Jasmine Guy says the producers of ‘A Different World’ mistreated Lisa Bonet

Probably because she wasn't very good on the show.

Jealous that she got to fuck Lenny Kravitz?

She couldnt act and was probably stoned most of the time. That strong patchouli smell was also off putting to the cast and crew.

She was good on the Cosby Show as a supporting character but not as the lead.

Two weeks' notice? I'm sure that was allowed by her contract. Starting right there, she's full of shit. Does she need attention for something right now?

She was already on notice with Cosby because of Angel Heart.

R5 she attempted to put in a two weeks notice and they pretty much laughed in her face. Hence her not being able to leave.

Perhaps I’m just distracted by the character she played, but Jasmine Guy seems like a consummate professional.

If Bonet was acting a fool enough for producers to respond the way they did, I don’t think Guy would have had her back.

Clearly they were out of line.

And clearly Kareem wouldn’t be backing up what she’s saying about them screaming in her face and being awful to her. And even if she was difficult (a claim NO ONE has ever made but Cosby) that is not how you handle it. The fact some people here are trying to even justify that.

Oh SHIT!

Dwayne Wayne got old and fat and grey!

[quote]Two weeks' notice? I'm sure that was allowed by her contract. Starting right there, she's full of shit. Does she need attention for something right now?

She said they were only supposed to record 7 episodes initially. I'm guessing they didn't get a full order of episodes yet. Also plenty of people have managed to get out of TV shows in the first season. Usually we never hear from them again but it happens.

I liked Lisa Bonet on the show but she wasn't the strongest actress to have carry a show. Even Jasmine says in the interview that they seemed to have issues writing for the character.

[quote]If Bonet was acting a fool enough for producers to respond the way they did, I don’t think Guy would have had her back.

Exactly. I completely believe Jasmine. She has worked in the industry for years. More than that, even in this interview, when they're speculating on why Lisa was no longer on the show, Kadeem mentions the pregnancy and Cosby but Jasmine is honest and says she doesn't know what the truth was there because she's heard rumors. She didn't go with the thing that would support what people thought. She went with her own mind.

For her to stop and say that the producers were yelling at Lisa Bonet in front of the live studio audience is bad strikes me as something she wouldn't say unless it actually happened. When she's asked what they said, she gave a clear example of them even yelling at Lisa about where to stand or what to say.

Damn, that's Kadeem?? I didn't even recognize him. Yikes!!

Why do you guys keep speaking about her as an actress? She was playing Denise, the same character she played for years prior. She was that shows biggest breakout and most popular Huxtable with viewers outside of Rudy when she was tiny and then Olivia when she was tiny.

They knew what they were doing. It was a spin-off of TVs #1 show, and finished its first season in Top 5. It was a ratings hit.

I would have preferred for Jasmine to discuss the popular cultural vortex that was her LA front yard where practically everything of any import in the late Eightes and early Nineties happened.

It may have been a ratings hit, but the show was a mess in its first season. Loretta Devine was hired to play a Mrs. Garrett type role, only to be fired a couple of episodes later. And she only found out she had been canned when she showed up and saw the set to her room had been destroyed. They quickly replaced her with Mary Alice. There were other characters, like Kim and Keenan Wayans who seemed to come and go without much explanation. And the storylines were either well worn plots or a Huxtable relative visits Denise and complications ensue. I think Anne Beatts of Square Pegs was one of the head writers that year.

When HBCU alum Phylicia appeared on one of the last episodes of the season, she was pissed at the end result and ran back and told Cosby. Debbie Allen was then called in to drastically restructure the show and make it about something.

It's trajectory was very similar to The Facts of Life.

Sorry, it finished its first season as the #2 most watched show in the country, behind its parent show, The Cosby Show, averaging 25 million viewers a week.

Cosby didn't have a problem with Bonet being in Angel Heart. He pitched a fit when Bonet got pregnant and she and Debbie Allen wanted to write it into the show. I don't know if that's why the producers were awful to her, but it's why she left. Cosby brought her back on the Cosby Show, though, completely sidestepping her pregnancy.

Let us take the time to remember all of the AMAZING things that happened ....

In front of ...

Jasmine Guy's House.

R17 he brought her back after she had the baby, but she was used less. And then he fired her.

