Jaleel White looks back on 'Do the Urkel' 30 years later, teases his pitch for a 'Family Matters' reboot

Jaleel White talks to Yahoo Entertainment and looks back on 'Do the Urkel' 30 years later. White also teases his pitch for a Family Matters reboot and explains why a modern day Steve Urkel could not exist today.

Video Transcript

- (SINGING) Now if you want to do the Steve Urkle dance, all you have to do is hitch up your pants, bend your knees, and stick out your pelvis. I'm telling you, baby, it's better than Elvis.

ETHAN ALTER: I was just looking over dates recently. And February 8, 1991 jumped out. I was 12 years old, sitting in front of the TV, watching "Family Matters," and that's the night that we got Do the Urkle.

JALEEL WHITE: Holy smokes, wow.

ETHAN ALTER: What do you remember about just doing that episode when you first read it? What was the process of making that dance a thing?

JALEEL WHITE: You know, you didn't think anything of it back then, because that would just be totally corny to do as an episode now. You're suspending reality when you do an episode like, that everybody at this party just jumps in sync to this dance, you know what I'm saying, right, with no prior practice. So it's like we just have a different way of storytelling now.

But back then, man, we were honestly just listening to actual '90s cool kid music in between takes and dance battling each other in between takes and then getting back to doing the Urkle. It was just another episode to do and choreography to get down.

Any long term thought that we're going to have the whole country or kids doing this was-- no, you just didn't think like that, dog. You didn't try-- you know what? I wasted all those words to just simply say, in 1991, you didn't try to go viral, got it? There you go.

ETHAN ALTER: Did you have any say in what the dance would be? Or like, did you get to do any of the moves? Or was it all choreographed for you?

JALEEL WHITE: May he rest in peace, Gary Menteer, he was a former Broadway dancer, he was one of our rotation directors, and so he came up with the choreography.

ETHAN ALTER: I was sort of tracking the '90s dance. That episode came out a few months after I Do the Bartman. That had just dropped.

JALEEL WHITE: Oh, wow, oh my gosh, you're aging the [BLEEP] out of me.

ETHAN ALTER: Do you know if that was a reaction to that? Like, did the writers say, oh, we've got to have our own version of Do the Bartman?

JALEEL WHITE: You know, I would read the script, like anybody, the night before. And I don't know a lot of the motivations, even when it comes to did I do that?

ETHAN ALTER: And I noticed that the Carlton followed a year after you. So you were sort of in the middle there. Do you and Alfonso ever talk about the fact that you have these two signature dances?

JALEEL WHITE: You should be teaching a '90s nostalgia class at frigging UCLA, man. I had no realization until now that Alfonso ripped off my attempt to go viral back in 1991.

ETHAN ALTER: Well, all the shows of my generation, our generation, are obviously coming back now. "Saved by the Bell" is back. "Punky Brewster" is coming back. Are there plans for a "Family Matters" reboot? Would you be involved if they did it?

JALEEL WHITE: Well, you know, I have some things that I would love to do with the legacy. I think the safest place to start with would be an adequate reunion, if one were to be arranged.

ETHAN ALTER: If they were to make it with new characters, what do you think a modern day Urkle would look like? Because the thing for me is nowadays, nerds are cool. So he couldn't be a nerd anymore.

JALEEL WHITE: I personally don't believe there's a modern day Urkle. I just-- I don't. That's like saying, is there a modern day Pee-Wee Herman or a modern day Ed Grimly? You know, those characters are almost just burned in time. I don't want to see it explored for what it could be now.

I would prefer to see it explored for what it was in the '90s, to give you a hint of what I would like to do. I want to enjoy the nostalgia like anybody else. I want to go back in and see backdrops with, you know, Circuit City and Blockbuster tapes and VHS. That's what I like to watch.

ETHAN ALTER: How would you think you'd handle the fact that Reginald VelJohnson played a cop in the original? I wonder if that's a very different occupation now.

JALEEL WHITE: We tackled some good episodes back then about a lot of things are going on now. You know, I remember there was an episode where Eddie was harassed by the cops, and Carl confronted the guy because he was a peer.

And I don't think we got enough credit for those types of episodes back then. But forget about credit. You know what credit I get? What a nine-year-old kid comes up to me today, wants to take my picture because they watched the episodes on Hulu. That's all the credit I need.