Before actress Cassandra Freeman landed the role of Aunt Viv in Peacock’s “Fresh Prince” reboot “Bel-Air,” she had come off a heavy role and told her manager she wanted to play someone who was rich and beautiful. She wanted lighter fare.
“That’s it, I don’t wanna do any more sad stories about black people,” she told me on this week’s episode of “Renaissance Man.” “I’m like, ‘I’m done. I don’t [want to] be crying in the street over my dead black boy. I’m done with that.’
“But when this role came through, I was like, ‘OK, no, not this one,’” she continued. “And my manager called me. He’s like, ‘This is literally everything on your list.’” But Cassandra didn’t think she’d book it. Her enthusiasm was unnecessarily lukewarm.
“Then finally I saw Jalen Rose Morgan Cooper’s trailer of his vision of this thing and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s brilliant.’ Cooper is a genius.”
She was in Greece, on her first post-COVID vacation, when she learned she landed the part. Her manager told her she needed to pick up the phone, even though it was 3 a.m.
“Since I said, ‘Yes,’ to this role, my life has been a roller coaster of a lot of highs and just so extreme,” she said. “I’m just so relieved how much the culture has embraced this version of the show. I like to say it’s not a reboot. It’s a deepening of ‘The Fresh Prince.’”
Last month, Peacock’s adaptation of the sitcom was renewed for its third season and Cassandra’s Aunt Viv continues to thrive. As for creating a strong TV mom, the Florida native said Phylicia Rashad as Clair Huxtable and Marla Gibbs in “227” were inspirations. She also channeled Diahann Carroll in “Dynasty.” And she has some all-star mom work under her belt. In 2016, she portrayed Kevin Durant’s mother in the Lifetime movie “The Real MVP: The Wanda Durant Story.”
Her first acting gig, when she was fresh out of NYU grad school, was working with Hollywood legends Denzel Washington and Spike Lee in “Inside Man.”
“They were everything that I would hope anybody would have on their first film set, where they didn’t treat me like a kid. They treated me like I was a part of this world just as much as them.”
Cassandra was accustomed to strong male figures. She was raised by her father, Mack Freeman, who was Jacksonville’s first black television reporter, and the person who turned her onto “Star Trek.”
Her father also taught her the virtues of the Bible and “The Godfather.” He would quote them both “in the same sentence,” she said, adding, “He was sort of like Martin Luther King to me. He would have these booming speeches and he was very magnanimous. And the ladies love Mack Freeman. He used to have his own radio show. He was like a DJ and he used to be a Black Panther. I really grew up in the shadow of being Mack Freeman’s daughter. It used to feel like I was like the princess of something.”
She also got a major boost — and a career pivot — from Chris Rock, whom she starred alongside in the 2007 rom-com “I Think I Love My Wife.” Cassandra was filming a scene with him and after they cut, she made a crack about Whitney Houston, which he said was a great joke.
“He’s like, ‘No, no, but you’re really, really funny.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ So because of Chris Rock is why I started my stand-up career. I worked at the Comedy Store, but it was truly because of him. I’m such a fan of Chris Rock, and he has been such a help in my career,” Cassandra said, adding that he’s always checking in on her, advocating for her and asking if she’s getting paid properly.
“I’m saying, like he’s a supporter of black women out here.”
But the biggest MVP in her life is her husband, Tom Paul. “Even on my lowest days, he still thinks I’m a queen,” she said.
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