Jaleel White is hitting again at his “Family Matters” co-stars’ feedback about his alleged “difficult” conduct on the beloved ’90s sitcom set.
White, 47, stopped by SiriusXM’s “Andy Cohen Live” this week to advertise “Growing Up Urkel,” his newly-published memoir about his life rising up because the nerdy neighbor Steve Urkel on “Family Matters” from 1989 to 1998.
In the course of the interview, Andy Cohen requested White how he felt about his co-stars Joe Marie Payton and Reginald VelJohnson claiming he was a handful on set.
“They, at one point, said publicly that you were not that easy to work with,” Cohen mentioned. “Did that surprise you to hear?”
White didn’t mince his phrases.
“They’re also over 70, and I’ve been told not to argue with my elders from the time I was 12 years old,” he responded. “So you know, with Jo Marie, it’s always like, what day did I catch her on or what day did the interviewer catch her? I talk about it in the book.”
He defined: “So, when you say ‘difficult,’ I’ll be self-aware enough to say, ‘okay.’”
Recalling that he began the present when he was round 13 and completed when he was 22, the actor continued, “You know, as a 13-year-old kid, anytime I was called to set, I always brought my basketball. I dribbled my basketball everywhere, and I can hear the script supervisor to this day, Joyce Webb, going, ‘Oh, here he comes with that basketball.’ It was tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap constantly.”
“It annoyed everybody,” Cohen interjected, to which White added, “If that is the extent to which I was called ‘difficult,’ then okay. I digress.”
In 2022, Payton — who performed Harriette Baines Winslow, the matriarch of the household that lived subsequent door to Urkel — instructed Leisure Tonight that White would “run wild and do whatever he wanted to do, thinking he can say what he wants to say, you know, and hurt people’s feelings and all that.”
She later backpedaled on her feedback.
“Yes, sometimes you bump heads and things,” Payton, 74, mentioned in 2023, per Folks. “But I’ll always love him. He was always a child to me, and I don’t care how old he is, he’s still a child to me … to me, no matter how old he gets, he’ll still be a baby. And I forgive everything because I have that kind of heart to get past stuff.”
VelJohnson, 72, performed the household’s patriarch, Carl Winslow, and addressed his relationship with White whereas talking with ET throughout the outlet’s “Iconic TV Dads” particular for Father’s Day 2022.
“He was a wonderful kid, [but] I think working with him was a challenge. Working with everybody was a challenge, and there were some moments where he was a little difficult,” the actor mentioned, including, “But overall, I have nothing but good memories from him.”
White additionally talked to Cohen a few attainable “Family Matters” reboot, telling followers to not maintain their breath.
“I was offered a blind contract with no script and half the pay that I made leaving the show, right? So, I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, what do you mean?’ I don’t get to meet any producers. I don’t get to see a script. ‘We’ll pay you this,’” he claimed he was instructed throughout reboot talks. “And it’s like, you know, if it’s just a cash grab and, you know, I just, I’m not interested in that.”
“If I touch anything that’s associated with Family Matters,” White added, “I want to advance the legacy and I want to help the kids’ careers.”
White’s memoir hit bookshelves in the present day (Tuesday, Nov. 19). He made headlines earlier this week after claiming within the e-book that “Family Matters” executives instructed him to swap Urkel’s signature tight overalls for looser-fitting denims due to his “bulge.”
“Family Matters” ran for 9 seasons over 10 years. The sequence was nominated for one Emmy throughout its TV reign and received a number of NAACP Picture Awards. White walked away with seven Picture Awards for Excellent Efficiency in a Youth or Youngsters’s Collection/Particular and Excellent Lead Actor in a Comedy Collection for his function as Urkel.
