Top Ten Guest Stars of A Different World!

Weirdy weird medio eighties, so pretty through the city and the man world. Welcome to AVS TV ladies, where we look back in order to leap forward. Here are your hosts, Susan Lambert had him and Sharon Johnson. Hello, I'm Sharon and I'm Susan. You know, one of the things I love about looking back at eighties television is you get to see some early and amazing young stars and very exciting stunt casting and a different world was no exception in fact, other than shows like The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Hotel.

It's probably one of the greatest shows for guest stars from the eighties. That is right, I had forgotten Sharon and what an amazing cast and a huge regular cast. It's six seasons. It's all out of college, so as the original cast grows up and graduates, they bring in a new set of freshmen, you know, coming in starting seasons four, five, and six. But like It's a Living, It's a Living was like that.

They had an evolution of cast, but in a different world. Those cast changes changed the show because of these new characters coming in the show and the stories evolve to meet them as opposed to like it's a living or other shows where they replace cast members and they'll be different characters obviously, but the show doesn't substantially change, the stories don't substantially change, and yet I think with a different world. That was one of the things that struck me is they were writing and adjusting to these new cast members when they came in, which was interesting. And I think one of the other things they did that a lot of shows about people who are in college, let alone high school, is they let the cast age pretty much in step with where their characters were.

We got to see characters graduate before the end of the series and trying to get that first job, and all those kinds of things that typically doesn't happen. I mean, people in TV shows that are in high school or college tend spend much longer in those schools than most of us do out in the real world. It's challenge for every show that's set in the high school or college, but I think they do it pretty well. There's so many cast members. I began to realize, oh, this is not just a sitcom, this is a soap.

This is a soap. It's a soap opera sitcom. Oh interesting, I know, it's relationships. It's really an evolving storyline and so many characters. Yeah, I never thought of that.

I mean, certainly when it comes to the storylines, they were not shy about tackling all kinds of issues related to people in that age group and some of the things they're going through and some of the things that may happen as well as some of the things that are happening or could be happening in the greater world as well. They didn't shy away from any of that and gave the characters an opportunity to find their way to kind of figure out what they're thinking or what they think about some of these things, and we got to watch that happen. It's pretty remarkable that way. Yeah, I'm really appreciating this rewatch in a whole new light, and so much of it is the characters and the cast, the recurring cast, the starring cast, but also all the guest cast.

So many young stars that went on to do amazing things, so many big stars that came in to kind of be a big star in those episodes. And I just there's such a joy in the guest cast. Yeah, and it's kind of seamless and a lot of shows that there's say, oh, here's the big guest star kind of thing. In this case, they come in, they're playing a role, and yeah, they're a big guest star, but they kind of seamlessly pull them into the show and end of the story, and you kind of lose some of that big guest starring nous that sometimes you have in shows, which I think is great. But the other side of this amazing list of guest stars on the show is that there just weren't a lot of roles for actors of color, black actors at this time and a different world because of the milieu, if you will, gave an opportunity for all kinds of roles, all kinds of different sorts of people, and therefore all kinds of different guest stars to come in for a week or as a recurring character or a couple of episodes or whatever it may be.

So yeah, I mean, it's just really remarkable. And I'm probably going to go back and watch all the episodes I didn't get a chance to see so far. I was a fan of season one, which again people now think are like, you know, is not as good as the sort of reboot and moving on. It's not as focused. It sort of doesn't really tackle a lot as much serious or interesting subject matters in interesting ways as the deeper seasons do.

But I loved the setup, I loved the characters. I was I was in I remember enjoying it. But I was also in film school and then out of film school and try and have a career, and then in grad school, and so I was not able to watch a lot of television during this run, this late part of the eighties early part of the nineties, I'm not as familiar with, and so I would only catch it really when it was the guest stars, like those are the ones. I would be like, oh, well, I want to see Diane Carroll, you know, and I want to see you know, Tupac Shakur. Well, we didn't know who to I would not know who Tupac was.

I know, but still I know in retroster it's great. Yeah, but I definitely knew who will be Goldberg was. I definitely knew who you know lean a horn Horn Come on, I mean those were Blair underwear? Oh it would did you do that on purpose, Melissa? I've always called him Blair underwear.

Now, if you worked with him. Oh my god. Once. Yeah, and he was like really almost naked. He was like in his underwear.

I didn't tell him to his face that I call him underwear. Yeah, it was like a shower seat. And I had to like take the towel from him. Oh, yes, very exciting. Did you have to measure to him?

No, yes, you did. Well. I was there. It was like this little it was like a shower that they shoved into the middle of the stage and I was like, it was me and him. All right, what show Dirty Sexy Money?

It only lasted like a season I think maybe two. I think no one season on one season? Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was Blair. Blair was great to work with.

I forgot he was on that show that was at ABC when I was there. Okay, And who who's the woman that I worked with? The older couple, the parents? They were very famous Sutherland. Yes, remember the woman.

Oh it's Peter Krause. Yes, Jill Clayburn, Thank you, Jill Clayburn. Wow, it was great to Wow, that's this is a cast. It was a great cast. That was Lucy Lowe.

I forgot. Yeah, it was great cast. It was fun to work on all right. Okay, well, we have certainly gotten off track because Melissa under underwear. See I I hope it never comes out of my mouth, but I will certainly have to think about it every time.

This is not what we came to talk about. Cute though, Oh gosh, though he was one of the guests. He was for episode twelve that we were looking at. Anyway, Oh my god. Okay, well, I don't even know how to get back on track.

All I'm now thinking about is Melissa in the day saying, now you don't do that anymore. For camera, they don't have to go measure But when I started, you should, as a camera assistant, you should seem to take this little measuring tape from the lens of the camera to the eye to eating with the what you're focusing on. Well, in the case of Blair Underwood coming out of a shower, apparently it was his underwear. Well, that's where I was focusing on. I was actually going to suggest that you explain what measuring when you're measured to that literally a measuring tape.

