Bel-Air Producers Say The Show Won’t Feature The Iconic Carlton Dance

Peacock’s dramatic Bel-Air reboot will not be featuring the iconic Carlton Dance. The show is a reinterpretation of the classic NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired for 6 seasons from 1990 to 1996. In 2019, filmmaker Morgan Cooper made a fan film imagining a gritty, realistic version of the series that caught the attention of star Will Smith himself. Smith teamed up with Cooper to grow the short into an entire series, which will begin streaming its first episode on Peacock tomorrow, Super Bowl Sunday. Although it features a much darker tone than its source material, Bel-Air follows the same general plot as Fresh Prince, in which a young Will Smith gets sent from West Philadelphia to live with wealthy relatives in California after being involved in a fight on a playground.

One of the most iconic recurring gags in the original sitcom was the Carlton Dance, performed by Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks. Carlton, who is Will Smith’s preppy and uptight cousin, has a signature dance that involves him flailing his arms wildly in the air back and forth. He first performs the dance in the season 2 episode “Christmas Show,” though the dance recurs time and again throughout the series, usually to the Tom Jones song “It’s Not Unusual.” The dance became so iconic that Will Smith himself eventually performed the dance with Carlton in the series finale of the show.

On Twitter, Variety shared a red carpet moment with the executive producers of Bel-Air where they were asked if the Carlton dance would be making an easter egg appearance in the series. Unfortunately, the answer is “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.” While the show has plenty of easter eggs for eagle-eyed fans, they “didn’t want to tear against the reality of what we were building” by including something that didn’t fit in with the tone of the series. They admitted that “it is hard to subtly work the Carlton dance into a drama.” Check out the video below:

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Will Smith himself will not be appearing on the show, at least in the main cast (a cameo seems almost inevitable). However, the character of Will Smith will be played by newcomer Jabari Banks. The rest of the cast will be filled out by Adrian Holmes as Phillip Banks, Cassandra Freeman as Vivian Banks, Olly Sholotan as Carlton Banks, Coco Jones as Hilary Banks, Akira Akbar as Ashley Banks, Jimmy Akingbola as Geoffrey, Jordan L. Jones as Jazz, and Simone Joy Jones as Lisa.

Bel-Air is one of many reboot series that have come to the air in recent years. In fact, it’s the third series to reboot an older program on Peacock alone, following Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster. However, the extreme tonal shift it is taking is unusual in the current spate of reboots, so it remains to be seen if this will help it gain a bigger audience or see the same initial interest followed by diminishing returns as those other series.

Source: Variety

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