Source: WENN

February of last year, actress Janet Hubert, commonly known for her role as the original Aunt Viv on 90′s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, wrote an open letter addressed to Wendy Williams. In the letter she called the media personality out for the way that she publicly bullied the late Whitney Houston over the years. While Wendy may have deserved for someone to call her out on doing Whitney wrong during the time that she was alive, I can’t help but to think that Aunt Viv is doing the most with these open letters (Let’s not forget the one she wrote to Will Smith). It appears that Hubert wasn’t too pleased that Wendy asked Tatyana Ali why The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cast a different actress as Aunt Viv after three years of taping, during an interview a few days ago. In her most recent letter Hubert blasts Wendy, calling her a “demon” and a man. The letter in its entirety reads:

“Dear Wiggy, I’m sorry, Wendy,

Recently, you found the need to put an end to the mystery surrounding my departure from a show that I did so damn long ago that I don’t even remember why I departed.

Wendy Williams, or whatever you are supposed to be, I’m not quite sure. I’m writing you yet again, to appeal to your sense of womanhood or manhood as some suggest. Please close your mouth about things that you know nothing of.

Now, I watched your show to see dear Tatyana Ali sadly to say, fall into your trap. She even brought pictures of our days on the show from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. You know most people watch you just to see what heinous things your mouth will say compared to what an overflowing volcano will spew forth on that day.

Now perhaps other Black women have allowed you to berate them and continued to support you in this manner of madness and rewarding hatefulness. It seems to become the norm and has taken over our society completely. But I, Janet Hubert, sat there and watched you tell the world that I was not a nice mother. I’m thinking to myself, the only person who has the right to say that is my child. So I sat there and watched you like some devilish sinkhole swallow up Tatyana Ali. You reduced her to a child sitting their tempting to keep some symbolism of dignity about her as you pried and invaded her life until you got what you wanted.

You are such a demon Wendy. You are wicked, awful, conniving, sinister, spiteful, jealous of every other woman. Simply put, Wendy you are a virus. You are not nor have you ever been a true woman. It seems as though your audience thirsts for the blood of others, as they are prompted to clap and hoop and holler at your shows and wigs and clothes.

Girl you will have some stars on your show and demean them before they even make it back home. I just would like to know who died and told you that you were reborn as Oprah. You want to be Oprah so bad that you would kill for it and you will kill anyone to achieve success. Sister, you will never be another Oprah. Oprah lifted her audience up and exuded an air of class.

But you know what Wendy, you are not even in my league. It is so beneath me to even bother with someone like you, but you asked for it. Didn’t nobody tell you to say my name on your show? You will not destroy all of the hard work that I went through for the last decade to clear my good name. I simply will not allow you to do so. I’m a lady and a real one. Wendy girlfriend you just messed with the wrong sista.

Now it’s funny for all that you and the world claim that I’ve done, I should have my own show like you. Darling there is nothing that I could have ever done in this lifetime in my career that would equal the vulgarity and ugliness and hatred that you spew on your show in one single day.

So, here is my advice to you Wendy. I want to help you. Learn to sit in a chair and stop fidgeting with yourself on camera. Wipe your giant teeth off camera, and don’t smear the spit on the chair. Please put some sweat pits under your arms, and darling if your sweater is pulling until there are lines across your chest, its too tight. You might want to deflate those tremendous breast. Take off the fake blonde hair. You have to stop playing the race card because you are coming off like a want to be white girl who will never be White.

Now, I have never seen anything besides hogs slobber at the mere mention of food, so I question your humanism at times. I have never seen a display of such self-hatred.

Just a couple more suggestions for you, please would you stop dissing all of us who’ve embraced our natural hair as many others and I have? And yes Wendy natural hair does belong on the red carpet whether you like it or not.

I kind of feel sorry for you. You sit there on your big-footed tacky throne everyday while millions of people are laughing at you not with you. There is a big difference. Nobody cares about what you think about his or her lives. But we do care about what you put out there about us. My heart saddens that women, especially Black women, have embraced her evil after all of our struggles in society. You and your kind have set us back a hundred years or so. How dare you chastise anyone when you are such a travesty?

Now take that, chew it my dear and stick it on your lord have mercy you are disgusting fly ridden gum wall. And that’s the advice I have for you my sister.

Peace.”

Dang Aunt Viv!

What do you think of Janet’s letter? Was it too harsh or did Wendy deserve everything Janet dished out?

Listen to Aunt Viv read her letter below.

Source: WENN

Will Smith took it back to his Fresh Prince/Big Willie Style days over the weekend while attending Gabrielle Union’s 40th birthday party. Though the actress who looks nowhere near her age was certainly the highlight of the Miami birthday bash, coming in close second was Will Smith who busted out an unexpected freestyle for the guests.

