[MUSIC PLAYING] This Aunt Viv and this Aunt Viv
are two very different versions of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. This moment is one of the
most important moments in Fresh Prince's run,
for that very reason. Will greets Aunt Viv. Jazz makes this comment-- You know, Mrs. Banks,
since you had that baby, there's something
different about you. And then he breaks the fourth
wall and looks directly at us to make, well-- [VIDEO GAME SOUND] As if to acknowledge
the viewer and say, yep, this is just
what it is now. Let's move on. What the show obviously
didn't address is why there was
suddenly a new Aunt Viv. Why one of the most important
characters on television at the time was suddenly an
entirely different woman, played by entirely
different actress. What we didn't know is
that Aunt Viv didn't leave. She was kind of fired. And what I think
is more interesting is not just how and
why she was fired, but how the show changed
relatively dramatically after she was. This is the story
of the two versions of Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air, a split that got the show
canceled, and how those two versions of
the show came to exist, and the show itself came back. I came in on, "your Aunt Vivian
can be quite bossy sometimes." Oh, well, you didn't hear
the part where I said, boys, the rest of the
statement is completely untrue. Will Smith had no professional
acting experience, but NBC decided to build
the show around him. He was a rapper and, at
the time, nothing more. And Will struggled. And trust me, this is important
for the Aunt Viv switch. Will struggle to the point
where the network almost fired and recast him after the
first few episodes were filmed. And yet the pilot,
and in turn, the show, would quickly become a success. And will grow as an actor. But that process was slow. Yet things went smoothly on
set and behind the scenes for most of the first season,
and the show would get renewed. But it was apparently the second
season where things really started to go downhill . According to Janet Hubert,
it was around this time that she started to become
upset with the culture of the show and its cast. She thought that Will
and Ribeiro, as well as the rest of the cast, weren't
taking their jobs seriously. And that it made it hard for
the show to be worth watching, and it made it even harder
for her to do her job. And Hubert, much
like her character, wasn't going to
stay quiet about it. There were reports
that during the filming of the second season
she began to verbalize her complaints on set. There are reports that she
would yell at Will mid-scene when he made a mistake, and that
she approached him directly, at one point, and confronted
him about what she deemed childish behavior on set, and
about his penchant for joking around and having a good time. But these things
would really come to a head for, well, everyone
and the studio in the show's third season. Wait a minute. Boy, do not test me. Yes, ma'am. Will would say later, when
asked about the situation within the third
season of the show, that she, Janet
Hubert, as he put it, really wanted the show
to be The Aunt Viv Show. And it was further reported
that Janet Hubert was quoted as saying that she's
been acting all her life, and this punk kid comes in and
they build a show around him. She didn't understand
how that's possible. And that third
season would prove to be the end of the line. She'd say that she simply
couldn't do her job because of Will's attitude. And Alfonso Ribeiro-- Carlton-- would say
in response that it was Hubert whose
outbursts and attitude were creating a miserable work
environment for everybody. Hubert resented the fact--
and she would admit this-- that Will hadn't
acted, and was upset that he needed to learn
how to do so, well, throughout the process
of the show's filming. And even more, she
resented the fact that she wasn't
being paid a number that she thought was fair. According to her, NBC
offered to renew her contract at a rate that didn't
include enough growth and pay over the seasons,
and this infuriated her. Now, it's worth pointing
out that I personally couldn't find anyone
confirming this but Hubert, but according to her, she
wanted more She didn't get it. Her behavior towards the
cast, and Will in particular, wasn't creating an
environment where anyone wanted to fight to keep
her aboard, and so Hubert-- the original Aunt Viv-- was terminated. What happened next-- [TWO-TONE BEEP] --would almost help kill
the show altogether. But it was also unlike anything
we've ever seen on television. And what is that
supposed to mean? Oh, too many big words? No, Miss Thing, but I got a
couple of small words for you. Some of the show's
most iconic episodes were Janet Hubert/Aunt
Viv-related. Before her departure, the
show used her as a way to establish a strong female
presence in the house. She was often the show's
vehicle to discuss and explore female dynamic and real issues. We saw episodes
like this where she tries to prove to herself
that age is nothing but a number, that