Don't use a metal one, and don't take it to their eye. You take it to No, that's bad, that's that's bad. Protocol. Yes, if you're gonna go to an actor's eye, if you use a tape, then you have like an assistant catch it and hold it up. Yeah yeah, yeah, and it's soft, it's there and you put like foam and great, great tapes, so they know it's coming.

And usually it's like they're very close anyway, and so everybody's just like so it's the camera's assistant job to know the distance between the focal plane and the actor that you're shooting or whatever you're looking at at all times. It's fascinating, fun job. You either have it or you don't. Can be very stressful. Yeah, it was very especially because you didn't write.

It was films, so you had to wait for dailies to see if it was in focus. Let's just look at the oh no, no, no, it didn't work like that in the old days. You had to get it right. Check the gate. Checking the gate.

Good for you, Susan, I was, yes, and explain to our viewers what the gate is and an old film camera. Yes, when you used film, the film goes through and takes a picture one at a time. You run those all together. And this is what I remember because I was I started as a camera Say, no, you did way back in the day because I knew camera and I needed a job. And checking the gate meant after you had the take that you knew was good, you had to make sure there had been nothing that got into the gate.

So the gate being the frame that the film ran through. So you would pull off the lens or the front or the back of the camera. There are two ways to do it. You can do it through the lens, yeah, and you look and see if there's any What happens with film is it's soft. The emulsion that you photograph is soft, and so sometimes little strings which you will see on old movies.

If you ever see a string wiggling, that would be the projector in you know, when they printed it and transferred it, it was dirty. But the same thing can happen in the original. And so if the gate was dirty, you had a hair. Yeah, you call the hair, you would call it a hair, but it was it was emulsion that correct stripped off. But yeah, and you could see it, and then you'd be like, and it's terrible because then you have to go it's not good.

And everybody by that point is like, it's great. We got the take, you have to yell and everybody's running and you're like, stop the race, stop the race. Not good, and they looked at you like you did it. You're like, hey, man, I just work here. I remember the days of kind of waiting with baited breath, being the one looking for it, and you're like, you don't want to get it wrong.

You don't want to say it's good, and it wasn't good. And because when it comes back from the lab it's an old machine. Yes, it's like a sewing machine. Oh those days. Like a lot of things, I actually appreciate having gone through the transition from film to digital, seeing that transition as opposed to being all on one side or all on the other.

Have a real appreciation for it, right, Yeah, I do too. I do too. And particularly editing was the same way it was by hand when you made it cut. You had to cut your film, and if you cut it too many times, you'd get in real trouble, right, like you don't have like oh no, So you really had to think about how you wanted to shoot the scene, how you wanted to cut the scene, and you really had to make decisions. You couldn't just fix it in post, which you can do now.

You don't have to make as many decisions up front because you can sit there and try and cut fifteen different ways. You can have AI try cut. And yet I think one of the reasons that sometimes film and even TV now feels not as real. And I will argue that it doesn't. Even though it's produced at a level that the eighties couldn't touch, it doesn't always count.

There's some breath in there. There's sort of the idea of the paint brush stroke, right that paint on canvas feels different. Oh, yes, they're two completely different. I mean, film was actual silver. There was a chemical reaction happening.

Yeah, it was a chemical reaction. You had to multiple steps of a chemical reaction, and so it was very physical. And TV is you know, video is it's just matrix ones and zeros and and so I think it's very different. And it's sort of like stunts, like you can now do anything right and none, not all of it. It almost feels like too much.

I don't know. I just have a great appreciation for how hard it was just to make anything in the eighties and before. But I also, like you appreciate that I was on both sides of it. When we were I was at film school when the first edit droid, when the first nonlinear editing system came in, it was called edit droid. It was on laser discs.

We had one at us. See, we had VHS to VHS editing, so we had tape tape that v so we saw it all. And we also had the old Movieolas. The Movieola is the standard mophy stand up, no violas and the flatbeds, and you didn't want to get your fingers stuck in some of that mechanics. That would be bad.

Yeah, so I think even I even think of the sound they don't have, Like there was a twenty track where you had twenty four tracks, just stop them, roll them back to Oh yeah, sound mixing was like sound mixing banks. Yeah, none of that. Now push a button. The magic of movie telling, indeed, movie telling moving Telly. That's our new thing.

Back to movie telling, television telling. We are off topic, back to a different world and the cast we're doing a show. We are doing the top ten guest stars on a different world. Now here's the problem of this, there's too money, there's more than ten. We decided we would each pick six and then compare notes and then try to narrow it down.

I think that's what we're going to try to do. And these are not let's say that these are not in any particular order. These are just our favorites. I'm not gonna I'm not going to order them, no, because unless you let me have just a tie at number one, because I can't. I cannot separate those two.

To me, they belong together. One is not better than the other or more more of my favorite than the other. Okay, let's first just give you some layout of the evolution of the cast, the main cast. So for season one, our main cast was Lisa Bonnett who played Denise Huxtable. Marissa Tome was one of her roommates, Maggie, and Don Lewis was Julissa, who was also one of Denise's roommates.

Now Don was a little older than everyone else. She was I think around twenty four. Then there's also Jasmine Guy who played Whitley, Gilbert Kadem Hardison who played Dwayne Wayne, Darryl M. Bell who play Ron Johnson, no relation, Mary Alice was Letitia Letty Bostic, and then Sindbad was coach Walter Oaks. He was a basketball coach, I believe, and he wasn't just in a couple of episodes of season one.

