A video of actor and “Dancing with the Stars” host Alfonso Ribeiro from 30 years ago is making the rounds on social media, and fans are in shock after discovering his real voice.
Ribeiro, 53, became a television legend thanks to his portrayal of Carlton Banks in the 1990s classic sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” starring rapper-turned-actor Will Smith.
Carlton’s character was presented as a yuppie and conservative teenager, which caused many television viewers to assume the Bronx native also had a preppy, elitist demeanor in real life.
That mirage was recently shattered for some fans when old footage of the current “Dancing with the Stars” host speaking with the cable access show “StreetFunk TV N.Y.C.” was uploaded on X.
“I’m chilling. I’m just trying to have a good time. I’m back in New York for a minute, so I gotta step up,” Ribeiro told the interviewer in the clip that is supposedly from 1994, after filming the show’s fourth season.
Ribeiro also said, “The show’s going great. We’re getting good ratings still. We got picked up for next season, so we’re going to be coming back. At least next year. We’re doing our thing.”
“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the series filmed at NBC studios in Los Angeles and ran from September 1990 to May 1996.
Numerous accounts on X reacted to the footage of a 20-something Ribeiro showing his off-screen personality in such a candid and open way.
“That’s his real voice?! I had no idea he is from the Bronx!! He played Carleton so well you would think it was him lol,” one X user admitted.
Another wrote, “At first, I was like, ‘Lol, Carlton tryna sound like he’s from New York.’ And then I remembered this n—-a is deadass from the Bronx, lmao.”
“Lmao, Carlton played his character so well [people] forget he’s not from 90210,” read one reply, referring to the famous ZIP code of the wealthy city of Beverly Hills, California.
A fourth responder posted, “I never realized how much he hid his accent until now.” “Hair Love” filmmaker Matthew A. Cherry pointed out that Ribeiro is a New York native of Trinidadian descent.
Cherry highlighted Ribeiro’s heritage by sharing a screenshot of the “Early life” section of the veteran actor’s Wikipedia page and captioned the image, “Accent is valid.”
Ribeiro played Carlton for all six seasons of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” after also playing a rich kid in the “Silver Spoons” sitcom for three seasons from 1984 through 1987.
While his time on “The Fresh Prince” produced pre-social media memes like the iconic “The Carlton” dance, Ribeiro has expressed mixed feelings about playing Will’s bourgeois cousin.
“Playing Carlton on ‘Fresh Prince’ became a sacrifice. I used to always say doing Carlton was the greatest and worst thing that ever happened to me,” Ribeiro stated during a May 2024 interview with Us Weekly.
He continued, “It was one of the greatest roles that I ever was fortunate enough to play, but it was also the role that stopped me from acting again because people couldn’t see me as anything else. The sacrifice was not having an acting career anymore.”
After “Fresh Prince” ended in 1996, Ribeiro went on to appear in other TV shows such as “In the House” with another rapper-turned-actor, James “LL Cool J” Smith.
Ribeiro also delved into reality television by competing on season 19 of “Dancing with the Stars.” He won the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy in 2014 alongside professional dancer Witney Carson.
For its 31st season of “Dancing with the Stars,” which premiered in 2022, Ribeiro was tapped to be a host of the dance competition program.
“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” also helped launch the careers of Karyn Parsons as Hilary Banks and Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks. Ribeiro also told “StreetFunk TV N.Y.C.” back in the 1990s, “We got some pretty ladies on the show with us. Tatyana went and grew up on us.”
The cast also featured James Avery, who played family patriarch Philip Banks, and two actresses as family matriarch Vivian Banks, first Janet Hubert-Whitten and later Daphne Maxwell Reid.
