.
“I think after Debbie came on, the issues became more honest. Like, really what do college people deal with?” she said.
“A Different World” ran for six seasons and tackled topics like pregnancy and AIDS. Allen told Vanity Fair back in 2021 that the AIDS episode was difficult to get the network to air.
“If there’s an episode that was remarkable, it was the AIDS episode. It’s remarkable that it even got on the air,” said Allen. “We were under a microscope. I don’t think the network wanted us to do it, and advertisers pulled out, but it was just the time. I got Whoopi Goldberg to play a teacher — and I knew she was going to win the Academy Award that year for ‘Ghost’ — and she was amazing. Tisha Campbell played the young girl who had been infected with AIDS, which was also the first role on the show Jada Pinkett auditioned for.”
Guy added that she knew Hardison before they were love interests on the show, which made things awkward because they had a sibling-like relationship. The entire interview can be seen below.