And the other thread

[quote]I don't know about her career OP, but I do know that a lot of relationship breakups have happened on the lawn of her house. Just ask around. If Jasmine Guy is around, that is like the kiss of death for your relationship.

R17 wrong. Everyone at NBC took issue with her role in Angel Heart. She even lied to them while filming it about the nudity etc. because she knew it could jeopardize her job on the show.

What was the story with Marisa Tomei's token white role?

That a lot of predominantly black colleges tend to have a few white students r22. No black college is 100% black like some shows/movies depict.

R21 nope. Cosby trashed the movie but publicly defended Bonet, saying he advised her to TAKE THE ROLE. He also publicly defended the nude photos. It was the press hyping up the idea that Bonet was "hurting" the show. Despite that Cosby gave her her own show with a starring role AFTER the movie was released--a promotion--kept strong ties between the 2 shows, and then brought her back. His problem with Lisa was not the movie, it was the pregnancy (and because she was supposedly late and unprofessional on set).

This was a guy who shamelessly and ruthlessly fired the actor who played Cockroach over a HAIRCUT. If he had a problem with the movie, she would never have gotten A Different World. They would have just sent Denise away to college and maybe had her occasionally visit.

R24 they were gonna use her for A Different World regardless. The shows inception is it’s a Cosby spinoff.

And how many more examples do you need to understand that if Cosby had a problem with her doing the film, she would have been ousted?

ADW as originally conceived wasn't even going to star Bonet, she was going to still be supporting. It was supposed to star Meg Ryan as a white student adjusting to a HBCU. Meg dropped out, they retooled it to center around Denise, and they would have retooled it again if Cosby really wanted to be rid of or "punish" Bonet. And then when she got pregnant and he wanted rid of her, she was out.

After Angel Heart and all the heat Lisa got, there was an episode of the Cosby show where they each came down and sat for a family photo or something and each kid that came down wore a sweater with PG on it. Then Cosby yelled "DENISE GET DOWN HERE PLEASE" and she came down wearing a big X on hers. It was pretty funny.

I remember Cosby encouraging Lisa to take Angel Heart, but he didn’t know she would appear nude and have sex on film.

OT: Jasmine Guy dated OJ Simpson before Nicole's murder.

^ She publicly said he did know and gave his blessing. He never disputed that, and confirmed he did encourage her to take it.

If she had secretly done an explicit film and blindsided him, he would have absolutely fired her. Do people still not understand what Bill Cosby was and is?

Did something happen to her on the front lawn of Jasmine Guy's house??

I always liked Lisa. She was so beautiful and eccentric. People say shy but she was just very subdued, mysterious and soft spoken in real life. And an introvert.

And unapologetically herself.

Debbie Allen explains her departure from A Different World

Something I didn't know until looking up TV columns from late summer of 1988: there was interest in moving Malcolm-Jamal Warner/Theo over to A Different World starting with the 1989-90 season. Luckily, ADW's reboot took and the show didn't have to revert back to the same gimmick as before.

Debbie Allen’s idea of wanting to write Lisa’s pregnancy into the show actually sounds like a good idea.

R15 nailed it.

There was, I think, a lot of money riding on this and clearly NBC wanted another hit, but it was such a mess in the beginning. I'm not a huge Debbie Allen fan but the show became watchable and somewhat entertaining after she came on.

I doubt Lisa was being unprofessional but she'd hardly be the first nor last supporting actress thrust into a starring role, and that doesn't always work out.

The shows first season had a lot of issues but Lisa wasn’t one of them.

Jasmine Guy was fantastic in CHICAGO.

Was the producer, Debbie Allen?

Rachel Dolezal attended an HBCU.

She is also a good artist

Was bookish Millie eating Whitley's lady ham on campus?

She was always stuck up her ass.

R39 not for most of the first season. She was brought in at the very end of season 1 to take over as showrunner and revamp the show.

I loved Whitney's dorm room in "A Different World."

Curious which producers screamed on Lisa Bonet?

Haaaaaa!!!!!! That's what you get, bitch!

R37 It was the main one. When the lead actor stinks, something has to change. The show was much better when she left.

The best thing to happen to YG was LB getting fired because she became the star of the show. Marisa Tomei too, if she wasn’t fired, she wouldn’t have had the movie career she did and win the Oscar.

A main problem of the first year was Denise acted like a freshmen when she was actually a sophmore.

