“Also, it becomes a conversation about authority, and I think is so assimilated to Bel-Air and assimilated to what’s the right and wrong way of doing things,” Freeman said. While Hilary is living for today, her mother’s approach to success is old-school. Vivian watches her daughter pave her own way as a chef and influencer, to her mother’s dissatisfaction. She could just come out of that cocoon, hopefully, throughout the season.”Īunt Viv’s struggle with her daughter, Hilary Banks ( Coco Jones ), is a catalyst for Viv’s potential butterfly moment. “And also, how does the family adjust to that? And how does she adjust to a new definition, because you see these first few episodes, she’s very much a cookie-cutter of that Bel-Air world. And so, throughout the show, you’ll find out, can she get back in touch with the part of herself that was fearless and ambitious?” Freeman shared. “She realizes that maybe she’s directionless, maybe she’s given too much of herself away to her family. In all that, she realizes how much she’s put her family before her own needs and desires. Freeman said 2022′s Aunt Viv is still very much “the heart of the show,” a wife who supports her husband’s political ambitions and a retired artist. The new Aunt Viv adopts many of the aforementioned qualities. And that, alone, allowed me to find some of my own authorship about who I thought Vivian is today.” “We could create our own shoes when doing this show and really think about who these people are today. “So to me, she was like a great combination of queen and Maya Angelou all wrapped up into one character.”īut Freeman told HuffPost that the goal wasn’t to fill Hubert and Reid’s shoes. “At the time, she was someone who was a pool of riches when it came to history and the history of her family, but the history of Black people,” the Florida-born actor reminisced. To Freeman, the original Aunt Viv “represented queendom.” Her unapologetic nature, grace, compassion and consciousness made the character legendary, she said. Both actors brought their own uniqueness to the character, but Aunt Viv became a cultural icon that placed Black womanhood on a pedestal on network television and transcended generations. Aunt Viv, originally played by Janet Hubert and later Daphne Maxwell Reid, represented more than a TV mom. Similar to the original, Freeman’s Aunt Viv is the powerful and brilliant matriarch who holds that household together like glue. When the series got Will Smith and the original producers’ attention, a bidding war started, and the series got picked up for two seasons by Peacock.įreeman’s manager convinced her to film an audition tape, and thereafter, she had an interview with Cooper and showrunner Rasheed Newson to discuss how they saw Aunt Viv. Like the rest of the internet, Freeman had seen creator Morgan Cooper’s concept trailer when it went viral in 2019 and thought it was brilliant. The series began streaming weekly in February. “Bel-Air” is a 10-episode drama that follows main protagonist Will Smith (Jabari Banks) as he moves from his humble hometown of West Philadelphia to the bourgie enclave of Bel-Air with his affluent extended family after a run-in that could’ve ruined his hoop dreams - or worse.
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