Since Debbie Allen took over as showrunner of the ’80s sitcom “A Different World” in Season 2, her influence reshaped the series.
The storyline centers on a group of Black students at an HBCU called Hillman College, similar to the Netflix reboot.
Drawing from her experience at Howard University, the new series tackles racism, homelessness, domestic violence, colorism, sexual health, and other issues.
Now 33 years later, “A Different World” returned as a sequel series that hit No. 1 on Netflix.
After its Sept. 24 premiere, the series has received rave reviews and has already been approved for a second season – proving Allen’s creative touch is still on point.
Allen serves as an executive producer on all 10 episodes. She also reprises her role as Dr. Langhorne, an academic adviser and counselor at Hillman.
This sequel follows a new generation of students, with appearances from several stars of the original series like Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Harrison.
At the screening in Atlanta, Allen told The Knockturnal how she prepared the actors for this season.
“I made them all write five pages of their backstory that wasn’t written, so I could hear what they thought their characters came from, where they came from, what did they care about, what was their religion,” she said in a clip circulating from Sept. 21.
Allen admitted she’d done this before when she directed the Broadway play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” earlier this year. The August Wilson play starred Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer as leads.
“It’s just a process for the actor to go further than what’s on the page,” she further explained.
In the series, Maleah Joi Moon portrays Deborah Wayne, the daughter of the original series characters Dwyane Wayne (played by Harrison) and Whitley Gilbert (played by Guy).
At Hillman, Deborah befriends criminal justice major Rashida Duvall, a role played by Alijah Kai.
Kai’s mother, Tichina Arnold, also portrays her character’s mom in the series.
Deborah’s love interest, Shaquille Johnson, played by Cornell Young IV, plays a football star who attends Hillman to honor his father’s promise. Darryl M. Bell, who starred in the original series, plays his father, Ron Johnson.
After learning about Allen’s technique for helping actors deepen their characters, fans praised her online.
After learning about Allen’s technique for tapping actors deeper into their characters, fans of her and the series praised her online.
One person who was admired by her story said, “She’s such a teacher.”
Another fan simply described Allen as a “Legend” in the comments. A third person commenting on her strategy wrote, “She don’t play.”
Allen certainly does not play. She said as much in June when she talked about the changes she made joining the series during season 2.
She brought storylines to the series that reflected real life on an HBCU campus.
“The first thing I did was really try to communicate to the writers that we needed to connect with the actors and vice versa, because that was the missing link,” she said.
“A Different World” was a spinoff of Bill Cosby’s “The Cosby Show” and originally followed Lisa Bonet’s character, Denise Huxtable, as she attended an HBCU in season 1.
But when Bonet became pregnant with Zoe Kravitz — her and her ex-husband Lenny Kravitz’s daughter — she left the series when Cosby refused to use her pregnancy as part of the storyline. With the show missing its main character, the plot had to shift.
Allen came in and made the life of several students at the HBCU the focus.
She told People that other production members didn’t take to her changes right away.
Her approach was, “Let’s solve this problem together, but it was a bit of rearranging for them to understand who I really was and what my task was going to be and that I really had the authority to do whatever.”
She was the chief creative officer. With that title, one of her main goals was to eliminate “a lot of the foolishness.”
“I’m all for laughter and buffoonery is OK, but to an end,” she said. She later added, “We’re dealing with serious issues out here, between education, poverty, joblessness, pregnancy, drugs, gangs. We have a lot of issues.
Allen’s approach to the series definitely worked. The year she took over, the show won a People’s Choice award for Favorite New TV Comedy Program. The show went on for six more seasons before ending.
Viewers were so influenced that HBCU enrollment even spiked around that time.
Now Allen is continuing her influence with this new “A Different World” series currently streaming on Netflix.
