The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Andy Borowitz Susan Borowitz
Developed by	Benny Medina Jeff Pollack
Starring	Will Smith James Avery Janet Hubert Alfonso Ribeiro Karyn Parsons Tatyana M. Ali Joseph Marcell Daphne Maxwell Reid Ross Bagley
Theme music composer	The Fresh Prince in association with A Touch of Jazz, Inc.
Opening theme	"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" performed by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Ending theme	"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (instrumental)
Composers	Quincy Jones III
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	148
Production
Executive producers	Quincy Jones David Salzman Andy Borowitz Susan Borowitz Kevin Wendle (season 1) Winifred Hervey (seasons 2-3) Gary H. Miller (season 4, episode 1-season 5, episode 15) Cheryl Gard (season 5, episodes 16-25) Jeff Pollack Will Smith (season 6) Benny Medina
Producers	Werner Walian Lisa Rosenthal Joel Madison Leilani Downer Joanne Curley-Kerner Joel Markowitz
Production locations	Hollywood Center Studios, Hollywood (1990-1991) Sunset Gower Studios, Hollywood (1991-1993) NBC Studios, Burbank (1993-1996)
Camera setup	Videotape; Multi-camera
Running time	23 minutes
Production companies	The Stuffed Dog Company Quincy Jones Entertainment (1990-1993, seasons 1-3) Quincy Jones-David Salzman Entertainment (1993-1996, seasons 4-6) NBC Productions Warner Horizon Unscripted Television (Reunion special)
Distributor	Warner Bros. Television Distribution HBO Max (reunion special)
Release
Original network	NBC
Picture format	NTSC
Original release	September 10, 1990 (1990-09-10) - May 20, 1996 (1996-05-20)

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is an American sitcom television series created by Andy and Susan Borowitz that originally aired on NBC from September 10, 1990, to May 20, 1996. The series stars Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, a street-smart teenager born and raised in West Philadelphia who is sent to move in with his wealthy uncle and aunt in their Bel-Air mansion after getting into a fight in the local playground in his neighborhood. However, his lifestyle often clashes with the lifestyle of his upper-class relatives.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran for 148 episodes over six seasons.^[1][2] A reunion special/retrospective reuniting the original cast debuted on HBO Max on November 18, 2020, one day ahead of schedule.^[3][4] A more dramatic reboot based on the fan film Bel-Air is in active development, with a two-season order for Peacock.

Summary

The theme song and opening sequence set the premise of the show. Will Smith is a street-smart teenager, West Philadelphia "born and raised". While playing street basketball, Will misses a shot and the ball hits a group of gang members, causing a confrontation that frightens his mother, who sends him to live with his wealthy aunt and uncle in the opulent neighborhood of Bel Air, Los Angeles.

Will's working class background ends up clashing in various humorous ways with the upper class world of the Banks family - Will's uncle Phil and aunt Vivian and their children, Will's cousins: spoiled Hilary, entitled Carlton, and impressionable Ashley.

Cast and characters

  = Main cast (credited)

  = Recurring cast (4+)

Main

Recurring

Celebrity guest stars

The show is notable for having a heavy celebrity guest presence with more than forty celebrities guest starring throughout the series. Seasons 1 and 6 had the highest celebrity participation with over 10 celebrity guest stars each.^[5]

Episodes

Development

The cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, seasons 1-3. From top left: Karyn Parsons, Joseph Marcell, Janet Hubert-Whitten, Alfonso Ribeiro. From bottom left: Tatyana M. Ali, James Avery, Will Smith.

In 1990, music manager Benny Medina, along with his business partner, real estate mogul Jeff Pollack, decided to market a TV story based on Medina's life. Medina had grown up poor in East Los Angeles but his life changed when he befriended a rich white teenager, whose family lived in Beverly Hills and allowed Medina to live with them. Medina decided to use this part of his life as the main focus of the show. However, given that by then a black character living with a white family was a concept that had been done multiple times on TV, Medina decided to change the rich white family to a rich black family. "That way we could explore black-on-black prejudice as well as black class differences", Medina said in an interview for Ebony magazine.^[27]

Medina pitched the idea to Quincy Jones, who had just signed a TV deal with Time-Warner. Jones was impressed by the idea and arranged a meeting with NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff. Will Smith was well known by then as his music career as The Fresh Prince had put him on the mainstream radar, but he had come into debt after failing to pay taxes. At the suggestion of his then-girlfriend, Smith went to a taping of The Arsenio Hall Show where he met Medina by chance. Medina pitched the idea to Smith, but Smith was reluctant, having never acted before. Medina invited Smith to meet Jones at a party that Jones was throwing at his house in December 1989. There, Jones handed Smith a script for a failed Morris Day pilot that he had produced and challenged Smith to audition for Tartikoff on the spot. Smith did so, and the first contract for the show was drawn up that night in a limo outside. Three months later, the pilot was shot.^[28]

Andy Borowitz and his wife, Susan, are credited as the series' creators. Andy Borowitz, who was on a contract with NBC, was selected by Tartikoff to write the pilot. He based Will's cousins on Quincy Jones's daughters, and named Carlton after his friend Carlton Cuse. In 2015, he remarked that "It was written and taped in about three weeks, start to finish, and somehow it worked. It was just an explosion of really good luck."^[29]

The pilot episode began taping on May 1, 1990.^[30] Season 1 first aired in September 1990, and ended in May 1991. The series finale was taped on Thursday, March 21, 1996,^[31][32] and aired on Monday, May 20, 1996.

