Jaleel White on 'Family Matters' and growing up in showbiz

Jaleel White, who played Steve Urkel on ABC's hit sitcom Family Matters, opens up about his former co-star Jaimee Foxworth and what it was like growing up in showbiz. White also talks about his new podcast, Ever After.

Video Transcript

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"Ever After," if you fall off your chair, just say that I do [? that. ?]

JALEEL WHITE: Check out "Ever After," a podcast about famous child stars and the adult lives we lead.

ETHAN ALTER: It seems like the mission statement of the podcast really is like, here is this generation of kids I knew or I was aware of growing up and we all turned out fine. Because we always hear about like, you know, the dark side of being a child star. So was that part of the motivation for you, this is how, you know, you can grow up in this business.

JALEEL WHITE: 100%, you know, I've had to sit for any number of interviews where I just felt like the interview, the questions were just cliche. You know, it's I almost want to turn to the interviewer and be like, you didn't really prepare for this very much, did you? Just kind of had drinks with some friends last night, said I'm talking to Urkel tomorrow. And they say, ask him if he hooked up with Laura.

ETHAN ALTER: One of the things I really love about the podcast, listening to it, I love how real you get with all your guests about the business. So I liked when you talked with Keke Palmer about, you know, money and how money works or when you talked with the "Everybody Hates Chris" kid about how you-- agents and that stuff. Like it gets really serious and provides some really amazing accounts of what's happening behind the scenes that we don't know about necessarily. It's just--

JALEEL WHITE: Oh, man, listen, particularly my business conversations with Tyler-- Tyler James Williams and Mayim Bialik were two of my favorites. They really were. I really felt like they just opened up and were very candid and, you know, I thought it that was so brave, even of Mayim. You know, Mayim was very candid. She was just like, everybody thought I had it made after "Blossom." And it was like, I didn't-- I didn't have any money at all. She even told me your salary and I was like, you didn't make six figures doing that show?

ETHAN ALTER: One aspect of both the Raven Simone episode and the Tyler episode that I really liked was you talked about the realities of growing up as a Black child actor in the business, which is very different than what a lot of white child actors face.

JALEEL WHITE: It's fair of me now to definitely say it was-- it was very different being-- you were made to feel African-American. Fred Savage was always invited to the "Emmys." He was always treated like a darling during his time. I was never invited to the "Emmys," even to present. It was pretty much told to us I would be wasting my time to even submit myself for a nomination. And it was so normal. It was so normalized, you just shrug. It was like, oh, yeah, no, that's for the white kids.

You know, I always took tremendous pride in how many different people from all walks of life came up to me and recognized "Family Matters." I was always really, really proud of that because that showed a complete opposite of the way I was being treated by our television elite. I even try to make sure I encourage African-American filmmakers today like, no, don't, don't forget we want to tell Black stories, but we want-- we want to make these things universal enough that our Black stories can resonate with other people, other cultures.

ETHAN ALTER: Do you ever see yourself talking with someone who didn't have as positive an experience for your podcast, someone who maybe whose career sort of went in another direction? Or is that not going to ever be part of your mission statement, do you think?

JALEEL WHITE: Like I root for people. If, you know, Lindsay Lohan were to land some awesome role or something or make a transition to directing or something like that, you know, she came out with a project that said that she was just in a different headspace than partying, she would be owed an invitation.

ETHAN ALTER: Well, even from your own past, I wonder if someone like Jamiee Foxworth from "Family Matters" that famously-- she left or was asked to leave midway through the show.

JALEEL WHITE: Yeah, but I would hold-- I would hold Jamiee to the same standard. You know, I'm like, my show is for people who have been working in the industry not anyone who has just an Instagram.

ETHAN ALTER: Obviously, a famous part of "Family Matters" lore is when Jamiee left. I mean, looking back on that now, do you feel any sadness about how things went down?

JALEEL WHITE: Oh, no, I had nothing to do with that. I had nothing to do. I am as indifferent as Switzerland on that. Tom Miller, may he rest in peace, famously fired people. We didn't have the internet back then. And, you know, it was Tom's thinking that, you know, he could always pivot in casting. And you could if you didn't have to answer to legions of fans in comments and whatnot. You could, you could get away with that. So, you know, unfortunately, Jamiee's mother and their family kind of asked for that in a lot of their behaviors. And, you know, it became a running joke on the set. It was like, hey, Tom Miller is going to come down here.

ETHAN ALTER: Yeah, it does seem like it got laid at your feet a little bit because, as you said, the show became very much more about Steve Urkel as it went on. And even though you weren't involved in it, it seemed like that was the way they tried to spin it in some ways.

JALEEL WHITE: No, I didn't fire Jamiee. Like, I had bosses like anybody else.

ETHAN ALTER: Well, I even think like recently in the "Fresh Prince" reunion we saw Will Smith and Janet Hubert finally make up after all these years. Do you think there's ever a chance where you could do a podcast, again, make that an episode of "Ever After" where you try to sit down and clear the air.

JALEEL WHITE: You know, I'm always down for something like that. But Jamiee was just to me like this just sassy little girl who could never quite deliver a line, as sassy as she was off camera. When she would have a line of dialogue, you know, it's just like, "and she blows the layup." Because it was just like, no matter how you put the line in her mouth, she just couldn't, [SNAP] boom, deliver the joke. But off camera, off camera, hilarious.

ETHAN ALTER: Thanks so much for taking the time today.

JALEEL WHITE: You are awesome. This was fun. Check out my podcast, "Ever After." And who isn't a fan of Yahoo? Come on.