"Fresh Prince's" fired Aunt Viv writes a tell-all book slamming Will Smith

[Mr. Television]

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/06...ms-will-smith/

‘Fresh Prince’ Co-Star Slams Will Smith In New Tell-All Book

Forner Fresh Prince of Bel Air star Janet Hubert, aka Aunt Viv, has penned a tell-all memoir that lashes out at Will Smith for sabotaging her and other actors who worked on the hit comedy.

The 53-year-old actress was fired from the show in 1993 and replaced by actress Daphne Maxwell Reid. Her book “Perfection Is Not A Sitcom Mom” will be released in early 2010.

Here are some explosive excerpts from the book via BVBuzz:

On Will Smith sabotaging his co-stars: “Smith had people around him who made sure no one outshone him. I was happy to see Don Cheadle become the quality actor that he is, and often wondered how he made it past one episode, as Hilary’s boyfriend, being such a fierce actor. No one could be on The Tonight Show, that first season, except Will. And I mean no one.”

On a guest star being too impressive an an early rehearsal: “I recall the lovely and incredibly talented Countess Vaughn coming to guest star. Oh my God! The day of table read, she was pee-in-your-pants funny. The writers were howling, we were howling, so I knew she was history – banished into the cornfield. Many years later, after she had her own show, I had to tell her when she asked me why. ‘Miss Janet why did I get cut from the episode,’ she asked? Simply, my darling, you were too good.”

For more on Janet and her book, visit JanetHubert.com.

[Marvo301]

Sounds like a very interesting read!!

[MrRetro_08]

Originally Posted by Marvo301

Sounds like a very interesting read!!

You got that right.

[catlover79]

It's so funny - she was my favorite Aunt Viv but my sister preferred Daphne Maxwell Reid. Sounds like an interesting book!!

[TripperFan]

Originally Posted by catlover79

It's so funny - she was my favorite Aunt Viv but my sister preferred Daphne Maxwell Reid. Sounds like an interesting book!!

I could never warm up to her - I prefer Daphne as well.

I wonder how Alfonso got away with it then - I found him absolutely hilarious on the show. His Tom Jones stuff was priceless!!

[TVFactFan]

Why is she still talking about this sh*T 16 years later?-lol


No one really gives a sh*T now because this is the summer of 2009, not the summer of 1993

[waichingliu81]

Originally Posted by TheLifeAdjuster

Why is she still talking about this sh*T 16 years later?-lol

No one really gives a sh*T now because this is the summer of 2009, not the summer of 1993

i agree with you solomon. why is she still b*tching about will firing her to this day? she should move on with her life and not dwell on the past. yes, it was terrible and though i preferred the first vivian to the second one, she shouldn't be making money by writing and selling a book and telling everyone what an a-hole will smith is. i am not a massive fan of his but i wouldn't bash him the way janet has been doing.

[Mr. Television]

She should have wrote the book back in 1993 when people cared. I didn't hear much about why she was fired back then.

[ThomasE]

Originally Posted by TheLifeAdjuster

Why is she still talking about this sh*T 16 years later?-lol


No one really gives a sh*T now because this is the summer of 2009, not the summer of 1993

Sorry Solomon, I want to find out what went down. I don't care if it was the summer of 1883. I want to buy that book!

Oh, I also prefer Daphne Maxwell Reid as well. I still love Janet Hubert though. She was sharp and fierce.

[PGood97041]

It does sound a bit like sour grapes, but I'm sure there's enough there that it will be an interesting read.

What I've never been able to figure out for sure is what Janet was hoping would change...did she want to become the star of the show?
Because don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Janet Hubert fan, she's smokin' hot, can act, sing, and did I mention she's smokin' hot?...but the hook to the show was Will being in Bel Air. If it became James Avery/Janet Hubert raise a family...hasn't that been done? Will did have a ton of talent.

Again, I think Janet is awesome (even though I also liked Daphne), but she must have acted somewhat unprofessionally herself in this case. Although if she wasn't so terrible and they just turfed her because she got pregnant, that's not fair, either. I do believe that Will had protectors and that there were a LOT of interesting things going on.

Anyway, one last thing. If she was Janet Hubert-Whitten for a while, and now her website is Janet Hubert, does that mean she's single again?