I, for one, never saw one episode of this series. It sounds absolutely dreadful.

*JG*

I watched for Bonet and lost interest when she left

R35 it was a great idea. Huge and powerful story arc for both shows. Among many other problems with asshole Cosby, his self-righteous hypocrisy left him unable to recognize that potential.

I had a pair of Dwayne Wayne flip up sun glasses. The 90s were awesome.

r43 - Her character name was Whitley not Whitney.

Jasmine Guy’s southern accent on ADW was fried and overdone!

R54 Oh dear! Apologies.

R43 don't let it happen again.

I am just at this moment realizing that Jasmine Guy and Jada Pinkett are different people.

I can't believe how Kadeem Hardison looks now. He's black, he has a duty to look far younger than his age not far older! Hes only 57. He looks 70.

Throw him out of the black community until he comes back looking younger than his age!

r59 black don't crack but ashy is forever.

I love how wasted Jasmine Guy was in that interview. Candidate for RHOBH?

Jasmine Guy hid Tupac in her house after he was shot. Jada was there!

Jada was also on ADW and they considered giving her a spin-off.

Kadeem just got real real fat in the last few years. The last round of ADW nostalgia was after the oral history in a magazine a few years back and he looked more normal sized then.....

R64 that’s exactly what it is. If he lost weight, he would look better

Lisa was great on Cosby (really, all the kids were great) and much weaker on ADW. The producers mistreating her might explain the difference. I wish we could have seen what Debbie Allen could have done with her.

I always assumed Debbie Allen was responsible for Lisa Bonets departure from the show.

I like them both, but they look bad. Kadeem was married to Chante Moore.

ADW wasn’t very good but I liked the fashion

R67 no. She actually wanted to keep her (and Marisa Tomei) around. She had tons of ideas she wanted to explore and turn into storylines. She was made showrunner but Cosby called all the shots in the end.

R67 I seem to remember that was decided before Debbie took over.

Cosby had the final say and Lisa's pregnancy ended any chance to Denise staying in school.

Cosby seems like a borderline egomaniac/narcissist.

R70, watch the video posted at R17 and again at R33.

"Doctor" Cosby the rapist preferred "dropout" to "unwed mother."

She was (and is) a beautiful woman, but she is incapable of acting. She is perpetually stoned and delivered all her lines in a daze.

The only reason she ever got as far as she did was that Bill Cosby was madly in lust with her.

R72 being a dropout isn’t the same as being an unwed mother.

You can always go back to college and finish. Once you have the child, you can’t go back from that. You can put them up for adoption etc. but you still are essentially a mother.

The shit that goes down in Jasmine Guy's house...

[quote]Lisa was great on Cosby (really, all the kids were great) and much weaker on ADW.

Lisa's, "Denise" played well against the other characters on Cosby. Unlike Sondra, who didn't have a definite personality until seasons in, Denise's "head in the clouds" schtick worked opposite Cliff and Claire. Sondra didn't get an interesting personality until seasons in when they finally had her Type A/Responsible bit tend to cause her to make weird/impulsive decisions that her parents wouldn't expect but made perfect sense to her.

On A Different World, Denise's personality got lost and later on we saw them do it right with Freddie but she wasn't the lead. In a way, Denise's personality worked well as supporting against someone more serious but that's about it.

Freddie and Denise were nothing alike…

[quote]I watched for Bonet and lost interest when she left

lol r51 you must've been the only person in America who did!

The show was HORRIBLE the first season, Jasmine and Kadeem recount several times all the problems with Season 1 if you watch the entire interview at OP. No one thought it would get renewed, that's why Jasmine was trying to be proactive and get out to find other work. Jasmine and Kadeem also said the ratings held up because it's timeslot was between The Cosby Show and Cheers, which saved it until it found its groove.

Lisa could never carry her own show, pregnant or not! She was not that great of an actress. Very beautiful, and like Jasmine Guy they both capitalized off being light skinned black women in the 90s. That was the look that industry wanted then, ie Halle Berry.

[quote]I always assumed Debbie Allen was responsible for Lisa Bonets departure from the show.

IT WAS ARETHA

Who cares? The show was still averaging 25 million viewers a week and finished the year as the 2nd most watched show in the Country, behind The Cosby Show, which averaged 27 million viewers a week for its 4th season.

