From left: Newson, Freeman, Banks and Cooper “I knew if I was going to come to L.A., then I had to have a reason to be here.”Ĭooper spoke to the importance and difficulty of casting an iconic family and how Bel-Air had such a unique difficulty. “I was couch surfing in Philly at the time I had jumped out of school, and I was trying to figure everything out,” he explained. So I was excited to be a part of this.'”īanks added that he also landed in LA from Philadelphia in a happenstance manner similar to Will’s origin story, adding to his connection to the character he plays. “Initially the audition scene was a scene between me and Carlton, where his friend had been saying the N-word. “I read the script and I was like, ‘Oh, this has something to say,'” Banks said.
The series found that with newcomer Banks, who explained that he resonated with the script. In whichever direction the adaptation took, the show had to star an actor who possessed a similar level of gravitas and explosion of character as Smith did with his portrayal in the 1990-96 original. I think that that permeated every single department and it was sort of our mission statement.” We had to sort of take that as inspiration, but go in a new direction. You’re not going to you’re not going to do it better than they did that. We knew we had to take bold swings because you can’t match what they did 30 years ago. We all took a lot of care with this material, but we knew we had to do something new. “Everybody had the same reference point, and everybody on the show was a fan of the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. “Luckily we have a trailer from Morgan and we had the history of the show to draw on,” Newson said. The creators of the show had a delicate balancing act with adapting the classic sitcom: respecting and being faithful to the source material and also forging a new legacy with their own creative vision.ĭeadline Contenders Television Arrivals – Day 2 Photo Gallery Smith in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ Everett He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I pitched him my idea to reimagine this is as a one hour drama.
“I invested my money in a short film that I made called Bel-Air (watch it below), released on YouTube in March of 2019, and less than a day later Westbrook reached out and I was in Calabasas the next day face-timing with Will. “We’re driving down Highway 71 and this vision hit me to reimagine The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a modern drama, and I knew it was a special idea,” Cooper recalled. Kim Kardashian, Amy Poehler, Robin Thicke, 'Shark Tank' Sharks And More On Board For Deadline's Contenders Television: Docs + Unscripted Event