If there’s anything we’ve learned about the runaway series, Red Table Talk, is that its guests come to spill the tea. And on an upcoming episode, actor Jasmine Guy did just that as she explained to Jada Pinkett Smith and Co. why she was prepared to walk away from the NBC hit sitcom A Different World after just one season.
Guy—who was joined at the table by her ADF co-stars Kadeem Hardison, Dawnn Lewis, Darryl M. Bell, Charnele Brown, Cree Summer, Glynn Turman, Ajai Sanders, Karen Malina White and Debbie Allen—said Lisa Bonet and Sinbad, who also starred on the show, were being disrespected by producers, and she made the decision to resign in solidarity.
“I didn’t like the way they were treating the cast,” she explained. “I went in there and I said, ‘Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’ve learned so much.’”
“And they were probably like, ‘Ok, well. Did something happen to you?’ I said, ‘Well you know, I feel like Lisa Bonet is disrespected in front of the audience,’” she recalled.
“[The producers said] ‘Well has it ever happened to you?’ I said, ‘If it happens to her, it happens to me,’” she continued. “You are disrespecting the cast. You are disrespecting Sinbad. It doesn’t have to happen to me. I felt like it was happening to me.”
According to PEOPLE, it’s uncertain whether or not Guy spoke directly to the disrespect of Bonet and others, but on a September airing of The Breakfast Club, she offered quite a few details.
“And I didn’t like the way they were treating Lisa Bonet,” Guy said to the radio hosts after recounting the story of how she handed in her two week notice. After Charlamagne tha God asked her to specify, Guy said that producers would tell Bonet to “’Just do it, just say it!’ Pointing all up in her face,” in front of the audience during taping. Kadeem Harrison nodded in agreement at her side.
“You know, I’m like, ‘That’s a sweet girl because you’re not getting all up in my face like that,’” she continued. “And we’ve dealt with b——es… as far as choreographers and directors or what not… I didn’t interfere onset, but I was like, ‘Oh no, you not treating her like that.’ She had to hire security!”
Guy also detailed the fact that the cast felt highly disrespected by the network’s decision to move the show’s airtime to a later slot that ended up competing with Fox’s Martin.
“I definitely took that personally. You ain’t got but two Black shows… so you put us at the same time against each other?” Guy shared. “And what had we done to deserve this kind of disservice?”
“You know, we’re not competing with Martin. They come on at 8:30, we come on at 8 — why did you move us?” she added. “That was a detriment.”
The cast of A Different World has been celebrating the show’s 35th anniversary all year, and will conclude its roundup of media tours and tv specials with this special episode of Red Table Talk set to air on December 19 exclusively on Facebook Watch.