Will Smith turned down a RuPaul cameo in the iconic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, a screenwriter has revealed in a new book.
Willie, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air not only launched his career Will Smith, but it is one of those sitcoms that influenced pop culture in the 90s with idioms, looks, and mannerisms. But not always the instructive scenes happen behind the scenes, such as the intervention of Will Smith himself, who has RuPaul turned down a cameo,
The background is revealed by journalist Thea Glassman in her book Freaks, Glicks, and Dawson’s Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed TelevisionAs Yahoo! Reported by! Entertainment.
Will Smith, star and eventual creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, was usually the first to speak when a joke wasn’t working.
“It Could Be More Fun”, They said. then he returned to the stage and “He said all the nonsense that was going through his mind”, as screenwriter David Steven Simon recalled. The improvisation was unusual for a sitcom with a very tight script involving comedic timing, but Will Smith didn’t care. It seems the actors focused on the live audience experience and forced the cast to do multiple takes of a scene, which meant that a joke that everyone laughed at the first time around would be far less funny the third time around.
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As the show grew in success, Will Smith gained power by personally approving the scripts for each episode. Actors don’t usually turn down offers, but they did when Simon turned down a cameo from RuPaul, a drag queen climbing the charts with dance hits. Supermodel (You Better Work),
“I remember him saying it would be a very bad idea. And I said, ‘No, listen to my story.'”
In the end Will Smith really didn’t want RuPaul to be on the show and according to the screenwriter, the reason has to do with his image: “The reason she said no is her image. She was afraid of being a bad influence”,