Janet Hubert returned to “the scene of the crime” last week when she appeared on Atlanta’s V-103 radio station, the place where she says her decades-long feud with Will Smith began.
Hubert played the original Vivian Banks alongside Smith in the hit 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before departing the show in 1993 after three seasons, citing “creative differences.” Daphne Maxwell Reid then took over the character.
In the years after, Hubert and Smith’s relationship frayed, with the pair occasionally feuding in the public eye for almost 30 years. They later reunited for the sitcom’s HBO Max 30-year reunion special in 2020, where they cleared the air and mended old wounds.
When asked where her relationship with Smith stands today, Hubert said, “It’s so good… I’m gonna give my baby his props, he put together the website [for her independent animated film JG and the BC Kids] with his team, for me. Paid for it, and then gave me his entire social media team to work with, and helped me put the pitches out there.”
The Demascus actor also revealed she was at “the scene of the crime,” noting how V-103 was the station where a young Smith first “dogged her out.”
THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR REUNION, from left: Will Smith, Janet Hubert, (aired Nov. 19, 2020). photo: Saeed Adyani / ©HBO Max / Courtesy Everett Collection
“Back in the day, this station was the station he did that first interview,” Hubert shared. “So I’m at the scene of the crime, so it’s very cathartic for me and very healing for me to be here. We come full circle, everybody.”
According to Vanity Fair, citing a 1993 issue of Jet, Smith previously told the Atlanta station how Hubert “wanted the show to be The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show.” These comments, per Hubert, are what kick-started a rivalry that lasted almost three decades.
Smith has since revealed he “made a horrible error” against Hubert at the height of Fresh Prince‘s popularity. In a 2024 episode of Vice’s Black Comedy in America docuseries, he confessed, per People, “I made a horrible error and misjudgment of her value and power and beauty to the show. I horribly underestimated what she was for me at that point in my life.”
You can watch the full interview with Hubert in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.