Jaleel White is setting the record straight on his falling out with Will Smith.
In a new interview with Us Weekly, White talked about his new memoir Growing Up Urkel, in which he dishes on his bond with his fellow ’90s TV star and their subsequent falling out.
“What’s weird is when you cross paths in our business, you never quite know how much or how little a moment meant to each other. And that can kind of play with your brain,” White said about getting to share his side of the story. “It didn’t go nearly the way I thought it was going to go with the things that I said about my interactions with Will.”
White did have a message he wanted to share with Smith, however, telling the outlet, “I just always want Will to know — and I’m not sure he ever did — how much I admired his forging ahead. I saw it coming before the rest of America got a chance to see it coming. I could see it coming in NBA All-Star Stay in School Jam and would think, ‘This dude’s freaking energy is huge in the room.’ And you wouldn’t necessarily get credit for that when you’re a kid.”
In his memoir, White recalled getting the chance to pitch a show to Smith after he signed an overall production deal with Universal in the late ’90s. The partnership came after White made a cameo on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It appeared promising — that is until White got told by those around him, including his agent, that nothing would materialize due to other people involved in those decisions.
“I should have called Will directly, and the truth was, I wanted to work with Will, badly,” White, who rose to stardom playing Steve Urkel on the hit ’90s sitcom Family Matters, wrote in the book. “Soon after my meeting with Will, his head of TV would end up getting relieved of his duties, which complicated the chain of command.
“And Will was becoming such a big star, so fast, that I didn’t have the nerve to call his phone myself months later and ask, ‘Hey, man, why’d you fire your head of TV? My agent said there was no deal to be made. They’re offering me this show at UPN and I know in my heart this premise is weaker than ours.'”
White would ultimately go on to sign on to UPN’s Grown Ups, which was short-lived,after being convinced it was the safer option.
“My decision to go with Grown Upsinstead of exploring a show with Will Smith — sticking to my guns and being patient with the process basically ended my and Will’s relationship,” he recalled. “There were no more invites to his house or his movie sets, no more calls to say ‘What’s up?'”
White told Us, “When I got the opportunity to nearly work with him, [I now] go back and look at the number of people that conspired to make sure that we did not speak directly any further. It sucks for me. But as long as I got it out and I got to express it, that’s once again in one of those areas where the book just becomes therapeutic.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, White reflected on his time on Family Matters, and some of the uncomfortable moments he had on set while filming the beloved series.
In an excerpt from the book, first published by The Sun, White detailed both the physical and mental changes he experienced while filming his breakout role from 1989 to 1998.
While his character famously wore glasses and suspenders, spoke in a nasal voice and was known for his catchphrase, “Did I do that?” White says that as time went on, show executives didn’t want certain things to be a part of his character anymore.
By the eighth season, White says they were doing away with his iconic suspenders and making some changes to his look, as White too changed and grew older.
“Lower his pants, too. Oh, and… it’s getting a bit uncomfortable watching him in tight jeans. There’s a, uh… bulge…,” White claims he was told.
Speaking about how he had grown out of his character, he said he felt like he was “peeling” himself out of his pants “like a banana” by the time he was in college.
White’s voice was also impacted as he transitioned from that high-pitched tone he was known for to a lower register.
“I spoke to a doctor and what happened is during puberty I spoke at the same pitch for extended periods of time. If the pitch had been going all over the place I wouldn’t have damaged it quite as much,” he said about his character’s speaking tone.
His vocal issues are “in remission” these days, with White adding that he’s “fine now,” but as a teen, White said he felt like he was “really losing” his voice after “constantly” getting notes from executives.
“It was kind of a scary thing for me to go through,” he said.
Read more in Growing Up Urkel, out now.