[Mr. Television]

http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur54147.cfm

EUR WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Janet 'Aunt Viv' Hubert speaks out about her new book on Will Smith (Pt. 1)

‘Fresh Prince’ Co-star’s Revealing Memoir Puts Stain on Superstar’s Nice Guy Image

By DeBorah B. Pryor

(June 22, 2009)

“There’s a machine and it was designed to make him a superstar. And that machine was designed to steamroll over anybody who got in the way. I was simply a body…” --Janet Hubert

*WARNING: It is going to be hard, even painful, for many people to fathom that Will Smith - an actor who has achieved the greatest level of fame, admiration, and success imaginable - may have at one time in his evolution, been a complete a-hole.


Now, nearly two decades since NBC’s ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ took the then 22-year-old rapper from his radio-friendly songs long enough to start his walk on the road to stardom, former “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” cast member, Janet Hubert-Whitten, aka "Vivian Banks" aka “The first Aunt Viv’” has broken her silence and authored the book "Perfection Is Not A Sitcom Mom."

In an emotional exclusive interview with EUR’s Lee Bailey, Hubert (no longer Whitten) sounds more hurt than bitter as she paints a disturbing and unrecognizable picture of the superstar, and although she admits she doesn’t know him now, she speaks candidly about the man she knew then.

Without so much as a stutter, Hubert, who at times seems to be near tears, uses the one-hour, eight minutes and fifteen seconds telephone interview to reveal vivid details of her claims against Smith; which include verbal and mental abuse on the set, hypocrisy, excessive egoism, blatant resentment, the insensitive spewing of ‘your mama’s so black’ jokes, and ultimately, public slander – which Hubert says kept her from getting projects green-lighted and has banned her from work in the field she used to love.


“He had a lot of power. He had full power on that set! Maybe not the first season, but by the second, third season he was basically running it,” she states. The words escaping her mouth so fast—with no second-guessing herself--it’s as if she is in a time warp. “He knew what everybody was making because even on that V103 interview he said (mimics Smith using gangsta voice) ‘She made two hundred fifty thousand – a quarter million dollars a year. Now she ain’t makin’ nothin’!’”

The interview Hubert refers to was one of the first, she claims, Smith gave following her removal from the show “…I dug out the old tape…I call it ... ‘Vicious V103’ in Atlanta. When it all went down he was in Atlanta, and he was with the DJ’s at V103 and he referred to me as a ‘Drive-by.’ When he had finished his session of lies and slander (gangsta voice) he said, ‘Well you know, I feel like this is like comic timing you know what I’m sayin’? It’s kind of like a drive-by; we should move on, you know what I’m sayin?”


With the show still in reruns, fans are constantly reminded of the abrupt departure of Janet Hubert’s “Aunt Viv” – and those who watched the show when it originally aired were arguably confused behind the networks’ decision to remain mute and just slip Daphne Maxwell-Reed into the role one day; Fine actor that she is, the difference between her "Aunt Viv" and Hubert’s was not a subtle one. But the decision to gloss over the cast change was, according to Hubert, Smith’s handy work: ‘We’re going to just act like nothing happened,’ she says, mimicking him. Now, with her new book due out in 2010, he’ll have to eat those words.


“Here’s what happened…Back when the re-negotiations came up, the network (NBC) offered me 10 weeks of work and they said ‘you cannot work anywhere else,” Hubert tells Lee Bailey, adding that the show was set to film 27 episodes [5 more than a usual TV contract] – yet cut her out of 15 of them. “So I was…not to work anywhere else – except 2 guest starring roles.”


As is the usual case with re-negotiations, there is a back and forth dance between the network and the talent. Hubert made it known to NBC that she would be unable to make a living with the offer they placed on the table, so she declined, expecting them to return with something better. You know? NEGOTIATE.


They never came back.


When her agent called casting he learned that her role was being recast. “I couldn’t believe Will would do this to me; but [then again] I could,” Hubert says, adding that no one would disagree with Smith as he was notorious for acting like it was OK to do so while in front of others, but would later ‘cut you’ for such an action. She mentioned one day on the set when Smith screamed, ‘I am God!’ and she responded, “No you’re not!”


“I was a dark-skinned African American mother, and Will used to tell the you’re-so black jokes to the audience before the show, and at one point I came out and stopped him; and the audience went ‘Woooo.’


He didn’t understand how unbelievably disrespectful that was to women like me. [Gangsta voice demonstrates Will telling the joke] “Yo mama’s so black when she looks at her shoes she thinks she’s looking in the mirror. Ha ha!”


Hubert said that when she would stop Smith he would arrogantly retort, “Nobody stops me!”


