The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air remains one of the best NBC sitcoms ever, even almost 30 years after it ended. Even though the show centered on Will Smith’s character of the same name, much of the Fresh Prince cast also received their flowers, including Alfonso Ribeiro. His character, Carlton Banks, is a fan-favorite, and Alfonso Ribeiro offered up the secret sauce about why he was so popular on the show.
Carlton had some pretty great moments throughout Fresh Prince’s six-season run, especially when it comes to his infamous Carlton dance that Ribeiro even recreated on Dancing With the Stars. But it’s not just because of his dance moves that he was so popular. While talking to Parade, Ribeiro credited his work on fellow NBC sitcom Silver Spoons for giving him an experience that was able to take to Fresh Prince:
I was the only one on the show that had done sitcom work. If you deliver a joke during the run-through, the best you can deliver it, and it bombs, it’s out of the script. If you don’t deliver it the best that you can deliver it, and they feel you didn’t deliver it the best that you can, it stays in the script, [but it’s] still a bad joke.
Ribeiro starred in Seasons 3-5 of Silver Spoons as Alfonso Spears. The sitcom ran for five seasons from 1982 to 1987 and was actually Ribeiro’s first acting role. He had a lot of personality as a child actor, so it’s not surprising that just a few years after the series ended, he wound up getting Fresh Prince. It seems like he never forgot what he learned on Silver Spoons. And it was because of that experience he was able to take what he learned and apply it to Fresh Prince, which definitely helped in the long run:
My character was third or fourth on the call sheet, but I ended up being No. 2 because all of my [material] ended up becoming better every week. It was like, ‘We can rely on him. If we write a good joke, he’s gonna deliver the joke.’ You keep delivering, and all of a sudden, the writers trust you, the producers trust you, the other cast members trust you.
Will Smith previously opened up about what it was like working with Ribeiro, praising him for his commitment and his comedic timing, so even he learned a lot from his co-star. The two have remained close since Fresh Prince, and the almost-birthday twins also show support for one another from time to time when it comes to projects, which is certainly nice to see.
That being said, just because of his prior sitcom experience, Ribeiro wasn’t always confident for Fresh Prince. He disliked his original audition because he didn’t dress like Carlton, and he thought he didn’t act well. However, that didn’t seem to matter to producers because they still saw the potential and knew that they had their Carlton, even if it didn’t come so naturally at first. It’s hard to imagine Fresh Prince without Ribeiro as Carlton, and it’s a good thing that fans will never have to deal with it.
Thanks to his popularity on Fresh Prince, Ribeiro is still very well known and loved to this day, and still occasionally references his Fresh Prince days. Now, as a co-host on DWTS and as the host of AFV, he’s still popular, but in a different way. But if he ever does another sitcom in the future, he definitely has the experience to take from. For now, fans can watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with an HBO Max subscription.