Jasmine Guy is looking back at her decision to nearly leave A Different World during the show’s first season.
In an exclusive clip of this week’s Red Table Talk, Guy, 60, opened up about her experience on the show while reuniting with her former costars Jada Pinkett Smith, Kadeem Hardison, Dawnn Lewis, Darryl M. Bell, Charnele Brown, Cree Summer, Glynn Turman, Ajai Sanders, Karen Malina White and Debbie Allen in honor of the NBC sitcom’s 35th anniversary.
Guy — who starred as Whitley Marion Gilbert on the series — said she gave her “two-week notice” after taking a stand with producers of the show, which aired from 1987 to 1993.
“I didn’t like the way they were treating the cast,” she explained. “I went in there and I said, ‘Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’ve learned so much.'”
“And they were probably like, ‘Ok, well. Did something happen to you?’ I said, ‘Well you know, I feel like Lisa Bonet is disrespected in front of the audience,'” she recalled.
“[They said] ‘Well has it ever happened to you?’ I said, ‘If it happens to her, it happens to me,'” she continued. “You are disrespecting the cast. You are disrespecting Sinbad. It doesn’t have to happen to me. I felt like it was happening to me.”
Rich Laru
Guy previously opened up about the producers’ treatment of Bonet, who played Denise Huxtable on the sitcom and left the show ahead of season 2.
“That first season, it was wack and I didn’t like the way they treated Lisa Bonet,” she shared on The Breakfast Club in September.
She claimed that producers would tell Bonet, “‘Just do it, just say it!’ Pointing all up in her face.”
“You know, I’m like, ‘That’s a sweet girl because you’re not getting all up in my face like that,” she continued. “And we’ve dealt with b—-es… as far as choreographers and directors or what not… I didn’t interfere onset, but I was like, ‘Oh no, you not treating her like that.’ She had to hire security!”
Guy also claimed that network executives didn’t respect the cast when they made the show compete with Martin, which aired on Fox at the time.
“I definitely took that personally. You ain’t got but two Black shows… so you put us at the same time against each other?” Guy shared. “And what had we done to deserve this kind of disservice?”
“You know, we’re not competing with Martin. They come on at 8:30, we come on at 8 — why did you move us?” she added. “That was a detriment.”
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A special episode of Red Table Talk with the cast of A Different World will stream Monday, Dec. 19 at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT on Facebook Watch.
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