As if that wasn’t jaw-dropping enough, Hubert said a call came from Deborah Langford of Quincy Jones’ office. Jones was a producer of the show. According to Hubert, Langford said, ‘We want you to go in front of the cameras and we want you to tell the world that this was your idea; that you’ve decided to move on.’ Hubert’s response?


“Kiss my ass! ... I said ‘what in the world am I going to get from that. I’m not Dawnn Lewis. I’m not a slave on an auction block who stands there and she’s got nothin’ and say (using a high-pitched female voice), ‘I’ve decided to move on because it would be good for my career.”


Lewis was dropped from the hit ABC comedy ‘Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper in 1993 when the producers decided to change the direction of the show. She took the action in stride and in an interview with JET magazine that same year, said she had no bitterness about the decision and was going on to pursue other projects she had missed out on by doing a weekly television show. Today Lewis, a great talent with powerful vocals, continues to delight audiences in live productions all over the world.


Hubert says that she believes it was Langford who went back to Will and started, what she refers to as, ‘the firestorm.’ And it is the self-reflection of what she calls ‘her sitcom mom death’ as well as the reality that [working] Black actresses in Hollywood have disappeared, that motivated her to write her book.


Already a professional in the business for more than a decade before the Fresh Prince of Bel Air came her way in 1990 Hubert had won a scholarship to the famed Julliard School in NYC, but ended up attending for only a year. She had appeared in daytime television and worked extensively in theatre; at one time as an understudy to one of the lead characters in the musical ‘Cats’ and was an Alvin Ailey dancer. It has been rumored that she was jealous of Smith for landing such a sweet deal without any previous acting experience.


Yet Hubert says in the first season, before she even knew who Will Smith was, she tried to get him to join her in uniting the cast so that they could ask for more money. She said she asked him what role he was going to play and he said, ‘I’m Will’.


“I said ‘Oh!’ I didn’t even know who the brother was. I’m 30-something years old [at the time]. I’m not a rap fan at all, not in the least. I didn’t know ‘Summertime’ or his name or whatever his hits were. I’m not easily impressed. You have to show me that you are an honorable person. [I] come from the theatre; [I’ve] gone to the school of hard knocks. Rappers don’t impress me. Their ideology…what they’ve done to our children. I’m really not impressed,” she concludes.

Listen to Janet Hubert describe one fierce battle she had with the ‘Fresh Prince’ writers and star, Will Smith. Journalist DeBorah B. Pryor serves as narrator:


Not aiming to be viewed as a ‘nuisance’ Hubert says she made attempts to bite her tongue. But at the same time, as an actor with integrity she took her role seriously and as hard as she tried, was unsuccessful in letting certain things slide.

Later this week in part two of Janet Hubert’s exclusive interview with EUR, the actor reveals how she had to leave the set after filming her scenes because her presence made Will Smith uncomfortable. She speaks of the lack of support from fellow cast members and the Black media; the legal battle that ensued between her and Smith; and the NBC lawyers who treated the case like it was a joke.


Can you say “Off the CHAIN?!" Stay tuned ...

[Mr. Television]

http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur54208.cfm

EUR WORLD EXCLUSIVE - IT GETS HOTTER!: Janet 'Aunt Viv' Hubert speaks out about her new book on Will Smith (Pt. 2)

Will ‘Fresh Prince’ Co-star’s Revealing Memoir Put Stain on Superstar’s Nice Guy Image?

By DeBorah B. Pryor

(June 24, 2009)

*"I can say straight up that Janet wanted the show to be 'The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air' show. She's mad now, but she's been mad all along." -- Will Smith (1993), the Atlanta Journal

Today, we continue our feature based on an exclusive interview with the 'Fresh Prince' Co-star and author Janet Hubert. Part I of the story appeared in Monday's EUR. Click here to listen as Hubert describes how Smith dealt with his growing discomfort around her.

Hubert says the older cast members, those who played the characters of Philip Banks (Avery), Geoffrey, the English Butler (Joseph Marcell), and herself, experienced many things that the younger cast members may not have gone through. When asked by Bailey if she got any support from her fellow, older cast members Hubert's authentic, guttural laugh implies a negative.

"Let me explain something to you about Hollywood Negroes," she begins. "Hollywood negroes are afraid to not eat. Everybody out there is so afraid that they're going to lose that job! And that job and that money supercede e-v-e-r-y, s-i-n-g-l-e thing in life! People in Hollywood, in my opinion, would step on their baby's face for a deal. If their baby is in the way, they will kick that baby out of the way for that money."

