Will Smith shot down RuPaul cameo in 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,' new book reveals (exclusive excerpt)

TV in the '90s was the era when television writers finally took young people seriously. Because of it, the adventures of Will and Carlton, Angela and Jordan Catalano, Dawson and Joey, Lindsay and Kim sucked us in and influenced pop culture for decades to come.

The new book Freaks, Gleeks and Dawson's Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed Television from entertainment journalist Thea Glassman, whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Hollywood Reporter and more, documents dozens of interviews with cast and crew members, including writers and showrunners, of seven influential teen shows from the past three decades. She takes a deep dive into '90s shows The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; Freaks and Geeks; My So-Called Life; and Dawson's Creek, but also dips into the 2000s and the 2010s, with The O.C.; Friday Night Lights; and Glee.

In it, Glassman connects the current generation of teen shows, such as Euphoria, Sex Education and Pen15, which she notes are "leading the charge when it comes to progressive, diverse and creative storytelling." She writes that they're doing so "on the hardworking backs of teen shows of years past that defined generations and shaped the landscape of TV as we know it."

The following is an exclusive excerpt of the chapter on what was one of the biggest shows of that time not just for young people, but for TV audiences in general: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

'Things were done differently on the Fresh Prince set.'

[Star and eventual executive producer Will] Smith was usually the first person to come over when a joke wasn't clicking.

"This could be funnier," he'd say.

Then he’d go back onstage and "just do s*** off the top of his head," [show writer David Steven] Simon recalled. That's hardly common behavior for sitcoms—scripts are tightly written to fit the time frame allotted, and improvisation just isn't baked into that formula. None of that mattered to Smith. He seemed hyperfocused on the liveaudience experience. The cast would do several takes of a scene, which meant that the joke everybody laughed at the first time would be a lot less funny the third time.

With each take, Smith would change up the punch line, hoping to keep the audience laughing. At first, David Pitlik, a writer who joined in the show's fifth season, was confused. "Where's that coming from?" he wondered as he camped out in a back office, watching the show in real time. But soon enough he caught on. Things were done differently on the Fresh Prince set.

Smith had a group of friends just offstage, a mix of childhood buddies and musicians, who operated like a shadow writers' room, brainstorming comedy bits with him between takes. In the beginning, Pitlik wondered where he, as a writer, fit into all this. "You finally start to figure out, OK, this is the way it's done," he told me. "And we will contribute what we can, where we're needed. If the boss says, 'Hey, this joke is falling flat, come up with something else,' we contribute, and then Will and his people were sort of doing their own thing." Still, he remembers having some fear around the idea that Smith and his friends might come up with better material than the actual writers. That wasn't good for job security.

Watching your jokes get rewritten or thrown out altogether comes with the territory of being a sitcom writer. You move on quickly if something gets cut, no matter how much you loved what you had written. Still, there were ways to strategically campaign for material. Rehearsals took place at four o'clock onstage, and the episode's writer would be there to watch the actors run through the show with their scripts in hand.

As they walked from set to set, Simon would trail them, laughing heartily at each punch line as if it were the funniest thing he had ever heard. "If the actors hear laughter, they feel secure. If they don't hear laughter or feel like we're faking it, those lines go bye-bye real fast," he explained. Being a writer on Fresh Prince meant a complex equation of being very quick and very funny, having zero ego, making the actors feel confident, and, above all else, keeping Will Smith happy.

Shelley Jensen, a director whose credits included Caroline in the City, Friends, and The Wayans Bros., joined in the show's second season and tapped right into that formula. He would go on to direct eighty-seven episodes of the series, something he attributes to the gentle way he approached the cast of young actors.

'Uncle Phil's cozy sweaters were a hit'

Working for the Fresh Prince felt like being in a "foxhole," Simon remembers, but a very high-end foxhole with unique perks. After each taping, the writers would pick up a bouquet of flowers to bring home from the arrangements brought daily to the Bankses' living room (and worth nearly $500). Once the season was done, they could snag items from any of the characters' wardrobes, including Smith's, which were bought at high-end L.A. boutiques where sports jackets could go for as much as $1,500. While Carlton's polos often went untouched, Uncle Phil's cozy sweaters were a hit.

Then came the foxhole part. The schedule went something like this: during the course of a week, they'd work on three shows at the same time. Last week's show was being edited, this week's show is in rehearsal, and next week's show is being written. Every story needed Smith's approval.

Smith didn't often reject ideas, but he did when Simon pitched a cameo from RuPaul, a drag queen who was making a name for himself with dance tracks like "Supermodel (You Better Work)."

"I remember him saying that would be a really bad idea. And I said, 'No, listen, hear my story—'"

Smith, as Simon remembers it, refused. He just kept repeating that it was a bad idea.

"OK, OK. We don't need to do it," Simon demurred.

From Simon's perspective, "The reason he would say no is because of his image. Period. The End," he told me.

'Internally pitching jokes about Carlton's height'

An episode would be written within hours. The writers knew the characters so well that they'd sit around a table together, lines flowing out of them. To this day, Simon will find himself at a stoplight, internally pitching jokes about Carlton's height. The bits are that ingrained in him.

When Simon worked on Roseanne, he was required to come up with ten backup jokes per page. ("That's insane. You do it, but that's insane.") Fresh Prince wasn't like that. The writers weren't given a quota of jokes, but there was a rhythm to every scene they had to stick to, which went like: setup, joke; setup, joke; setup, joke; setup, joke; setup, setup, setup, joke. Each week, the writers sat down with network executives to listen to their notes. Sometimes, Simon remembers, they gave bad notes—"unbelievably stupid notes." "You would have to be kind about it, and gently say something like 'Are you aware that if we do that note, we have to put the whole script in the garbage because it negates everything else?'"

That would make the network execs think twice.

The actors needed their scripts by Tuesday morning. Between five p.m. on Monday and five the next morning, the writers would divvy up the pages and write scenes on their own. They'd hope to God that when each of those scenes came together, it was a lucid episode. Ninety-eight percent of the time, it wasn't. Then, their brains officially mush, they'd have to start over from page one to make it work. They didn't have email then, so Fresh Prince hired assistants who would sit around until five a.m. waiting for the script to be done and then quickly hop in their cars to hand-deliver the material to each actor before six.

The writers worked out of NBC's offices on Bob Hope Drive in Burbank, a sleepy city in Los Angeles County dotted with television studios. Their windows were soundproof but in the mornings they would start to rattle as Smith pulled up in his white Bronco, blasting music.

He'd come hang out in the writers' room, put his feet up on the desk, and shoot the breeze. The absurdity of hanging out so casually with someone so famous wasn't lost on the writers. Sometimes, as a prank, Simon would pick up the phone and say to the actor, "OK, Will, I'm gonna just dial someone at random, and hand you the phone and tell them you're calling." Smith would amiably agree, and Simon punched in a number. "Hold for Will Smith, please," he'd say.

People would either assume it was a joke and promptly hang up or frantically scream into the phone.

Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson's Creek is available Tuesday, June 27, at bookstores.

From the book Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson's Creek by Thea Glassman. Reprinted by permission of Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright 2023 by Thea Glassman.