Fans of 1990s television are in for a big treat as the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will come together for a reunion special. The event will air on HBO Max in November and celebrate the 30th anniversary of its debut on NBC. PopCulture.com caught up with Alfonso Ribeiro, who played Carlton Banks in the series and revealed he enjoyed catching up with the cast.
“I love them; they’re family to me,” Ribeiro said in our series, PopCulture @ Home. “It was a blast kind of getting together and doing this with them. They’ve always been family. We love each other; we talk all the time. It was a wonderful time to get together and have that reunion special.”
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Ribeiro further talked about what fans should expect from the reunion special, admitting it would be “really heartfelt” and nostalgic. “We did a wonderful tribute to the late great James Avery. We will take everyone on a ride, a little ride behind the scenes in terms of how we shot [the show], the impact it had on generations and the impact we had on sitcom television.”
Ribeiro later said the reunion special would look at “the way we did things differently and why we believe that some of the success was based on how our cast played an important role in the development of each season, of each character and the show… We had a blast shooting it. It will be fun.”
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran from 1990 to 1996 and starred Ribeiro, Will Smith, Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Janet Hubert-Whitten, Daphne Maxwell Reid, Joseph Marcell and Avery who died in 2013. The series has nominated for multiple awards during its run, and Ribeiro won the Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1996. Despite the show debuting 30 years again, it still resonates with the people now.
“There’s no way you can ever do something and think about the future,” Ribeiro stated when talking about the impact of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. “It’s interesting that the show is more successful after we stopped filming than what it was when we were filming. We never a top-10 show based on the ratings, but the storylines still resonate. The storylines are forever.”
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