From my memory, that sounds about right. He but he did come in in season one and then continued through the show, Yeah, and became more of a recurring character rather than sort of an occasional character. And then season two, Lisa Bonet and Mersa tomeilee of the show for wid of reasons we covered in other episodes. Charlene Brown and Chrise Summer joined the cast as students Kimberly Reese and Freddie Brooks, and I liked them. I did too.

They didn't really replace those characters because it was really more like Whitney moved up kind of to the sort of kind of the lead, the lead, the lead female character, female student, if you will. So I thought that was really great. And then they brought in more adult professor or mentor characters, Glenn Turman and Lou Meyers playing Colonel Bradford Taylor and the pit's proprietor who was in the pit was the cool hangout where everybody sort of works and gossips and meets up and dances, and yeah, it was a fun place. And he was the proprietor, and they were sort of again kind of the wise adults exactly. So no real significant changes, I don't think in season three.

But come seasons four, five, and six, we get Asia Sanders, who was another girl in the dorm, Gina Devereaux, Jada Pinkett, this was before she married Will Smith. She was Lena James, and then Karen Melina White as Charmaine Brown. And these were the freshmen. These were sort of the freshmen coming in because we had upper class. All of our original cast was now upper class, graduating and either moving on or staying in relationship to the college, but were on their way out of being college students, correct, So they brought in this amazing sort of new round of students.

This was Jada Pinkett's kind of breakout. All of these people who are now stars, Jasmine Guy were stars. Sindbad it was pretty early Sindbad. He was he had been a comic and I think he had come in as a warm up guy for The Cosby Show and I think he did a Cosby episode and then moved over to a different world anyway, So that's exciting, and this cast is just so impressive. Without this show, many of these actors would not have had the careers they had, Yes, certainly the younger actors, and it gave opportunity to some of the more seasoned actors to work in their craft.

So yeah, Glenn Turman and Loom Myers were character actors who had worked and been amazing. But now on to the guest stars. There are so many. It was so hard trying to figure out. And just when I thought I had finished the list, I'd come up with another episode and I'd be like, oh wait, we forgot.

What was fun about this show being set at a college is that there was every reason for huge, real people to show up, right, Yeah, you have presidential candidates and politicians show up at your college. You have musical stars show up at your college. You have guest professors show up at your college, and so there. It was kind of a perfect setup for bringing in a round of really amazing talent to be like, guess who's on the show this week. You've got your list, Yes, I've got my list, and I think we should start with you and you should give us like you know, and again, these aren't in order, I guess, but they really aren't.

And you have to give order to things. They don't necessarily mean that they have to stay in that order. We can move them around. And again, just the fact that they made the lost exactly means they won. Okay.

So these two, in my mind, for the purposes of this show, really go together because of the roles that they played, and I'm talking about Diane Carroll who played Whitney's mother, and Patti LaBelle, who played Dwayne's mother. Now, Dwayne and Whitney come from two completely different socioeconomic backgrounds. Whitney was raised with a lot of money and culture, etc. Dwayne's family is very much middle class, and their mothers reflect that. And it's a perfect storm when they meet, when they get together, because of course, they both are very devoted parents to their children and aren't sure frankly, that the other person's child is right for their child.

So you've got that inherent conflict, if you will. But what I was not expecting was the level of comedy that they brought both of them, and the episodes that they're in, especially the episodes they're in together, are for me some of the funniest, especially especially the episode for Thanksgiving. When they Thanksgiving, they first meet Oh my gosh. Obviously, different families have different ways of approaching Thanksgiving. Everybody does it a little differently, and boy do they do it differently.

And it devolves into a food fight, it devolves into them getting arrested, I mean, and getting locked up. I mean, it's it's so hilarious, it's so amazing, and they are both so amazing in it. I completely agree. This is where we agree. I totally, I totally agree with you because they're so good together.

They're so good in their scenes with their child, right. I really love the Whitley Mom relationship. Diane Carroll plays Marion Heite Gilbert and has a whole journey. She's in several episodes, and a lot happens to her and to her and Whitley's relationship, and that is really I love that. I love family stuff, and I love the evolution of that relationship.

But I don't know that they were getting offered the kinds of roles that they should have been, and I think this basically reminded people how amazing they are. Well. Diane Carroll, in particular, has a long television history coming into the show. Patti LaBelle, on the other hand, did not She was a singer. I don't know that she did much, if any, and certainly nothing this high profile as an actress before this, But boy did she Boy did she bring it, and boy did she hold her own against Diane Carroll.

It's really amazing the two of them together well, and Diane Carroll, you're right, has a huge television history. Julia, the nineteen sixty eight television series the first weekly series to star an African American woman. In this case, I think it really gives both of them just a chance to really shine, Like you're just they're amazing. Yeah, you just want them, You want them to have their own show exactly. I would have watched that show.

Oh my gosh. They should have the detective agency where they have to work together to solve crimes but also manage Thanksgiving dinner. It's so delightful because you have set up these characters in certain ways, and then this is the first time those characters are coming in after Whitley and Dwayne have gotten married kind of impromptuly and to much of their family's chagrin, and that's just the perfect opportunity for comedy. And they're so good and I love that when Whitney's mom shows up. She brings a fiance, yes, Monika does.

She brings Malik, her young Cuban boyfriend, who is played by Nestor Carbonell, who you know would go on to do Suddenly Susan, The Bates Motel, Lost, The Dark Knight, all of those things. You totally you're like, oh my god, it's that guy. He was just in Shogun by the way. Oh, there you go, it is that guy. But this was early on.

Yeah, he's twenty five, and I had to look it up. I was like, Okay, how old is Diane Carroll in real life in this show? And she was fifty seven? Good for her one. She looks amazing for this, She's amazing to her boyfriend, which turned out to be a man she hired an actor, But you buy it up until that reveal comes and is twenty five, and I was like, that is fantastic.