Television producer Winifred Hervey Stallworth, a highly-regarded African American producer in Hollywood during the 80's and 90's; an Emmy winner for The Golden Girls, and producer of The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and several other sitcoms told Hubert, 'Janet, you were expendable. You were a dead body.' Hubert says that although Hervey is OK today "Will did [a job on her] too!"

As fear would have it, Hubert says she could not even find a ghostwriter for this book. One potential scribe told her, "I've got a script sitting on my step right now. I can't go against that!"

So after writing several chapters and sharing them with her friends, her confidence grew. They began to call her regularly while drinking their morning coffee, in anticipation of the next scene. Eventually, still attempting to secure a ghostwriter, she showed the manuscript to another writer and was surprised when he told her she didn't need a writer. There was nothing he could do for her book that she was not already doing. The book is self-published and will be available via Hubert's website www.JanetHubert.com.

Hubert says she was a mess during those last months with 'Fresh Prince' - dropping down to 104 lbs. She had no milk to [breast] feed her baby anymore because she had lost too much body fat. She said Will insulted everything in her world, including her husband - who he knew was not employed at the time, saying, "Well, I don't know, he looks a little soft to me."

Standing strong she replied, "…Well, you might know soft, but that's not my husband!"

Hubert said she was totally alone. Nobody would call her. Even the cast disappeared. There was fighting at home before her husband left her. She was paranoid and even afraid for her life not knowing to what extent the Will Machine would go. "How could I fight? How do you fight a network?"

After her 'Fresh Prince' contract was not renewed, and Smith went on his alleged slander campaign, Hubert took her case to court, spending $98K out of her own pocket in attorney's fees.

"Will hid behind NBC's panties, I swear," she said, after she filed a slander suit against the actor and NBC. "There were nine attorneys from General Electric [on behalf of NBC] she continues, "who sat there and laughed, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes...Will would come outside laughing - even trying to be friends with my friends! Then they'd all go back inside as if it were some big joke. They'd be like, 'OK, [laugh] we're back' and I would be sitting there, crying hysterically."

Hubert says she had no intention of involving NBC because they had done nothing to her; but the lawyer she had at the time-who she became so displeased with, convinced her otherwise. "In fact, NBC had asked Will to stop, but he wouldn't," she claims. "They wanted him to stop with the comments and he just wouldn't. He went to Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta - every major market that we were #1 in. I have the tape produced by Benny Medina; and it's for promotional use only…I'm looking at it going 'for promotional use only'. Really… Killing me was a promotional thing? Thanks."

Hubert says that not only did she get no support on the set from her older fellow actors; she got no compassion at all from the media. She continues…

"No one stands up for Black women in Hollywood. No one stands up for Black women period. We don't get assistance from our own race…Not one Black radio station called me during that time. They joined in, they chimed in, [and] they enjoyed feasting off my dead carcass. They laughed and said, 'Oooh. Ain't this just like 'Good Times'?"

"Quincy [Jones] called me. He [Smith] doesn't know this but I asked Quincy: 'Quincy, why is this happening?" Quincy said, 'Lord, lord, I told him not to do this…The karma on the show is going to be terrible.'"

Hubert said Jones confirmed that if Smith didn't want all this to happen, it wouldn't. That was the last Hubert heard from the man she calls 'The Big Q.'

In March of 1993 Hubert-Whitten's son, Elijah Isaac Whitten, was born; and she says her husband at the time, James Whitten, left them soon after her 'Fresh Prince' contract ended. This was also the case with many of the people she once called friends.

Following her exit from the show Hubert appeared on The Gilmore Girls, Friends, and The Bernie Mac Show following her leave from The Fresh Prince. But as the offers for work started to dwindle, she eventually left the industry altogether.

Today, it is difficult watching Smith on interviews "pretending like he is Mickey Mouse." She adds, "I'm tired of watching the charade…To sit on television and say 'I have a 100% approval rating, is just not very humble…I'm tired of people harassing my son, my family, and me."

With hurt in her voice Hubert says, "I've had sisters' sit behind me at events and talk about me like a dog…I was blacklisted by Black people. [Two years ago] I went to Tom Joyner and asked for help promoting my children's line. 'No!'"

When recalling her life some months after giving birth, Hubert said she would go into a store, and all the tabloids would have her face plastered on them. The customers reading them would look up just in time to get a glimpse of her and yell, "Oh my god, it's you!"

"Who do you go to?" she asks Lee Bailey. "…Quincy? Oprah? I love Oprah but I don't think she's there for the sisters that ain't on the A-List."

