Fresh Prince's Original Aunt Viv, Janet Hubert, Joins Final Season Of Bel-Air

Janet Hubert is headed back to Bel Air. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alum, who played Aunt Viv in the show's first three seasons until her departure in 1993, has boarded the fourth and final season of Peacock's Bel-Air, Caroline Chikezie (Power Book II: Ghost) has also joined the show as a guest star, the outlet reports ahead of the season's premiere on Nov. 24. For her new role, Hubert, 69, will reportedly play a woman who Coco Jones' Hillary meets, becoming important to the Banks family. Chikezie will play a woman named Dominique Warren, who led Geoffrey’s former London gang, Hubert shared the casting news on Instagram, writing in a caption, "My circle is complete!" She's now part of a growing list of original Fresh Prince cast members to join Bel-Air, following Vernee Watson-Johnson, Daphne Maxwell Reid, Tatyana Ali and Joseph Marcell. Hubert's casting comes over three decades after she played Vivian Banks (or "Aunt Viv") in the first three seasons of Fresh Prince, from 1990 to 1993, before she exited the show citing "creative differences." She was then replaced by Reid, who took on the role for the remainder of the show's six-season run on NBC. Fresh Prince came to an end in 1996. In the decades since, Hubert and Fresh Prince star Will Smith occasionally feuded in the public eye before burying the hatchet during the show's HBO Max 30-year reunion special in 2020. In a 2024 episode of Vice’s Black Comedy in America series, Smith said he "made a horrible error" in misjudging his costar at the time, noting that he "horribly underestimated what she was for me at that point in my life." He has since offered public support of Hubert, appearing at an event for her project JG and the BC Kids in March 2024.Hubert said she and Smith, 57 — who serves as an executive producer on Bel-Air — have had a “very good relationship” since the reunion special. "We text each other back and forth all the time," she continued. "I meant it with all my heart when I hugged him, because I saw that little boy, that little 21-year-old boy. Had we had an opportunity to talk back then, I think this would have never happened." Hubert reiterated in September that things are "so good" with Smith during an appearance on The Big Tigger Show.

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