Maybe there was, but I don't know that you saw even though it turned out to be fake and somebody she hired, but even just somebody putting that out there on a TV show, that this woman's dating this man who's twenty years younger than she is, And there were so many things I loved about those episodes, and they were great, and he was great, and she was great. But Patty LaBelle, come on, she's phenomenal. Oh yeah, yeah, you would not know that she had very little on camera acting experience when she did this show, and she's amazing. Yeah, they really are number one and two. I mean, we haven't gone through the rest of the list, but since you put them one and two and I kind of put them one in two, they're basically one into I couldn't agree more.

Now I think we're going to get into it. That's a who knows. It's all good. They're all good. So my next one, and again these are in order, but they could they're ball pretty close.

But my next one was Whoopy Goldberg season four, episode twenty three, If I Should Die Before I Wake. It's the AIDS episode that we talked about in other episodes. Also guest stars Tisha Campbell as a student Josie. But Whoopy Goldberg is playing basically a professor. It's a cameo professor role doctor Jordan, and she's teaching them how to speak right.

It's a speaking class. What do you professional? What do we call that? Public speaking? Public speaking?

But there's also another word for it. Oration. Yes, one of the reasons I put her there great. She's kind of at the height of her fame. She's about to win an oscar and they talked about it on the View with Woopy Goldberg how basically she was the reason they felt they could get the network to say yes, they wanted to address AIDS.

They knew they had to do something, and they knew they needed someone who the network couldn't deny and couldn't shut them down. And that was it. And it was highest rated episode of the year and people went and got tested and it probably saved lives that episode. Yeah. Absolutely, she was great, and she was great and lending her clout to getting that episode on the air, getting it made getting the network to agree to it good for her.

That's awesome, all right. So she's my next one. And then I have Josephine premise, who is we know Susan fails Hill's mom. But I love that. I love that part of it again because I'm a sucker for the mother Daughters.

She played the art auction right lady. She's a big art buyer in season four that Whitley goes to work for and then gets in trouble and then gets out of trouble as things happen, and I thought she was so I really enjoyed her character there, and then later she plays the landlord of Whitley and Dwayne right, I think she's great. So those were My next two will be Goldberg and Josephine premise Oki Dooke. My next two from season six, episode twenty three Billy D. Williams.

He plays a former baseball player who didn't finish college and some of the characters talk him into thinking about coming back to school. So now I also have to say that Billy D is that is Billy Deist in this episode, which doesn't hurt. But he's great in He's so good, he's so yeah, he's so great in it. And so he comes back. The kids ask a professor if this guy can come in and audit the class who's old or and thinks about coming back to school.

Well, it turns out and she says yes, And it turns out that the professor and he used to date a long time ago, long time ago, and the professor was played by Leslie Egghams. Oh yeah, another one on our list. Yes, so I mean, and the two of them together are just setting the screen on fire. I just I just yeah, it's pretty great. Billy Dalliams.

And if you're not an eighties television officionado, I gotta go tell you Eighties Billy D Williams is worth looking up and just watching. He is amazing, and he's amazing in this episode. And basically they're sort of scene when they first kind of reunite, is her talking about feminism and and so it ends up being about men and women, and he's clearly got a slightly different view, but it's kind of adorable. It's yeah, it really is. It's really terrific.

And he's just that is a man with so much charisma, no kid, my lord. Yeah. I mean I think a lot of people probably know him primarily from the Star Wars movies that he was in. Yeah, that's so funny. I was like, well, lady sings the Blues, of course, but I think for a thing, for a lot of people, he will always be Lando Kelarissian and is.

As much as I enjoy the Star Wars movies, he didn't get as much to do in them as the other characters, which is, you know, which is what happens but yeah, he's so great in this and so that's that's my number. That's my number three. Yeah, I love Billy d Williams. Originally from Brian's song Oh God. Yes, that's the first thing I think I ever saw it.

It is the first nineteen seventy one TV movie based on the book I Am Third, Jimmy Cohn, yes, James conn billyd Williams playing football players. That book is heartbreaking. Who's the movie? The movie is heartbreaking. Y're adorable.

They're adorable. But I remember reading that book. I'm sorry, what's the book title. It's called I Am Third. And at the beginning of the book, here's the reason it's called I Am Third.

It was basically the Lord is first, my friends are second, and I Am Third. And it was about the friendship between Brian Piccolow and Gail Sayers, two football players. It's a real story. But what I also remember from that book, other than it being a great book, so their football players ultimately wont A stricken with terminal cancer. But the other one basically has his knee completely destroyed in a football and they describe it and where he's planted his knee and then gets hit and it goes backwards, and I will remember that description like it's it's a again.

I read a lot of books as a kid. I was a big book reader, but that book has stayed with me. And that TV movie is I feel like we got to rewatch it. We might have to do a Patrin because it's not I don't even think there's a woman in it. Maybe there's a wife's probably probably their wives show up.

So when that movie is obviously a TV movie. My family was living in Japan at the time because my dad was in the Air Force. We didn't get much off any TV in English during the four years we were there, and somehow, some way, I don't remember how we got to see that show. We're huddled around this black and white TV and one of my sister's rooms because maybe it was an antenna. It was the only way we could get a clear picture or something.

That is the only time in my life I think I ever saw my father cry. Oh it's impossible not to cry. Yeah, when they bring in the song. Yeah, only time he had a tear in his eye. I don't that's the one at all time.

Yeah, d William's major dad. Course he did, of course he did I think that was one of the first like movies of the week. That was definitely it was cly the one the way we remember, Yeah, like where it just it just was huge, huge u U change. Yeah. All right, Well that's a season six episode twenty three.

I highly recommend it. It's called college Kid because he also and his character name is Great Langston Page, a former baseball player who never finished college. It's perfect, all right, who's nice? So next is Debbie Morgan. Many people, probably listeners of this podcast, may remember that they first noticed or saw Debbie Morgan on All My Children.