In trying to get support for one of her entrepreneurial ventures, Hubert says, "I had lunch with her best friend Gayle because I thought, gee, she's doing all these great things in schools. She would like this, because its quality… [Yeah] Right!"

It is widely known how much Oprah loves her buddies Will and Q. It is probably safe to assume, she won't be calling Hubert anytime soon.

While she looks absolutely fabulous today, Hubert has survived a number of health challenges over the years; including bouts with neurological issues; a cervical hernia and some dance-related health problems. A few years back she was diagnosed with osteoporosis and even lost her voice back in the 90's. On JanetHubert.com, she shares the vicissitudes of her life openly with her fans; speaking passionately about her work with young people, and her new animated series: JG & the BC Kids; a creation inspired by her own son; which celebrates the ideology of kids being confident and caring; and taking a bold stand against joining the sagging pants crowd. Hubert does a great voiceover as the animated lead character, JG, an archeologist who has "unraveled the mysteries of time travel" and challenges kids to "Take a dare. Be a square, 'cause BC kids are everywhere!"

But there is one admission on the site, where Hubert is speaking about the book that audiences may find particularly poignant:

"…I don't dance anymore because it really hurts. I don't sing very much because I got jacked after leaving The Fresh Prince by the entire Burbank Police Department, and I completed over 390 hours of community service in the river bottom of Riverside county with convicts while hiding under hats, no I wasn't doing Katherine Hepburn from the African Queen."

When asked by Lee Bailey why she did not tell her story earlier Hubert says, "Because I didn't think anybody really cared. I kept saying 'why would anybody care. They love him. They love him…They're going to think 'what a bitch, she's just trying to take him down. That's how Black women are…just hatin'…

I've always been such a private person, [but] it's too much to bear. I'm healed. I'm totally healed because I've got love."

Now this self-proclaimed M.O.M. [Mother on a Mission] takes off the "Difficult Bitch" tattoo but assures fans on her website that she and her TV character are not that different proclaiming, "Vivian Banks would snatch off her earrings and do battle with the best of them!"

She feels a sense of security today that she has not felt in a long, long time because her 16-year-old son, Elijah, will soon be safely out of the school system and headed abroad to attend college; and she and her husband, Lawrence Kraft, have made a home on the east coast; where she is ecstatically happy. When speaking of her husband, who is of Irish descent, she says, "He has my back, my front, my sides and my middle. He took us into his heart all scarred and bruised and battered...and he's the best daddy ever that my son could have."

In relation to their son, Elijah, who stands tall at 6'3" Kraft assures her, "I can't teach him to be a Black man, but I can teach him to be a good man."

"I'm trying to do my projects but I can't get past it until I deal with [this]," she confesses to Lee Bailey, and reiterates that this book, which talks about her life experiences outside of The Fresh Prince too, is not meant to hurt Will Smith; who she admits she doesn't know today but says, "The toilet has been backed up for a long time. The water can't flow to all the other projects until I remove this tattoo!"

Hubert says years later Smith made attempts to change the comments he had previously made. "He pulled a 360 …telling Ebony 'Janet brought love to that set. She made that set a home. She made it a family. Of course the show suffered from the loss of Janet Hubert-Whitten.' I was shocked at the turnaround… [but] it was too little too late. Who the hell reads Ebony magazine? I don't! It's not my mothers' Ebony."

Bailey can't help but chuckle at this.

"…And I notice [he] has been going back and stepping in his own poo," she retorts. For a while now he has gone back to the press and said, 'That's not what I meant.' But you must be careful what you say… Hubert blames Smith for 'destroying a family name' and on her website states she owes it to her father, now deceased, to clear the family name.

Claiming the backlash has made trying to do things in the community difficult, she states, "Every time I walk into a meeting I feel the mark of the beast. I've been branded. I've worn this tattoo that Smith has put upon me for a long time and I've decided its time to take it off.

Hubert says she reached out to Will Smith two years ago, when her brother, a high-powered attorney in Chicago, passed away from a massive heart attack on Thanksgiving weekend. "I called Will's production company [Overbrook Entertainment] and I spoke to an assistant…and I said…'This is who I am…I have felt this knot that I have to mend. Ask him to call me.'" She said, "I promise you, I am his personal assistant…I will get the message to him.'

I never heard anything."

Hubert tells EUR that, "with each page I write, I can feel myself being freer." She also says the only time she heard something from Smith's camp was when she left a message stating she was writing a book and would be using original deposition material in it.

She adds that she hopes audiences will not be ugly, and will understand why she needs to do the book.

