Random Things You Didn’t Know About '90s Sitcom Stars (15 items)

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  (#12) Before Turning To Stand-Up Comedy And Acting, Martin Lawrence's Goal Was To Be A Professional Boxer 

  In 1992, Martin Lawrence was given his own sitcom on Fox. The series, entitled Martin, ran for five seasons and led to the stand-up comedian turned actor getting cast in leading roles in hit films such as Bad Boys and Big Momma's House.

  But as a teenager, it appeared that Lawrence was on his way to becoming a professional boxer. He had a natural gift for the sport, becoming a Mid-Atlantic Golden Gloves runner-up and winning an AAU title. 

  "I could do work with these things [his hands]," he said on a 2020 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, showing the talk show host some of his moves.

  If it wasn't for his mother, he may have continued to pursue boxing rather than turning to comedy. "I got my eye swollen. I came home and I had a big eye, and my mom said, 'That's it. No more for you.' And I've been doing comedy ever since."
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  (#14) DJ Jazzy Jeff Got Tired Of People Wanting Him To Recreate The Handshake He And Will Smith Did On 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'

  Before getting his own sitcom, Will Smith had risen to fame as one half of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. The other half of the duo, Jeff Townes, had little interest in acting, but when The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air became a reality, he agreed to play the recurring role of Jazz - the best friend of Smith's character. Will and Jazz always greeted each other with their special handshake - a swinging movement involving a mid-five, point-back snap as both guys went "Pssh!"

  But if someone runs into Townes, they might want to think twice about asking him to recreate this signature move.

  "I got really, really annoyed that everybody wanted to do the handshake," Townes admitted in an appearance on Smith's 2020 Snapchat series Will at Home when asked if anything bothered him about people acting like he was his Fresh Prince character.

  "Our not-so-secret handshake," Smith laughingly replied.

  "You would see in people's eyes when they were about to sneak your handshake, and I would just grab their hand and hold it," the DJ continued. "Aside from that, I'm good."
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  (#1) Tim Allen Went Public About His Arrest History Before The First ‘Home Improvement’ Aired So A Scandal Wouldn’t Derail The Show

  Before he became a famous actor and comedian, Tim Allen had a troubled life. A recovering alcoholic (he has now been sober for more than 20 years), he had started drinking when he was just 10 years old - one year before his father was killed in a car accident. He also struggled with drugs, and in 1978, the then-25-year-old pled guilty to drug trafficking charges after being caught at Kalamazoo/Battle Creek (MI) International Airport with more than one pound of cocaine in his luggage. He ended up serving two years in jail.

  Allen had started his career as a comedian before his arrest, and he resumed this work after his release from prison, eventually becoming a regular at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles and performing his stand-up act on various late-night talk shows. Despite his limited acting skills and experience, he was cast as the lead in the ABC sitcom Home Improvement. 

  Shortly before the first episode of Home Improvement was scheduled to air, the actor learned that some of the tabloids were digging into his past, which led to him telling the show's producers about his criminal history.

  "Before we talked to Tim or anyone, I said, 'The worst thing we could do is try and hide this.' And I said, 'Let's talk to ABC, let's talk to Disney, and I think what Tim should do instantly is go out public and explain his story and get it out there,'" series co-creator Matt Williams said in an interview for the Home Improvement episode of E! True Hollywood Story.

  Allen agreed to come clean. Williams believed the actor's willingness to be open resulted in the media backing off, allowing the series to move forward as scheduled. It debuted on September 17, 1991, and quickly became a hit - in fact, it ranked in the Top 10 of the Nielsen ratings in all eight of the years it was on the air.
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  (#3) Will Smith Wanted His ‘Fresh Prince’ Character To Have His Name So He Wouldn’t Be Forever Associated With Some Fake Name

  On his iconic 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith's character is called - Will Smith!

  Yes, he uses his real name. Why? Well, when the rapper turned movie star had his Fresh Prince co-star Alfonso Ribeiro on his Will From Home Snapchat in 2020, the pair revealed that it was Ribeiro who came up with the idea. 

  "We had talked, and I said, 'Look, if you're ever going to do this show, you've got to be Will Smith,'" Ribeiro remembered.

  "You said 'Because people are going to call you that for the rest of your life!'" Smith laughingly agreed.

  Unfortunately, Ribeiro himself fell victim to this exact drawback - even years after the show ended, he had trouble booking work because casting directors worried that audiences would only ever see him as ‘Carlton.’ 
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  (#2) Roseanne And John Goodman Acted Like An Old Married Couple So Naturally, He Was The Only Actor They Auditioned For The Role Of Barr's Husband

  In 1987, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner were working as executive producers on The Cosby Show when they commissioned Matt Williams to write a pilot script for a potential series about a white working-class family. They then signed stand-up comic Roseanne Barr to be the female lead. Because she was an inexperienced actor, the plan was to cast skilled, experienced actors in the other roles, so that Barr could learn from them.

  According to Barr, John Goodman was the only actor who actually read for the part of her husband. "There were more [auditions] planned, but the second I met [Goodman], I fell in love with him," the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2018.

  "I went in there, and it was just easy as pie," Goodman agreed. "We got along great. For some reason, I just knew I had the job."

  Matt Williams agreed with Barr and Goodman that there had been an immediate connection between the two actors: "We brought him [Goodman] in the room, he looked at Roseanne, and said, 'Scoot over,'" he told EW. "She said, 'Shut up,' he plopped down, and it was like they had been married for 16 years."

  The chemistry between the lead actors paid off big time, as Roseanne became a huge hit for ABC, ranking in the Top 5 of the Nielsen ratings in each of its first six seasons.
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  (#5) Frasier's Brother Was Only Created After A Casting Director Noticed David Hyde Pierce's Resemblance To Kelsey Grammer

  If it wasn't for the fact that he resembled his future castmate, David Hyde Pierce may have never portrayed Niles Crane, the iconic role that earned the actor four Emmy Awards.

  In fact, there was no definite plan to even give Frasier Crane a sibling until an assistant casting director showed the series creators a headshot of Hyde Pierce, saying:

  "Doesn’t he look like Kelsey [Grammer] did 10 years ago?"

  Impressed by the resemblance, Frasier's creators did some digging into the actor's past roles. After seeing him portray a quiet, suicidal Congressman in the short-lived sitcom The Powers That Be, they set up a meeting with Hyde Pierce. It only took a brief interview to convince them to offer him the newly created role of Frasier Crane's younger brother.

  "I met with the producers, and we just talked for about 45 minutes, about what the brother might be,” Pierce recalls. “Niles was going to be a Jungian and Frasier was going to be a Freudian - things like that were tossed around. Not long after that, they offered me the part, and I thought, ‘What part?’ I hadn’t seen a script," Hyde Pierce told the Los Angeles Times in 1998.

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