Will Smith's Messy Feud With Fresh Prince Co-Star Janet Hubert, Explained

If you were alive and thriving in the '90s, chances are you religiously watched the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and probably hopped on the landline with your friends after the first episode of season four aired sans Janet Hubert as Aunt Viv. The internet was not quite a thing just yet, so when Hubert vanished from the show with seemingly no explanation, fans were both upset and curious about why she left. Back then, there were no Twitter or Reddit threads to help fans make sense of their unexpected loss, but tabloids were thriving, and soon it came to light that the reason for Hubert's departure was because of so-called "creative differences" with her much younger co-star and leading man of the show, Will Smith. The latter also later claimed that Hubert was "difficult to work with" (via The Sun).

Years later, Hubert said Smith was the difficult one and hadn't shown her respect. "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. ... He didn't understand how unbelievably disrespectful that was to women like me," she told BlackAmericaWeb in 2010 (via Newsweek).

The tea has remained hot over the years, with neither Smith nor Hubert willing to bury the hatchet, but then an unexpected reunion special came around...

When Will Smith agreed to star in the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," he could never have dreamt it would launch his career (and bucketloads of drama). He and Janet Hubert kept butting heads on set, with Joseph Marcell, who played Geoffrey Butler on the show, later saying in an interview that Hubert had a problem with Smith being the lead and with his name appearing first on the list of credits. Smith and Hubert's relationship soured, and after she left the show, Smith spoke openly about their beef with Atlanta radio. "I can say straight up that Janet Hubert wanted the show to be 'The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show' because I know she is going to dog me in the press," Smith said (via The Sun). "She 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," he added.

Hubert was notably missing from a cast reunion dinner in 2011, and when TMZ asked her why, she didn't mince her words. "There will never be a reunion," she told the outlet, "As I will never do anything with an a**hole like Will Smith." She made it clear that she blamed him for getting fired from the show and was still waiting for an apology. "He is still an egomaniac and has not grown up," she said. In 2016, Hubert took another Jab at Smith when his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, called for an Oscars boycott due to the lack of diversity among nominees. Hubert shared a video in which she accused Smith of being behind the boycott because he was unhappy about not being nominated.

In 2020, Will Smith and Janet Hubert finally buried the hatchet during the long-anticipated "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" reunion special. The two had a tearful heart-to-heart after 27 years of being at odds, with Hubert sharing how turbulent her personal life had been during her time on the show. "What you didn't realize either [was] that I was going through a lot at home. You guys didn't know [I was] in a very abusive marriage," Hubert told Smith, who acknowledged that having gone through a divorce of his own, he now had a much better understanding of her pain. "I can see now the level of pain and the level of struggle that it was for you just to show up every day," Smith said. They discussed her exit from the show, with Hubert speaking openly about how she felt Smith took away her only lifeline when she got fired. "Calling a Black woman difficult in Hollywood is the kiss of death," Hubert said. She then apologized for criticizing Smith in the past, and he, in turn, apologized for not taking her experience into consideration.

These days, it's safe to say that the two are besties. When Smith and Chris Rock's tense relationship came to a head at the 2022 Oscars, Jada Pinkett Smith wasn't the only one who spoke out after Smith retaliated with a slap — Hubert did too. She defended Smith in a since-deleted Instagram post, saying that, while his actions were wrong, Rock took things too far. In 2024, Smith and Hubert met up again when the former joined her to do a reading of her new book. Smith shared a video of them hugging to his Instagram page, calling Hubert "my dear friend."