she's still got it, and that she's independent. But not only that, that she's
made the right choices in life, as a wife and mother. Or the episode where
Will and Carlton fight for African Studies in
hopes that they get an easy A. And Aunt Viv becomes
their teacher, and it really forces them
to process and understand the history of their culture. Or even the mall episode, where
Viv turns the recording booth into a concert hall. In the first three
seasons, this character was not just almost always
the voice of reason, but she was the primary focus of
a lot of the show's plotlines. The show was written with
Aunt Viv at the forefront of that writing. Hubert was a
phenomenal actress that played Viv as a strong woman
that fought for herself and never wanted to be unheard. And the show succeeded. Its highest ratings were
in the third season, with Janet Hubert as Aunt Viv. But once Hubert was
fired, the show's dynamic shifted Nicky was
born and Aunt Viv went from a strong, independent
woman to a quiet background character for most of
the show's ensuing run. Episodes would stop
focusing so much on her and would treat her
as a lesser character. And the plotlines in the
stories that were once written for that
character fell mostly to Ashley, who would quickly
develop a much larger role in the show's writing. This was a very different
Fresh Prince, from season 4 on. One that was grounded almost
exclusively by Uncle Phil and much less so by Aunt Viv,
and one that became much more focused on the kids than it
did their parents, as a result. And a version of the show that
coincided with ratings that simply did not live up to the
network's expectations, so much so that the show was actually
canceled after Daphne Reid's first season-- the fourth season of
the show, in totality. That was supposed to be
it, season 4 and done. The Fresh Prince would
end with a season finale and the network would move on. Yet the world wanted more. A lot more, actually,
and thousands, hundreds of letters
and petitions were created and sent to NBC
for months after the season 4 cancellation. So many, in fact,
that the network decided to renew the
show for a fifth season and, eventually, a sixth season. Seasons that would
continue a ratings decline, and included
Daphne Reid as Aunt Viv. It actually got bad
enough internally that the season 5 finale
was written to potentially be the end of the
show, just in case NBC happened to pull the plug
once the season had ended. It happened to be
renewed for a sixth, and the sixth season's finale
was written with the knowledge, from everybody internally,
that this would indeed be the last episode of the show. And it's worth saying that
Reid didn't necessarily make the show intrinsically worse. And, in fact, a lot of
my favorite episodes are post-Hubert. But it's undeniable that
she was a great Aunt Viv. And it's also undeniable
that the world did not respond to Daphne
Reid's Aunt Viv nearly as much and
nearly as well. And the show was at its
best, for the most part, when Hubert played
the character. Janet Hubert and
Daphne Maxwell Reid tell the tale of two Princes. But regardless, The Fresh Prince
of Bel-Air is, to this day, a phenomenal show. It's a slice of the very
late-'80s and early-'90s culture that is still funny
and sometimes even remarkably resonates to this day. From season 1 to
season 6, it's a show that dealt with
things, eventually, that were much more dramatic
and much more serious. The reason, by the way,
is that Will himself was inspired by some of the more
dramatic episodes of this show and asked the writers
himself to create a few more dramatic episodes. And those succeeded as well. And a lot of those episodes
are still important pieces of television today. But very few shows
in television history can survive recasting a lead
character entirely the way that Fresh Prince did. I mean, could you imagine
watching this episode live, when it aired. You've been watching The Fresh
Prince for three seasons. Each week it's prime
time television. And there's no functional
mass internet at the time. So one night, you turn on Fresh
Prince for the season premiere, and in walks this woman. And she's Aunt Viv, and
this is what you see. It's a moment of
strange confusion that modern television
literally could never replicate. You know, Mrs. Banks,
since you had that baby, there's something
different about you. Millions of people
sitting in their home, looking at this face. Yeah, Will, I'd imagine
that's how every viewer felt, sitting at home, too. [MUSIC PLAYING] That is it for today's
episode of Nerdstalgic. If you enjoyed this video, press
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to mention that there's a great video on the
minutia of this story and the minutia
of what happened, that focuses less on
the results and more on what was really going
on, made by a channel called Comedy Hype. It's great. You should watch that as well. And as always, on
your screen right now are two more
episodes of Nerdstalgic. You can click on either of these
to see what I've done recently. And I will see you
guys in the next video.