She played a character named Angie who fell for a bad boy who turned out to be the love of her life. She was studying to be a doctor, and of course her parents were not happy about their wonderful daughter getting involved with this hulum. In any event, one of the all time favorite love stories of All My Children fans, and probably the thing that put Debbie Morgan on the map. I don't know that I watched it the whole time she was on there, but I do remember her, and I remember I was watching it during some of the times when they were on the show, and she was awesome. She was great so when her name popped up as one of the guest stars on this show, I thought, well, I have to go back and watch this, and I just loved her character.

She plays another student at Hillman College who is more on Dwayne's intellectual and interest level than Whitley is. Whitley and Dwayne are very different people in terms of what their interests are. She's very art oriented, he's very science oriented. And Debbie's character is someone that Dwayne can talk to about the things science related. Her name is Lisa that interest him.

This is also a point in their relationship when they're getting ready to get married, but things are not exactly really great. They're just a little kind of off out of saying yeah perhaps, and so he finds himself going out to dinner with Lisa, just the two of them, and it causes him to be a little uncertain about where he and Whitley are and whether they're doing the right thing to get married. Needless to say, that causes all kinds of issues in the show then the story going forward. But I loved Debbie Morgan in that role. She was not your typical, you know, home wrecker kind of woman exactly.

She you know, their connection was intellectual. There seemed to be me the possibility that in other circumstances it could be more. But there wasn't anything where she was kind of deliberately going after him, trying to interfere in this relationship. The relationship already had issues, and her presence just sort of brought them more to the four I think in Dwayne's mind. But I just thought she played it wonderfully, played it brilliantly.

So that's why she's on my list. Well, and it's so interesting. I love that. And it's interesting because I was a certain point in later seasons for a second, I was like, wait, is this an eighties ladies show? It started as it because it started centered around and He's Huxtable, and then it sort of shifted and it was in many ways about Whitley and then the roommates that were sort of left, but then a lot of guys come in and it becomes kind of a Whitley Dwayne show with surrounding characters.

So I'm curious if it's truly a lady's driven television show by the end of the show. You know, I would have to say, I certainly think a case could be made for either way. But one of the things they did really well, I think in terms of the female characters, whether they be the regular characters or the recurring characters or the guest characters, is you got to see a lot of different kinds of women in terms of intellectual level, interest level, professional level. And that's to me where the case could be made that this is an eighties lady show, because if you're watching this, you're seeing a lot of different kinds of ladies. But when you combine not just what we see on screen, but what is happening off screen, I think it's absolutely an eighties TV lady show.

Start with the incomparable Debbie Allen. Not only did she come on as a producer director, she directed eighty three episodes of the show. She was responsible for steering the show for the last five seasons in a way that has made it the cultural touchstone that it is today. In addition of the one hundred and forty four episodes, one hundred and four of them were directed by women. Ellen Gidtelson directed fifteen eighties TV Ladies guest Nima Barnett directed at seven, Kim Friedman directed two, and Jasmine Guy directed one as well.

As writing episodes as well, Jasmine Guy, I mean, and then of course you have head writer Susan fails Hill, who was with the show from the beginning, who steered the writing staff. So when you look at the credits of this show and you see all the women who had a part in making this show what it became, it is absolutely an eighties TV Ladies show in my opinion. In my mind, I was like, of course, a Different World is part of eighties TV Ladies. As I was watching it, there were several episodes in the middle that I was like, oh, maybe in this middle part it's not as much, but then it kind of swings back. But I think it is.

I do think it is ultimately, but it is sort of interesting because it becomes a relationship show. Yes, yeah, it really does, which makes sense for a college show because that's kind of people are trying to figure out their relationships and their friendships and their romantic relationships and wear those ebb and flow. But I love that it is about everyone in the show trying to figure out how to drive their story. That's what it feels like. It is about light skin, dark skin, rich poor male female.

What college should be is figuring out what you want and how to achieve it, And that is what this show seems to be about, in addition to the funny, right, in addition to all the issues and the soap opera relationship stuff. That's what I really felt the show delivered was that college is a time to explore and discover yourself. And I think that's one of the appealing things about it. You're like, you want to watch these characters grow up. You want to watch these guest characters come in and teach a valuable lesson or learn a valuable lesson, right, And so I think that is such a part of this show, and I think it's another reason why I think the guest stars really shine, because everyone kind of has their story, and their story is important.

And I think it's one of the reasons I like the AIDS episode, not just because talks about AIDS and not just because it addresses something really important at the time and is very eighties television in that way. It is relating information, making sure people get some information they might not have and are able to take action they might not have thought to take action about. But it also is what's your story? Like it all starts because The Professor is like, do your eulogy tell your story of your life in your twenties, which is a hard thing to do. I mean, like that would be an amazing assignment, right, But anyway, I think that that's sort of interesting, and I think the To Tell the Truth episode has some of that too.

The Debbie Morgan. I don't know, it's just it's sort of I'm realizing that again looking at my list, it's very female driven, not completely, and I'm wondering if the rest of yours is so do you have? So that's your three? Four? That's right.

So I cheated a little with five, mainly because I am such a fan of Jennifer Lewis and I did not know that she was in this show until we started looking into it and watching it. And she plays two characters on this show. She first shows up in season four, episode six, where she's a Professor, and then she comes back in season six as the Dean, and I do love her name. Her character's name is the Dean. She her character's name is Dean Dorothy Dandridge Davidson.

Not only is that a lot of alliteration, but the fact that she was named after Dorothy Dandridge, I think is just fantastic, and she appears in eight episodes in season six in that role, most notably in the Gladys Knight episode, which we yes talk about later. I misspoke, Jennifer Lewis is in the Lena hornet Lena. I didn't I think she was in season She's in the Lena Horne episode in season six, not Lena Horne is on my honorable mention, So yeah, but yeah, that's that. Gladys NDE episode is a great one as well. Well.

