If Jaleel White is running from the ghost of Steve Urkel, he sure doesn’t sound like it.
Yes, he’d rather talk about Me, Myself & I, the high-concept CBS sitcom that marks his return to series TV for the first time since the short-lived comedy Grown Ups ended in 2000. He’s actually been pretty busy since Family Matters ended in 1998, and the following two decades have helped him embrace the high-pantsed, nasally thorn in the side of the Winslow family.
“I’m not one of those kind of people that likes to beat up the past to validate the present,” he tells Vanity Fair. “Certain people think that it’s cool to make fun of MC Hammer. I’m like, ‘Yeah, but you owned all of his records.’ . . . [Urkel] was this big lightning-in-the-bottle accident that saved a show that wasn’t doing so well.”
His attitude echoes that of Darryl, the role he plays on Me, Myself & I—the easygoing best buddy of inventor Alex Riley (Bobby Moynihan), who appears in the show during three different, critical periods: the present day, 1991 (when he was 14), and 2042 (when he’s 65). Darryl is both accommodating and blunt, and he’s also got a garage big enough to fit all of Alex’s worldly belongings. (Moynihan’s character moves in after he finds his wife cheating on him.)
White and Moynihan hit it off from the start, especially after Moynihan compared his co-star to another actor who got his big break on a family-friendly 90s sitcom: his former S.N.L. castmate Kenan Thompson. “‘You guys, you’re cut from the same cloth. People forget how long you’ve been working in the business. You make our jobs easier,’” White recalls his Moynihan telling him.
But White isn’t the only TV vet on Me, Myself & I. John Larroquette plays the 2042 version of Alex, while Ed Begley Jr. plays the sixtysomething version of Alex’s stepbrother, Justin, Sharon Lawrence plays the mature version of Alex’s high-school crush, Noni, and Tim Reid plays a retired-and-living-the-good-life version of Darryl.
Can White—who’s been appearing on camera since doing an episode of The Jeffersons when he was 7 years old—learn a thing or two from accomplished actors like Larroquette? “I don’t have scenes with him, but I love going to the table-read each week and just hearing him work. And John will remind you of his hardware,” he laughs, referring to Laroquette’s five Emmys. “They might as well be on the hood of his car.”
Of course, he also has wisdom to impart to the younger members of the cast, especially Skylar Gray—who plays Alex’s young daughter, Abby. “She makes a lot of mistakes as a young actress sometimes, but I find it fun. I really do. I’m always right there with the director to help her hit her mark, or focus on continuity. We have to do it in a very playful way because she’s 8. Those moments, for me, are the ones that I really enjoy. I love working with the kids.”
White has managed to keep a positive frame of mind partially because, unlike a lot of actors who get a memorable sitcom role at a young age, he never let that define his career. At a certain point, he says, he took to heart the advice of a network executive, who told him at a pitch meeting after Family Matters ended that he should go the dramatic route.
“As you get older, you start to understand you have to do what you need to do. That meeting always stuck out in my head as the drama opportunities began to present themselves. All it takes is just a little more maturity, and having a daughter, and being a dad.” That attitude led White to voice-over roles and Fake It Til You Make It, a Web series he created, wrote, and starred in, as well as guest roles in TV shows like Boston Legal, The Game, House, and NCIS. ”I actually started to come up with a different goal: I wanted to be a guest star on every single drama on every network there is,” he says.
White is especially proud of the small role he landed as a talent booker in the 2006 big-screen adaptation of Dreamgirls. Director Bill Condon told the actor he loved his audition tape—but things almost got derailed when it came to White’s costume fitting, which included a huge pair of Urkel-esque glasses. “I was mortified—but I was disciplined, and I didn’t say anything. I think probably about a half hour before we were supposed to shoot it, Bill came up to me and he was like, ‘Why don’t we try it without the glasses?’ I don’t even think he knew who I was; I think someone came up to him [and told him]. Since he is who he is, there weren’t too many people that were going to even question his decision to cast me. Little moments like that just really helped stoke my fire to keep going.”
So maybe Jaleel White still feels the ghost of Urkel behind him, at least a little bit. But he’s not letting it bother him, especially now that he’s making a 22-episode network sitcom once more. “I’m 40 years old now,” he explains. “I’ve got an 8-year-old daughter. I have a completely different outlook on life. I’m very proud of what I was able to do during the 90s, when baggy pants were in, and East/West rap was relevant, and all these different things.”
It’s good that he’s O.K. with it, because the 1991 portion of Me, Myself & I coincides with the peak popularity of his signature role—and he’s bracing for the inevitable meta jokes that are likely brewing in the writers’ room. “They’ve already told me about certain things that they have in store, because these boys are growing up in 1991. That was TGIF’s hot time right there,” he laughs. “If they do, I will tell you this: this writing staff is going to do in a very clever way.”
