Kathy Griffin is taking a trip down memory lane, revisiting her time on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. On a recent episode of her YouTube show Talk Your Head Off, the 64-year-old comedian shared behind-the-scenes memories from her guest role in the hit sitcom’s first season, including her experience working alongside a young Will Smith in 1990.
“This was the first big gig I had,” she said, adding that Smith “did not talk to me until show day.”
Griffin recalled that her Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode was filmed before the show had even premiered. She noted that Will Smith was best known as “the Fresh Prince,” one half of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince at the time.
“So, then it came to show night,” Griffin recalled. “Remember, Will was this super-famous guy. So, when I finally got to talk to him on shooting day, which was Friday, I said, ‘What would you like me to call you, Fresh Prince or Will?’ And he said, ‘You can call me Will.’ So I did, and I was, you know, nervous around him, because I’d seen all his videos and Jazzy Jeff was there for a day, which was great, and the live audience went crazy when they saw Jazzy Jeff. He may have even DJ’d, if I recall correctly.”
Griffin explained that Smith had “ignored me all week, because he’s launching a gigantic show.”
“I can’t imagine the pressure he had on,” she said. “But I do remember that Friday night when the audience was there and it was time to actually roll tape, he really took his time to kind of get to know me a little bit. And he was asking about me and helping me relax. I didn’t tell him I was nervous, but I think he could tell that I hadn’t done a show this big before.”
Griffin reminisced about rapper Flavor Flav energizing the studio audience during the taping of her Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode.
“So, it was like a party,” she said. “And I had been to a couple TV tapings of friends of mine that got to be guest stars, and I had never seen anything like this. And so, I remember looking around and being like, ‘Wow, this is how African American shows do it. This is amazing. It’s like a party in here.’”