Interestingly enough, Gladys Night is my number five Season two episode five. I love that episode. It's sort of for me where season two really starts to take off. And again I jumped around, so it's hard to get the full trajectory of a straight watch through, which I haven't done, but I think it's where wi Allen's like, oh, oh, I'm going to put all the music all the where anywhere I want. Let's get Gladys Knight in.

They bring Gladys Night in, and again it makes sense. It's like, oh, Gladys Knight's coming to perform, and they're going to put two students in the show, and Whitley and Jalisa team up to audition and they in a third and then chaos happens, right, and they don't get it, but they get to dream about singing with Gladys and they sing Love of a bordwhich was her hit from nineteen eighty seven. This is nineteen eighty eight, and they do this in the show and I love this. I love Gladys Knight in it. I love that it's such an eighties guest star moment, right.

It's bringing in a musical star and then doing several musical numbers and you finally get Gladys Knight. You get Gladys Knight in a scene, and then you get her singing, and for a while you think you might not get her singing because they don't make the show. And it felt like so perfect for this show for Debbie Allen, and you know her musical background and her choreography background, and I was like yeah, And I think that the show continued to do that. There's tons of music, there's tons of choreography in the show, and I, as a musical theater fan, love that. So I had to pick Gladys Night from that episode.

What a great pick. I mean, Gladys Knight is on my Honorable Mention list because she was great in it. I was thrilled in watching it to see that they did the whole number for Love Overboard. It wasn't just a clip of it. They did the whole song and I love that song, which helps of course, and then both Don Lewis and Jasmine Guy got to show their stuff in terms of doing the choreography.

You know, I loved it. Yeah, I was. I was like, Oh, I need these ladies singing all the time and dancing, and there's so much of that in the show that it's always delightful when it shows up. I realized again when I was sort of watching for something else and suddenly there's the episode where Chrisscross, the hip hop group is in. I was like, what are these kids coming in?

Who are these kids that are in this that are playing the like kind of the the kids on the edge, the kids that are going back, you know, into the system if they don't straighten up and fly right. And so they bring them to Hillman and pair them with professors, and of course these two kids who want to fight and kill each other and run with gangs are given to Dwayne and He's trying to figure out how to reach them, and ultimately, somehow they suddenly decided to start rapping about things. Even before they started singing, I was like, who are these kids? They look familiar. And their Crisscross who had the huge like jump, they were huge and they were fourteen at the time they did this.

Yeah, it was crazy. I was like, oh, every they have Gladys Knight and the Crisscross on this show. All right, My six is an odd choice for me. But again, I loved the episode so much. I felt it was so timely to then and now, and it felt like a really good different world episode, even though it was very guy centered.

This is when I was like, wait, I'm picking a guy episode and it's season two, episode twenty one Citizen Wayne and Dwayne is running for student council president while Reverend Jesse Jackson is visiting the college and it becomes all about should he run on the issues that he cares about and why does anything matter? And also about the importance of voting. And then Reverend Jackson gives an amazing speech at the end, you know, about why you should care about your civic duty and the desire to change things and make a better world, and I loved it. So I'm picking Jesse Jackson, which I would not have thought when I started that I was going to pick. But I also I love that several times through this show they talk about the importance of voting, at least three episodes that I remember, but this one is very much a call to action and I really appreciated it, even though there's very few women in this particular pis Soon.

Interestingly enough, the reason I left him off of my list is for that very reason. There wasn't enough female presence for me. As great as I think this episode is, and it is terrific, and Jesse Jackson, surprisingly to me, was also really good. It's pretty good. Yeah, it was pretty good.

I mean, I think politicians are always weird for the most part, and particularly from the seventies, eighties, and nineties, they appear very oddly when they're put into situations like sitcoms and television bits. But I do think he came off really well, and I think it felt like, of course, Reverend Jesse Jackson, we would go to Hillman and do a talk and meet with kids that were running for student council, like it just felt like it was speaking to the HBCU experience directly, so I gave it a pass for not being focused on women. Now. Having said that, Dwayne's opponent in this episode running for student body president Candy Alexander Yes, who not only was one of the regulars on the first few seasons of News Radio, she played Olivia Pope's mother in Scandal, and of course Joe Morton, who recurred on this show, played her father.

What so that is come in full service? Yeah too, but now I love it. And she's a big dancer in Choreographers. That was really fun. I didn't know she was a dancer.

Then she broke out that dance and kicked her leg practically over her head, and I went, oh my god. I had no idea. I had ordered to work on, Like basically, you had to press wi Allen, so you'd better be able to get you be able to dance. Yeah, that was really, really, really a fun episode, really a great episode with a surprisingly good turn by Jesse Jackson. And of course not to minimize the message, if you will, of the episode, which for both of us is very important.

People need to vote. From the eighties TV ladies perspective, the evolution of Whitley as a character because she sort of takes over that a little bit of a Denney Huckstable role, which I think they probably would have continued going with. Denney' Huxtable was very huge star on The Cosby Show. You know, she was fashionable, she was breakout in a lot of ways. But they also what was interesting about it, she wasn't a great student, right, and so she gets to Helmet and she struggles, and I thought that was really good.

She ends up struggling with too many things and it's sort of like she's sort of all over the map. I don't think they really honed in on what exactly they were going to do with her, but at the same time, I think the idea that she'd also evolve into a person who cares a little bit more deeply about the world around her was interesting. And so when she left and Whitley kind of came forward, they did that with her. So that was an interesting travel for that character. Interesting journey from the sort of again the Southern Bell princess raised with privilege and thinking that that made her as a character.

