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Former 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' star Janet Hubert leaves HuffPost Live

Source: RWong/WENN.com / WENN

The exit of the original “Aunt Viv” from ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ has been well-documented.  Now, more is being revealed on happened right after that big departure.

Janet Hubert, who we all know as the first “Vivian Banks” on the popular 1990-96 NBC sitcom, sat down with the new pop culture app PopViewers in a new interview to talk about how she got the part and the mental toll the exit from the show took on her.

Hubert tells host Chris Witherspoon she actually did not want to be on the show.

“No, I didn’t want it! I didn’t want it because I knew I was not what they were looking for,” she says of her audition for the show.

“So sometimes when you think you know something…you don’t know sh-t!” She explains that she was not even nervous when she was flown out to “test” for the role, saying, “I did not even try, and they said to me, ‘It was not what you did with the lines, it’s what you did in between the lines.’”  Ultimately, she won the role.

As for her well-publicized departure from ‘Fresh Prince,’ Hubert did not hold back on the situations that happened once she stopped doing the show.

From The Grio:

She explains that after leaving the show, things were hard for her. “There were moments that I felt so broken, so low…I didn’t know what I could do. There were moments where I wanted to die.”

When Witherspoon asks Hubert if she ever contemplated suicide, she reveals, “Absolutely…because I figured…I had a life insurance policy that would take care of my son.”

Hubert also revealed how people would use her ‘Fresh Prince’ exit as a weapon against her.  As a result, she ended up having “an altercation with a man, serving 400 hours of community service, and the brink of a nervous breakdown.”

“That’s when I said, ‘I am going to have a nervous breakdown now,’” according to Hubert.

Now, the original “Aunt Viv” is not only on better terms with the show that made her famous, but she also reunited with Will Smith, where the two had finally put aside their differences and mend their once-broken relationship, and her ‘Fresh Prince’ co-stars in the HBO Max reunion along with meeting her replacement Daphne Maxwell-Reid.

The ‘Fresh Prince Reunion,’ along with all six of the show’s seasons, is still available to stream on HBO Max

Here is the interview with Hubert below.

Click here to read more.

 

Article Courtesy of The Grio

First Picture Courtesy of NBC and Getty Images

Second Picture Courtesy of RWong and WENN

Video Courtesy of PopViewers, YouTube and The Grio

Janet Hubert Discusses How Her ‘Fresh Prince’ Departure and the Aftermath Took a Toll on Her Mental Health  was originally published on wzakcleveland.com