Tatyana Ali Talks Mentoring Ashley Banks On ‘Bel-Air’: “This Is Really Meta”
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Tatyana Ali has lauded the cast of Bel-Air for taking on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air legacy “as their own.”
The veteran actress, who joined on as a full-time cast member for season 2 of Bel-Air, spoke with Entertainment Tonight about her and her former castmates’ impression of the reboot and watching the new cast breath new life into the iconic series.
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“I think we all feel very much like they’ve taken the initial concept of the show and made it their own and ran with it,” Ali said. “That it is its own show and I think now that it’s in its second season, the proof of concept is there. Now that they’ve got wings, they’re going to fly with them… Somebody called it like a legacy — I don’t know if that’s what it is — but to have that on top of the emotional full circle-ness of it, is just… who gets to do that? Like when do you get to do that in your life or your career? It’s cool.”
In particular, she gushed about actress Akira Akbar, who was cast in the role of Ashley Banks and whom she will work with during season 2. “She’s just so beautiful and so genuine… and I just told her, ‘We’re a very small sorority, it’s just me and you. We’re the only two Ashley Banks that have ever been,'” the dual threat shares. “‘Do your thing, you know, let your light shine.’ And I think she has, very much so.”
The actress’ role as Bel-Air Middle School English Literature teacher Mrs. Hughes will be a full-circle moment from her role as Ashley Banks in the original iteration of the series. Ali will be appearing in the series as Mrs. Hughes, a Bel-Air Middle School English Literature teacher who takes a liking to the reimagined version of Ashley Banks, which she played in the series’ first season.
The 44-year-old also spoke about her decision to continue her portrayal of Mrs. Hughes and how the character resonates with her. “I didn’t expect it to be weird. I treated it like an opportunity — [it’s] this great job, the writing is amazing and Mrs. Hughes as a character is amazing,” the former teen idol details. “She’s a real mentor [and] she’s feeding this young Black girl from her own library of books by Black women, Black radicals. This is what’s happening right now, this is an amazing role. But then, when I got to set and found myself at Bel-Air Academy with children in the same uniform that I was in for all of my teenage life on Fresh Prince, that’s when I realized like, this is really meta.”
Ali also reveals her excitement of continuing to contribute to Bel-Air’s second season came partly as a byproduct of her experiencing working with the cast on the first, which conjured emotions within her though long dormant. “I think after one of my final scenes with Akira, I asked the director, ‘Are we finished? Is there another setup?’ And he was like, ‘No, we got it, that was good, we got it.'”
“And I said thank you and I walked back behind one of the walls and [tears] just came down like a flood,” she recalls. “It’s just a full-circle moment and what my character was saying to her, it felt very much like I was looking at myself in a way. You always connect to your character like that anyway and the other actors in that way, it’s always personal on some level, but this was just another thing.”
Bel-Air Season 2 premieres Thursday (Feb. 23) on Peacock with its first three episodes, after which a new episode will air every subsequent Thursday.