Often in the early episode she felt above people. She felt somewhat like racism couldn't really touch her, and over the course of the six seasons, evolves into a person who's very civic minded, who's much more thoughtful, always been intelligent, but in a different way, and ends up sort of getting what she wants. It's not exactly what she thought she wanted at the beginning of the show, and I always think that's lovely, but I also love that like in the later episodes, I think it's in the the La Riot and Honeymoon Honeymoon, and it's an episode that doesn't really work. I think Susan vales Hill is correct, she was right about that, but it's pretty interesting. There's a lot of guest stars Roseanne and Tom Arnold show up in that episode, speaking of wacky guest starred moments, as well as Gilbert God, God and the Real And that's where I think it's just all over the map.

It's all over the map in terms of tone. But what was interesting is they were back at college telling this story and she's talking about voting and the important of voting. And again that's the second episode out of several that are really pushing this idea of civic action for young people, which is not a message that was happening a lot in the eighties, and so that's why I was like, those episodes really resonate. It's like, oh, yeah, it can be easy to be mad about stuff. I'm thinking of the protests that they do with the radio free Hillman.

But getting back to Whitley for a second, I didn't really thought about it in the greater context. But as the show went on and her evolution I think is so interesting. She'd never really lost her witliness. You know, she didn't turn into a new person, but what she did is turned into a deeper person with more layers and more to her than just this focus on her appearance and her stature. She was more thoughtful, but she was still Whitley.

Yes, they never turned her into somebody else, so she matured. Yes, let's hear your number six. My number six was Tisha Campbell from the episode If I Should Die Before I Wake the woild Be Goldberg up, he said, she focused on her, and I was all about Tisha Campbell. She's amazing in that episode. She is It is her episode more than it's whip Be Goldberg's episode, for sure.

And now she was in another episode that she was She was in another I've introduced as a character before, right, but not really. She just people don't just know her, but don't know anything about her. She's working at the pit, she's people are like, oh, well, she's always in a bad mood or what's wrong with her or something like that. And then we find out this was still a time when I don't know if they were just beginning to talk about AIDS being transmitted to women when it really had been seen at the beginning, certainly as a gay men disease, certainly not a heaterosexual disease, and certainly not something that could eventually make its way to women. And I love the fact that they talked about that in terms of if they're going to talk about AIDS.

I'm really glad they talked about that, talked about that context as well. And as you said, she was great. She really hit it out of the park. I thought, so we gotta narrow it down. But before we narrow it down, maybe we take a break, Okay, and then we'll narrow it down.

Okay, sounds good. We'll be right back, Susan. We got to tell our listeners about our new sponsor for adies TV Ladies, a podcast called Grits with a Side of Murder. It's about amazing true crime stories with a dash of humor and a splash of alcohol. I am a secret fan of true crime.

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So check Grits out on any of the platforms where you listen to your podcast, or go to the website Grits with us Side of Murder dot com. Now tell you mom, and then we said hey and go listen to Grits with a side of Murder, and we're back. Okay. I think we have to narrow it down to the top ten, so we have to take away too. Okay, so obviously dian Caroll on Patty of the Bell, we're not taking out.

No, they're untouched. They have the what does the survivor pass? They have the immunity idol and they have immunity idol DIANK Carol and Patty Lebelle. All right, so you get to eliminate one from my list will be called Berg, Josephine, Premise, Gladys Night, Jesse Jackson. I'm going with Jesse Jackson.

I will allow it mainly because we are in eighty CV Ladies Podcast. This is a very male centric episode. There's nothing about the quality episode. I think he's great in it. But I got to pick one, so I'm picking that one.

Awesome, Okay, I will allow it. I guess you have veto power because I would have pulled veto else. All Right, so your list Diane Carroll and Patti LaBelle, Billy d Williams, Debbie Morgan, Jennifer Lewis and Tisha Campbell. I'm gonna say, Billy D. Williams.

I was going to take on Billy D. Billy D was my honorary But at the same time, I think for the same reasons. Yeah, okay, we're eighty TV ladies, we're ady CV ladies. But also he was doing Billy D. Would His name might have been Langston Paige form a baseball player, but he was walking in his Billy D.

Williams. Now he was in a big stretch for him as much as you're saying, to be fair, So it was Jesse Jackson, but it was written is Jesse Jackson. He wasn't playing a character, you know. I will actually say, I think in some ways Jesse Jackson did more with his role. Yes, And I'm not just talking about the speech that he does at the end.

I'm talking about the conversation living room and how relaxed and natural he is. I mean, listen. But in any event, I'm good with both of our choices. Okay, So our final list the top ten one and two Diane Carroll and Patti LaBelle. Number three, let's go Whoopy Goldberg, Whoopy Goldberg.

Okay, number four, Debbie Morgan, No, I go Gladys Knight, Gladys Gladys Knight, Gladys Knight. I'll go Tisha Campbell after Gladys Knight, all right. Well then I'm going to do Josephine premise, okay, and then Jennifer Lewis okay, and Debbie Morgan and then Debbie Morgan. So that's the ten okay, all right, But we left off Lena Horne and the Wayans. We didn't even talk about the way No, it didn't.

But that's Keenan, Damon and Kim are all in there, different in the same in the they are all in the same episode season one, episode five, but she recurs in the first season, got it, but they don't. The men don't. And we didn't even talk about halle Berry is season four, episode fifteen. She's one of several dates that Ron is having. She's stunning looking.

She doesn't have a lot to do, but this is her year. It's nineteen ninety one and halle Berry's about to become halle Berry within a year. Love doing this show. It's like the fourth TV show she does in nineteen ninety one or something like She's being shot out of a cannon. There's also in this show.