R78 they can say what they want. Networks care about ratings. These people seem to think the network was gonna cancel a show bringing in 25 million people a week because the quality wasn’t up to par. Lmao. It’s all about money. More ratings equal more money. NBC wasn’t canceling them.

Lisa and Jasmine are both biracial. Not just “light skinned”. And yes, there’s usually a difference in appearance.

r81 I just said they were recounting, sharing their thoughts of what was going on, THEN. Of course 30+ years later they know it was business. They both thought it was just another job. Kadeem said he actually was trying to hide himself with the hats and sunglasses so people wouldn't recognize him if the show got canned after season 1.

ANYTHING following Cosby, the gold mine of ratings, would make out decently...huge lead in. The true measure of how good ADW was came in the later years when Cosby was over. It surpassed expectations. Jasmine said she hated not getting any credit for saving that show, while talk show hosts insulted her by asking about other shows on NBC, Cheers, Cosby.

Personally, I think ADW was at its best between 1989-91. The retooling had solidified and Dwayne & Whitley's relationship hadn't yet fallen into the trap of breaking up or making up in time with sweeps months. (Even if we did have Kinu, Dwayne's other girlfriend, for half a season.)

The show dropped in ratings so drastically, out of nowhere. I always felt seasons 3-5 were it’s best.

Season 1- #2 averaging 25 million viewers a week

Season 2- #3 averaging 23 million viewers a week

Season 3- #4 averaging 21.1 million viewers a week

Season 4- #4 averaging 17.5 million viewers a week

Season 5- #17 averaging 15.2 million viewers a week

Season 6- #71 averaging 9.6 million viewers a week

Season 6 was after The Cosby Show ended. Anyone remember what took its timeslot for the 1992-93 season?

^ It wasn't out of nowhere, it tracked The Cosby Show's ratings. And because the Cosby show ended, the ratings for last seasons of ADW plummeted.

I think people were just over the show by season 6. Same with The Cosby Show’s final season. It took a huge nosedive. People were tuned out by the final season.

r85, NBC moved ADW to 8pm during Season 6, which put the show on at the same time as "Martin" on FOX. That's what caused the drop off. Jasmine said it was a deliberately racist move by the head of the network, to split the audience which was heavily black.

r82, the point is they both had the look, but Jasmine had the talent as well. Jasmine said that one the first things Debbie did was add more dark-skinned people to the cast to make it more realistic like a historically black college.

Jasmine was also pissed that Rosanne got to butcher the national anthem lol. She said that practically all the women on the ADW cast (5) could sing professionally, but never got opportunities to sing outside the show.

Thanks for the clarification, R89.

Jasmine is probably not wrong with that hypothesis, and I wonder if NBC just got bored of the show with TCS no longer around to lead it in.

They already had their shiny new toy called [italic]The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air[/italic], showcasing a rich black family from the west coast rather than the east.

Well, r90, Vivien was born and raised in Philly, but moved out West. Same with Will. Vivien’s kids were being raised rich and from the West though.

The Cosby Show was such a phenomenon and a cash cow, I'm surprised they didn't attempt more spinoffs, even backdoor spinoffs with one-off characters.

All that Jasmine...

AHS: Jasmine Guy House

[quote]Debbie Allen’s idea of wanting to write Lisa’s pregnancy into the show actually sounds like a good idea.

I think for a supporting character, but not sure the lead of a newer show about college students, which would involve having a baby being in most episodes.

Not that either Different World or Facts of Life were ever the best shows on television, but I think it is two cases where they nailed with the tinkering of the show after the first season, who to keep etc. and did actually improve the show. There are probably more examples out there where they tweak a show to try and save it and make it worse.

That said, the first season of Different World was better than the last and probably on part with the penultimate season. It probably should have ended with Dwayne and Whitely's wedding. They really were reaching a bit at the end on keeping the original group around while trying to introduce new undergrads who ended up being pretty underdeveloped with not enough time with the now too big cast.

r52 the good of it.. Cosby wanted a largely black but desegregated show - but the way it was approached led to it being retooled to resemble HBCUs, though... but it didn't quite manage that either, especially given the fictional college's location and seemingly being presented as a larger university with a diverse range of programs than most small colleges... which would have held the probability of having more diverse students.

