A Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reboot Is Happening—As a Gritty Drama

Jenny Singer
·2 min read

Now this is a story all about how…a TV show got flipped turned upside down. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the beloved 1990s sitcom that made Will Smith a household name, is being rebooted. Not remade, with smartphones and “WAP” references, but rebooted as a dark, high-intensity drama. 

The tale of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot is just as wild and unlikely as the tale of a teenage boy who goes from shooting some b-ball in the neighborhood to drinking orange juice out of a Champagne glass. Will Smith is creating the new show with Morgan Cooper, the editor of a viral YouTube video that retold the Fresh Prince story in the narrative-driven, heart-pounding style of an HBO drama. The four-minute film, posted to YouTube in March 2019, has 2.1 million views and counting. Now it will serve as a template for a new, fresher Fresh Prince series. 

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cooper will cowrite the script, co-executive-produce, and direct the new show, working in tandem with Smith's production company Westbrook Studios. Smith has been attached to a reboot of Fresh Prince for years and has reportedly been involved in the Cooper project since 2019. The buzzy show is being shopped to major streaming platforms, including Netflix and HBOMax. The original creators and producers of Fresh Prince have signed on too, replacing laugh tracks with swelling chords and tense drum beats. 

More than 30 years after the original NBC show premiered, the story of a Black West Philly teen who relocates to Los Angeles and moves in with his millionaire relatives will have a different resonance—Cooper's short captures the circumscribed freedom of a young Black man in 21st century, prison-industrial America, the oppressive fear of parenting a Black child in light of police brutality, the sticky attractiveness of respectability politics, and, of course, the photogenic quality of Southern California swimming pools. 

It's all the class commentary and satisfyingly swish-ing basketballs of the ’90s Fresh Prince, but for a more honest, more antiracist 2020 America. We can't wait to go back to Bel-Air. 

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.                          

Originally Appeared on Glamour