If you guys look further, there's Orlando Jones Tupac Shakur who Orlando Jones who also was a writer on this show. What I know, I I started seeing his unless there's another Orlando Jones out there. So funny because all I'm doing is looking for women's name. So yeah, because his name kept popping up story editor writer here, and I just was like, whoa wow, I had no idea I was a comedian, so that makes sense in many ways. And then he went on to work on the Symnbad show.

That's funny as a writer and probably I assume as an actor. I don't think I ever watched the Sinbad show, so I do. It's so funny. Oh my god, I love that. Yeah.

So there's a lot we didn't even touch on. Raven Simone I didn't include because she basically was in the Cosby show. Yeah, and then there's a crossover, you know, deep in there so that there can be some wrap up between Dwayne and Denise. But she's playing three year old Denise Huxtable's stepdaughter, who is adorable. She looks like Raven Simone, like some like sometimes you see a three year old or a four year old whatever age she is, and you're like, well, that doesn't look it, but it's it's literally raven simone little tiny baby Raby's remote.

It's adorable. I didn't know she'd done The Cosby Show. I kind of a lost track of The Cosby Show. Oh my god, and so that was a huge surprise that she was in a different world and I went, oh, wait, and then she was in the Cosby Show. I knew she had been a child actor.

I guess I just didn't know that The Cosby. Yeah. I watched it till till the very end, The Cosby Show. I mean that was definitely still something I was. I was watching, and I remember when she came on board in all of her cuteness because they needed to replace Keisha Night Pulliam, whose Rudy was the cute one.

And now she's, you know, in the middle of grade school or something and getting ready to turn it to a teenager and etcetera, etcetera. Oh, women get too old too fast, even even in grade school or pre school. Bring in more cute girls. Okay, that's getting creepy, all right, I hear it. Anyway, as you were mentioning some of the other people who get start.

Eric Lassal was in the show aforementioned Gilbert Godfrey, Robert Gillome. Yes, Robert Guillome was awesome, and I did mention Joe Morton again. He was in a number of episodes and was engaged Whitley for a while before Dwayne, I'm just gonna give it all away here Dwayne stopped the wedding. Yes he does a Yes, I have something to say. I love you, Come marry me.

That's always exciting and a toughness of show and something you do not want to experience in real life. It would not work. And I think we have to do an honorable mention for Lena Horne. Oh of course she also would have been there. Yeah.

In fact, I might have to put her above Jesse Jackson now that I think about it. But okay, you know now that he's been a list eighties TV ladies listeners, who would be on your list of your favorite guest stars from a different world? What do you think of our list? Would be your top ten or your top because top ten is big. I think you have to know we're downe top six and then you have to find a friend do your top six?

Do exactly what we did and then cut out too. We would love to hear your thoughts about this in today's audioography. Find out more about a Different World College Tour twenty twenty four at adwtour dot com. Read about will Be Goldberg and the Different World AIDS episode at Hollywood Reporter and there'll be a link to that article in our show notes. And you can read a great oral history of a Different World at Vanity Fair.

The link will be in our description. We so appreciate your feedback, So if you're liking the show have some thoughts you'd like to share, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and mention what shows or ladies you want us to cover. Find us at eighties TV Ladies. Well, that's a wrap for now on our series of episodes about a Different World. And Sharon, I'm a little bit sad because it's I think it's also a wrap on season two.

This has been the longest season of our lives. We've had like thirty eight episodes. I think we've kind of lost our mind, but we've also had such a great time. I am so glad. It's because we threw moonlighting in unexpectedly that we kind of went over.

I wanted to do twenty three because that's what a typical eighties television show would do, and then they take a break for the summer, So I think we might do that. We didn't really take a break between season one and two. We have been going really hard to bring you all these shows, and I think we're going to need to take a break. It's also making me sad. Well, it makes me a little sad too, but considering how hard we've been going this year, not only the gift that was Moonlighting that literally fell into our laps, but also the gift of the TV movie Lateies of the Eighties at Divas Christmas, it fell out of the sky, neither of which we were expecting or planning for, but of course we had to do them.

How could we not. And they both were fantastic, as well as every other interview and person we've had the privilege of talking to and all the shows we've covered. But yeah, it's been a lot. It's been a lot, a lot. But we are going to be planning for season three, so yeah, so we're gonna take a little break, but we will be posting some rerun episodes before sometime in late summer early September about we will post a sneak peek of season three.

We thought season three should start maybe in September. This I'm around because that's when eighties TV used to start their new seasons. So you're just going to have to wait like it's nineteen eighty five. And we're going to be providing some content on Patreon over the summer. So if you feel like you're not getting enough new eighties TV ladies, you could become a patron and check out the content there.

That's a great idea, excellent. I'm working on an indie television pilot, which is unusual for me because I do mostly theater, but I do do film and television as well. This is an indie pilot. It is called Famous Lake Park, a puppet animation pilot. It's adorable.

I have to say. The puppets are turning out adorable. I'm working with this incredible team Pen Productions. I'm co directing, and if you want to check it out, you can go to TinyURL dot com slash Famous Lake Park. There is also Famously Park Facebook page.

All right, we're gonna miss you, can I can't even sign off, thank you, sign all right, reach out, don't be strangers, and we'll be amazing ladies of the summer of twenty twenty four. Yeah, have a great summer everyone. Eighties TV Ladies is presented by one thirty four West and Summerland Entertainment and part of the Weirdingway Media Network. Produced by Richard HadAM, Susan Lambert HadAM and Melissa Roth, Hosted by Susan Lambert, had Him and Sharon Johnson. Theme song and parody songs are by Amy Ingelheart.

Find her at amyingelheart dot com. Our sound engineer and editor is Kevin Doocey and associate producer is Sergio Perez. As always, we hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old show to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century. Thanks for listening, Hands Pretty through the City, A Man World Eighties Night