Since so much time has passed, and wisdom has a way of altering our perspective on things we may have said, done or remained indifferent to in the past, we reached out to Will Smith and James Avery for any comments they might have in setting the record straight.

Neither chose to respond; an action that, within itself, may speak loud and clear.

But in 1993, the same year that Hubert-Whitten was replaced on the show, a young Will Smith is quoted by the Atlanta Journal as telling a local radio station:

"I can say straight up that Janet Hubert wanted the show to be 'The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show' because I know she is going to dog me in the press ... She has basically gone from a quarter of a million dollars a year to nothing. She's mad now but she's been mad all along. She said once, 'I've been in the business for 10 years and this snotty-nosed punk comes along and gets a show.' No matter what, to her I'm just the AntiChrist."

Whether these words came from the emotion of the time or not remains to be seen. And posts documented on numerous sites since Part I of this exclusive was published, do imply a curiosity on how Smith might feel about the issue today; with some stating that if Hubert's words are true, Smith should take the high road and issue an apology; while others say, Hubert should just get over it and move on.

Yet not everyone associated with The Fresh Prince of Bel Air has chosen to remain mute. EUR caught up with Joseph Marcell, who played Geoffrey -- the English Butler on the show. Marcell, who is currently in London filming "Fever" a gritty underground flick about corruption, greed and murder, still offers that British eloquence; even as EUR publisher Lee Bailey approaches him about this 'not-so-pleasant' matter.

"Time is a great healer. My recollections [about the show] are pleasurable. Wherever I go, I can't escape 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'" says the actor who admits he is constantly surprised by audiences today that still stop him on the streets to acknowledge his role in the show.

"Life, as you know, is not a bed of roses. It requires concentration and application but, yeah, my memories are very pleasant ones," he continues. "I met some wonderful friends, people like Janet, and James Avery, Karyn Parsons, Alfonso and Will. And it's great for the ego; as an actor to come from a different country and do an American show."

Marcell's exuberance is apparent, even as Bailey hones in on the reason for the call saying "Well, speaking of cast members, you know Janet Hubert has written a book about Will [Marcell begins to crack up] and its not too flattering."

When Bailey asks Marcell if he is aware of the book the actor, who continues to chuckle says, "Yeah," [and adds] "He has a shoulder. He can take it! I don't think they had a pleasurable relationship. It somehow deteriorated over the years really."

When Marcell hears that Janet Hubert said she got no support from her older cast members, who were afraid to go against Will Smith; Marcell seems genuinely surprised.

"Me and Mr. Avery? Wow! Oh my lord, well, I don't think she'd say that about me. I'm surprised. For one thing I considered her a very close friend so that is surprising but you know, it's easier said than done these things. I don't think we were privy to Janet's negotiations with Will or with anybody, and how she chose to play it-it was really up to her. From where we were approached I think everybody though a conciliatory approach would be wiser. You know what I'm saying?"

Bailey confirms that he does.

"So, I'm surprised," Marcell continues, "…that she doesn't think I supported her. I consider her a really close friend and I couldn't, I wouldn't, do anything to queer her picture as it were. No, I'm very surprised."

At this point, Marcell even appears hurt; causing Bailey to wonder if he might have misquoted Hubert and her intentions. He [Bailey] can be assured, he has not. This is, indeed, what Ms. Hubert said in her interview.

"…We have to understand that it is a buyer's market that we are involved in, not a seller's." Marcell explains. "And even if people do things that are spineless and annoying you have to understand the predicament that they're in. You know, for myself, I couldn't ask anybody to sacrifice their financial wellbeing…their career…to support me 'cause it's hard; it's very difficult to take that approach. I think for the other members of the cast, maybe time has mellowed them, and made the memories less painful. I…I speak for myself and in my case I supported her to the best of my ability…and I still consider her a very close friend and I have nothing but admiration for her. We have to make decisions for ourselves and our perception of how people respond to them…Sometimes we don't hear what we would like to hear vs. what is being said…Again, its important for her to exercise those demons and good luck; I just hope it has the value that she expects it to have rather than, you know, sometimes these things turn out to be a double-edged sword."

When asked if he would ever write a book Marcell says, "No, it's not my style…Books, like everything else, is a matter of perception, and I wouldn't be able to control how it is being perceived."

[ThomasE]

Thanks for posting this C.E.F. I am definitely checking this out. I knew that something was up with that situation.

[Scoobiedoo30]

I was really sorry to see The first Aunt Viv Fired.

[catlover79]

Me, too.