Will Smith responds to The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air spin-off trailer
13 August 2020, 11:52 | Updated: 13 August 2020, 13:50
The iconic 90's sitcom is set to return to our screens in the form of a gritty drama - here's what Will Smith thinks.
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is being rebooted in the form of a modem, gritty drama, it was reported this week. After the trailer dropped, Will Smith - the star of the original show - spoke out.
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air to be rebooted as new series
The actor and rapper, 51, famously played a characterised version of himself in the iconic 90's series, portraying a streetwise teen who moved to Bel-Air from West Philadelphia to live with his affluent aunt and uncle.
The trailer for the new reboot, BEL-AIR, dropped back in 2019. The series, written and directed by Morgan Cooper, will feature hour-long episodes and is being produced by Will Smith’s Westbrook Studios and Universal Television.
How I Really Feel About That BEL-AIR Trailer
In a new video on his YouTube channel, Smith meets up with Cooper to discuss his thoughts on the new series, hailing the idea as "brilliant". Cooper says he was inspired the create the series after watching the original as a child.
"I grew up watching the show. Since I was five, I remember watching," he tells Will. "I remember seeing what you did on screen, so it's always been a part of me." He adds that the idea for the show "hit me like a ton of bricks" while driving one day.
Will expressed his excitement at the deeper emotional layer that can be portrayed in the new series, thanks to its longer episodes and darker content.
"The dramatic version of these ideas means that you can use existing storylines, but it's not going to see like you're redoing episodes because the storyline is going be back new from the dramatic perspective," he says.
"We get to go back to the beginning and start talking about my real experiences," Smith continues. "For me, I moved to LA and started the Fresh Prince, and all my friends started getting killed and going to jail."
"The escape that I made from it in real life was the escape that Will made in the show. Was I gonna be that same statistic or was I gonna do and be something different?"
He added, "What's exciting to me is the new media of it all. You put something on YouTube... just made a trailer, created something. I'm excited and inspired about that new way that human beings are interacting and ideas are getting created."
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air originally ran from 1990 to 1996 on NBC. Produced by Jones, Warner Bros. TV and what became Universal Television, the show recently became available to watch in Netflix.
Smith starred as himself alongside Uncle Phil (James Avery) and Aunt Viv (Janet Hubert-Whitten and later Daphne Maxwell Reid), and cousins Hillary (Karyn Parsons), Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro) and Ashley (Tatyana M. Ali) - and butler Geoffrey (Joseph Marcell) - after getting in a fight in his hometown.