The theme song "Yo Home to Bel Air" was written and performed by Smith under his stage name, The Fresh Prince. The music was composed by Quincy Jones, who is credited with Smith at the end of each episode. The music often used to bridge scenes together during the show is based on a similar chord structure.

Crossovers and other appearances

During the fall 1991-1992 season, NBC gained two hit television shows to anchor their Monday night lineup (Blossom aired immediately after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). To gain popularity between the two shows, Will Smith appeared in the Blossom episode "I'm with the Band" as himself under his rap stage name, The Fresh Prince. That same season, Karyn Parsons appeared in the Blossom episode "Wake Up Little Suzy" as Hilary Banks. Parsons also appeared in the Patti LaBelle sitcom Out All Night as Hilary.

In the House and Fresh Prince were both executive-produced by Winifred Hervey, David Salzman, and Quincy Jones. During the second season's first episode, Alfonso Ribeiro and Tatyana Ali appeared as their Fresh Prince characters (Carlton and Ashley Banks) in the crossover episode "Dog Catchers". Later that season, James Avery (Phillip Banks) appeared as a mediator in the episode "Love on a One-Way Street".

In the Season 4 episode "My Pest Friend's Wedding", James Avery and Daphne Maxwell Reid (the second Vivian Banks) guest starred as Dr. Maxwell Stanton's parents (Stanton was played by Ribeiro). Both Avery and Reid portrayed the parents of Ribeiro's Fresh Prince character. Joseph Marcell, who played the wisecracking Geoffrey Butler on Fresh Prince, appeared as an officiating minister in the same episode.

Syndication

The series was produced by NBC Productions in association with the Stuffed Dog Company and Quincy Jones Entertainment (later Quincy Jones-David Salzman Entertainment in 1993). After the show was released to syndication in 1994, the series was distributed by Warner Bros. Television Distribution, which continues to distribute the show worldwide (with Warner Bros. currently owning the series' copyright).

Currently, reruns of the series air on MTV2, BET, and VH1, having previously been aired on WGN America, TBS, Nick at Nite, TeenNick, Disney XD, ABC Family, Centric, MTV, and CMT.

The series developed significant popularity in the United Kingdom, where it aired on BBC Two between 1991 and 1996 with reruns airing on the network between 1996 and 2004, and was shown alongside The Simpsons and was later repeated on Trouble, Bravo, Channel One, Living, Sky Living Loves, Viva, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Comedy Central Extra and 5Star. In the United Kingdom, all series became available on the BBC iPlayer from 1 January 2021, and also currently airs on Sky Comedy. It also aired on CBC in Canada.

The series became available to stream on HBO Max on May 27, 2020. It streams in Canada on Crave.

Home media

Warner Home Video has released the complete series, seasons 1 to 6, on DVD in Region 1.^[33] Seasons 1 to 4 have been released in Regions 2 and 4. Seasons 5 to 6 have been released in Region 2 in Germany, and in the complete series boxset in the United Kingdom.

Awards and nominations

Planned reboot

On August 13, 2015, it was reported that a reboot of the show was in development by Overbrook Entertainment, with Will Smith serving as a producer.^[46][47] In August 2016, during a promotional interview with the E! television network for his then upcoming film Suicide Squad, Smith denied that a reboot was in development, saying that it would happen "...pretty close to when Hell freezes over."^[48]

In 2019, a mock trailer titled Bel-Air was uploaded on YouTube, written and directed by Morgan Cooper, for a darker, more dramatic re-imagining of the sitcom.^[49][50] Will Smith subsequently heavily praised the fan film, commenting that "Morgan did a ridiculous trailer for Bel-Air. Brilliant idea, the dramatic version of The Fresh Prince for the next generation." expressing interest in expanding the idea beyond the short film into a full Bel-Air reboot series.^[51][52]

In August 2020, it was announced that Will Smith and Morgan Cooper would be developing a reboot of the series based on Cooper's Bel-Air. The series had reportedly been in the works for over a year since Cooper posted his Bel-Air trailer on YouTube, with Netflix, Peacock, and HBO Max all currently bidding for the series.^[53] On September 8, 2020, Peacock gave Bel-Air a 2-season order.^[54]

A reunion of the surviving original cast, The Fresh Prince Reunion, aired on HBO Max in November 2020. Among other reminisces, Janet Hubert appeared, also appearing around this time in a joint radio interview with Smith where the two appeared to reconcile.^[55][56] More information and context were offered regarding the situation between Smith and Hubert and her exit when the two met for their conversation. Hubert discussed the turmoil in her personal life, her abusive marriage, and that she had not actually been fired by the show. She was offered what she described as a "bad deal" to return for the fourth season and she turned it down. Will talked about how his youth and learning to deal with his rapidly increasing fame lead him to make decisions during that time that he now regrets and wishes he had made differently.^[57]

Notes

References

Real Estate Data

External links

• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at epguides.com
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on IMDb
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at TV.com