Benefit in the retooling, it was no longer another Cosby vehicle. Negative was, of course, yes, he was an asshole and maintained influence...

and there were even sexual harassment allegations back in that day, too. Which even after everything now.. people still dance around the specifics. But you find this common with black entertainment in general, everybody knows about the dirty laundry but you're not supposed to air it out in public because it might limit black opportunities in the foreseeable future. networks are more prone to shelf those kind of programs for a while than address and fix problems even now.

R90, she’s not. That’s the way things were done in general. Networks would either put shows of the same “type” up against each other to knock one out or networks would wisely put shows with different audiences up against each other.

You didn’t put on a family show, on another network, opposite ABC’s TGIF at its height. You put on serious shows that would potentially grab a different set of viewers.

Putting Martin up against A Different World definitely split black audiences. Either the intent was to kill it or the intent was to knock Martin out but after that many seasons (and Martin being goofy, newer/fresher) it’s not a shock Martin won.

“It was not a terrible mistake, it was a regular mistake. A terrible mistake is when you forget A Different World follows Cosby!”

R96 what you just described isn’t exclusive to black entertainment. How many white men in Hollywood sexually harass or abuse or even rape women and no one hears about it? It’s common.

Why do we keep speaking about this show like it was only black people watching? Most people who I’ve met who watched this were not even black.

I remember some racist on here speaking of The Cosby Show like it was some flop, only to be corrected and told it was the #1 show in the country for like 5 years. He then said “well at least he would never have been big in the UK” only to be told that the show was a #1 show there also, and was huge throughout Asia also. It was a phenomenon and foreign syndication rights and policies etc. were created because of this show. It’s the first show to ever bring in $1 billion to its company in a single year because of all the money foreign countries were paying to air it in their country, back in the early 90s at that.

It was a flop in syndication.

I was a kid in 1992/93 but I remember, even back then, getting the sense that the big networks were getting rid of their primetime shows that were popular in the mid- and late-80s at around the same time, especially the family-themed ones. I could only guess that they were trying to make their lineups be more "90s".

On NBC, The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls ended their runs in the same week in 1992. A week earlier, Who's The Boss? and Growing Pains ended on ABC. On CBS, Designing Women stayed on, but was gone after 1993. I'm sure I'm forgetting some others.

Family Matters and Full House both debuted in the late 80s but they were still on the upswing and I think people consider them to be 90s shows.

Full House ended in 1995. But yes, they’re considered 90s shows. Family Matter lasted all of the 90s.

R103 TV was changing by the mid 90s, which is why family shows were being tossed. Family Sitcoms were the ratings winners of the 80s into the early 90s. But it’s been stated shows like The Simpsons and Roseanne started the transition from wholesome family shows to more mature sitcoms, and those shows are considered what killed the popularity of shows like The Cosby Show, Family Ties etc.

And then primetime became mostly adult centered comedies and dramas again.

You still had some family sitcoms that were hits, like Home Improvement, but shows like Friends, Seinfeld, ER etc. were what took over the Top 10.

I think it's hilarious that some troll tried to pretend that The Cosby Show was anything but a massive success. It's like someone claiming the movie Titanic flopped.

Didn't MJW/Theo get a spin-off, playing a social worker?

He sure did, in a show called "Here and Now" which got cancelled after half a season.

But it wasn’t a spin-off. Warner wasn’t playing Theo.

The only other attempt at a spinoff for Cosby was one called Mr. Quiet starring Tony Orlando. The pilot aired as an episode of the Cosby show's first season.

R109, you're correct. My memory was failing me!

Tom Brock.

^ wrong thread 😑

[quote]and there were even sexual harassment allegations back in that day, too. Which even after everything now.. people still dance around the specifics. But you find this common with black entertainment in general, everybody knows about the dirty laundry but you're not supposed to air it out in public because it might limit black opportunities in the foreseeable future.

r96 "not airing dirty laundry" was entertainment industry thing, prior to social media and "Me too". Especially when it came to men. Its not specific to black entertainers at all, but people here like to pretend that it is.

Even as a black kid in the 90s I knew Bill Cosby was a creep.... I know the shit when I see it. It's interesting though, A Different World was my first education about date-rape, AIDS.

34 years ago today, the cover of TV Guide.

September 24, 1988.

I never knew Tom Brock was on "A Different World". What part did he play?