Will Smith hopped on the mic with Doug E. Fresh and dropped a few punchlines that definitely got the crowd hype. Then he took it back to the old school performing everyone’s favorite summer jam, “Summertime,” followed by the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme. Sounds to me like Big Willie’s still got it. What do you think?

necolebitchie.com

Back in the day, we had some of the best shows on television.  The thing about it is that almost no two shows were alike and you could ALWAYS find something to watch. Let’s check out a list of shows we’d love to see back but here’s the twist: Most of the old cast members are old or have passed so…let’s revamp the cast!  In the comments, play along and share who you’d like to see in our new and improved tv shows! Oh and keep in mind that this is a starter list of shows and you can feel free to say what other shows you’d like to see come back! Let’s go!

Read the rest of this entry »

What happens when you get some crazy press for having to go smack a Russian reporter upside the head  for trying to get some lip action? If you’re Will Smith, you turn the other cheek and give your British fans what they want: a delightful and nostalgic rendition of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song.

Willy appeared on the BBC program The Graham Norton Show to promote Men In Black 3, but spent a large chunk talking about the show that fans around the world know him best for: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Although the show has been off the air for 16 years, Will says that he’s surprised by how much love it still gets. Along with the audience, he sang the theme song to the show and looked like he was having a ton of fun doing so.

Check the three sistahs mad representing in the audience.

And sing along, why don’t ya? In West Philadelphia, born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days…

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Source: Eurweb.com

From Eurweb.com

Will Smith’s new movie “Men in Black 3” is not only loaded with state-of-the-art special effects that puts the 1997 original  to shame, but its his first-ever film shot in 3D …which he admits gave him pause.

“My first concern with being in 3D was my ears, because I could see these things taking over pretty much the whole of the screen,” Smith told us Thursday during roundtables for the film in Beverly Hills. “When I first saw it and it was cool, I was like alright, we didn’t have me looking like satellite dishes.  And special effects now, you can see anything. Like there are no limitations with special effects.”

Case in point – Tupac.

“That was crazy,” he said of the late rapper’s hologram that performed with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at the recent Coachella Music Festival. “That was like, ‘Whoa! Hey, that’s a little too good. Let’s back that technology off a little bit.’”

Asked if he thought virtual Tupac went too far, Smith said, “No, it was great! But it was so great that it was chilling. That’s the world that we live in now, so it’s just a matter of the artist figuring out how to create it in a way that it’s most effective for the audience.”

See what he said Fresh Prince has meant to his career and what his kids think about it at Eurweb.com. 

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The Carlton Dance was seriously one of the best parts of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and Alfonso Ribeiro recently brought it all back, leading a massive flash mob in Los Angeles.

The former Carlton Banks set it off at Universal Studios City Walk in Hollywood with a slew of eager fans who were trying to break the record for the most people in North America flash mobbing at the same time. Of course, the mob had to start off with Carlton’s favorite Tom Jones classic, “It’s not Unusual,” they also broke out “Apache” and did the “jump on it” dance Carlton and Will performed during the hilarious male strip club episode.

So far there’s no word on whether the group actually broke the flash mob record but they clearly had a good time regardless. Check out the clip.

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Even with the old school dookie braids and the VERY foul mouth in Menace II Society, Larenz Tate knows he was a cutie! And he’s been like that since he first stepped on the scene, showing up on our favorite shows like Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Rescue Me, as well as some of our favorite films: Love Jones, Crash, and Dead Presidents. Spitting smooth poetry, dancing and singing like Frankie Lymon and playing a ruthless killer, Tate has done it all over the years. However, the 36-year-old Chicago native doesn’t look a day over 25 (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating), and for that reason, along with his delicious smile, he’s our throwback arm candy for the day. Take a walk back down the hotness memory lane.

How come a black woman can’t express feelings of frustration, hurt and even disappointment without the fear of being labeled bitter or having an attitude?

Seriously, the stereotypes of Black women and their so-called anger or bitterness are so pervasive that anytime a sista acts out in a way that’s seen as aggressive, she gets attacked by everyone including the white mainstream, Black men and other Black women. Sadly, we have become so accustomed to the bitter Black woman” meme that we even have internalized it as true, although research has proven otherwise. Nevertheless if I see one more person flippantly dismiss the emotional angst of a black woman by saying, “oh she’s just bitter,” I will scream -but not too loud because than folks will assume that I have an attitude problem.

Take for instance Janet Hubert, actress who is best known as the first Aunt Vivian on the hit TV series Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Recently she was asked why she had been missing from the picture of her former cast members at a reunion dinner, which had been posted on Will Smith’s Facebook page and ultimately started rumors of a “Fresh Prince” reunion, she said:  “There will never be a reunion … as I will never do anything with an a**hole like Will Smith,” the actress told TMZ this weekend. “He is still an egomaniac and has not grown up. This constant reunion thing will never ever happen in my lifetime unless there is an apology, which he doesn’t know the word.” Ouch, that’s kind of harsh.

Once news spread of Hubert’s reaction to the question of a reunion, folk were quick to judge and without much pause, concluded that Hubert is holding on to a grudge. To me it was an honest answer to an honestly invasive question. I mean, what else was she suppose to say? “I was busy,” or “I was washing my hair,” or some other lie to appear graceful to the fickle masses? The same folks wanting her to move on are probably the same folks, who wonder why she wasn’t at the reunion dinner. She told her truth and what is wrong with that?

If you recall, Hubert didn’t leave the show on good terms. As the original Aunt Vivian, Hubert, who was pregnant during the series’ third season sued Will Smith and NBC for breach of contract for offering her a new contract with less air time and less money.  After the unsuccessful lawsuit and refusing to sign the new contract, Hubert was replaced on the show by Daphne Reid.

And just like that, the first Aunt Vivian vanished into obscurity, never to be seen – or even thought about – by the public again until last year, when she wrote the book about her experience as a TV Mom. In an interview about the book with BlackAmericaWeb, Hubert said that she was subjected to verbal and mental abuse on the set, hypocrisy, excessive egoism, blatant resentment, racial jokes at the hands of a young Smith. According to Hubert, “I was a dark-skinned, African-American mother, and Will used to tell the you’re-so-black jokes to the audience before the show, and at one point, I came out and stopped him, and the audience went ‘Woooo,’” she remembered. “He didn’t understand how unbelievably disrespectful that was to women like me… ‘Yo mama’s so black, when she looks at her shoes, she thinks she’s looking in the mirror. Ha, ha!’”

It has to be a hard thing for viewers to separate the relationships that actors have on screen with their real life relationships and turmoil back stage, but it happens. Like when John Amos (James Evans Sr.) was fired from the hit series Good Times, he was accused by the show’s producer Norman Lear of being a “disruptive factor.” Of course, Amos would say differently and said countless times that he had been fired because he objected to the negative stereotypes of African Americans that the show constantly presented including the increasing buffooneries of fellow cast mate Jimmie Walker (James Evans Jr.).  When Amos sought to clarify rumors and assert his position on his overall feelings about the direction of the show and his fellow cast mate no one accuses him of being a bitter or an angry Black man.  We understood it. So why can’t we give Hubert the same benefit of the doubt?

In a previous editorial, Hubert sought to challenge the angry Black woman image she was receiving by recounting candidly what it’s like growing up in a world that constantly subjugates you. “While growing up, only the lighter skinned black women were considered beautiful. The sad thing is that today those standards of beauty are still in effect. I think a better description would be the politics of beauty. I am making the references of physical beauty to make a better point in pursuit of the angry black woman theory. We don’t say the angry light-skinned woman, do we? That in itself is enough to piss me off, so am I angry yet… not quite.”

I think that as Black women we have been so conditioned to being treated with less dignity and having our personal contributions undervalued, that we honestly feel that it is our place to always “just deal” with our emotional well-being without complaining. We readily accept that Black men are targets by racist institutions since slavery and tossed away by society as degenerates and sub humans. However when it comes to understanding how black women are also the targets of those same racist paradigms, and carry the weight of gender oppression on our shoulders, we would rather see a woman suppress those intense angry feelings. After all, being angry is just not considered lady-like.

Putting myself in Hubert’s shoes, I can imagine the stress that might occur every time someone mentions what she perceives as one of the most single traumatic moments of her career.  I mean, if I had gotten fired from a job because of some strife with the boss and/or coworker, and  they try to invite me to the company’s reunion party that included all the people you had strife with, I would be like, “F that. And here is why” too. I wouldn’t care if it is the Fresh Prince or the Fresh Grocers (supermarket), if it bugs me, I’m going to speak on it.

Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.

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Remember the Fresh Prince reunion picture we posted last week? Well you may have noticed that there was a missing person. And we’re not talking about Geoffrey. The original Aunt Viv, Janet Hubert, said she will never reunite with Will until there’s an apology.

Hubert told TMZ Will Smith is the ego maniac that resulted in her termination from the show.

Here’s what she had to say:

“There will never be a reunion … as I will never do anything with an a**hole like Will Smith. He is still an egomaniac and has not grown up. This constant reunion thing will never ever happen in my lifetime unless there is an apology, which he doesn’t know the word.”

Well, well. Apparently, Hubert is still holding onto a grudge. She believes she was fired because she wouldn’t kiss Will’s butt back in the day.

Will is aware of how Hubert feels about him. Back in 1993, he addressed “the beef” in an interview with an Atlanta radio station, saying it was her bad attitude that got her fired.

“[Hubert] said once, ‘I’ve been in the business for 10 years and this snotty-nosed punk comes along and gets a show.’ No matter what, to her I’m just the AntiChrist.”

Wow. We’ll probably never know what went down and how it all transpired but either way Aunt Viv just comes off looking bitter.

Do you think Will had something to do with Hubert’s firing? Does Aunt Viv need to let it go?

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In honor of the pending holiday, Madame Noire is going to celebrate our favorite mothers throughout the week. To kick things off we’ll start with our favorite moms from our favorite sitcoms. (Ooo a rhyme!) While these women are very different from one another, they all possess qualities that made us believe them in the mother role. Maybe you even saw a little of your own moms in the following women. Check it out.