Jaleel White can’t believe fans love Steve Urkel strut 35 years later
Jaleel White can’t believe fans love the iconic strut from the “Full House” and “Family Matters” crossover episode.
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If Jaleel White could bring back something from the 90s, he’d start with the prices. A burger and fries from a studio lot cost $3.25 in the early 1990s, he says.
And don’t forget the Blockbuster stores. There was something special, he remarks, about roaming the aisles and picking out a videotape, untouched by an algorithm.
“If you saw a VHS jacket that you liked, you asked your parents, ‘What’s this?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, I watched that when I was your age,’” White tells USA TODAY. “And you’re like, ‘Alright, throw it in with the three other ones.’ I’m going to run them, and I’m going to pay late fees on two of these.”
The nostalgia of the 90s is having a renaissance. (Look to Gen Z who are driving the “Analog summer” trend, and the uptick in flip phones and landlines in place of smartphones). White, immediately recognizable as the uptight Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” is returning to his retro roots to host HGTV’s “Totally ’90s House.”
The reality competition show, releasing weekly on HGTV and HBO Max, asks ’90s stars like Jodie Sweetin (“Full House”), Keshia Knight Pulliam (“The Cosby Show”), Brian Austin Green (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) and Melissa Joan Hart (“Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) to renovate homes that are stuck in the 90s. The series also corralled Matthew Lawrence (“Boy Meets World”), Beverley Mitchell (“7th Heaven”), and Joey Lawrence (“Blossom”) to participate.
Although White admits to having a “super contemporary” home, he has an appreciation for the decade that welcomed live audiences, celebrated sitcom crossovers and raised him as a child star. Below, White discusses his new HGTV show, his legacy as “Family Matters” star Steve Urkel and life after child stardom.
Question: What kind of ’90s homes do you get to tackle in the HGTV show?
There are so many interior design aesthetics that “Totally ’90s House” is going to put front and center, and you’ll all have a laugh at, from those cherryoke entertainment centers that really dictated what size television you had to carpet in the bathrooms, the fuzz on the toilet seats − whoever thought these were good ideas? There was one home in particular that just had so many dang mirrors. It was like, how can you leave? It was like a fun house. There’s just so many darn aesthetics that should stay back there. The trick to our show is trying to figure out which ones can we bring into the now.
Tell me about the house you grew up in.
When I think about the house that I grew up in, it couldn’t have been more ’90s. Oh my gosh. Just the dirty grout and the tile and the kitchens. I can get really detailed. I used to have drapes in my room that had sports players on them, and they matched the bedsheets.
You also were a big basketball fan, and that was going to be your game plan until you decided to get into acting.
Huge. I also had posters on my wall everywhere. In the ’90s, especially as boys, we had signature posters that you had to have. Wings, Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson with the shoulder pads and the bat. These were just staple posters that were in a lot of rooms, and I miss that. Even my daughter [Samaya], my daughter doesn’t have posters in her room.
Teenage bedroom decor isn’t the only ’90s thing that has been cut from today’s society. Do you think live audiences, like the ones featured on Friday nights on “Family Matters,” will ever make a comeback?
I have a live audience on my game show “Flip Side,” but that’s different. Game shows really benefit from having a live audience. But sitcoms, I don’t know if sitcoms are going to make a comeback. I don’t see how it can. It’s hard because there’s so many tenets of sitcoms that don’t work with modern life. So you get people in the comments that want to be like, “Why does that boy keep coming over to that house uninvited? That’s stalking.” Like what? We didn’t see it that way at all.
I have to assume even back then that people may have felt some kind of way when they heard certain things because they were triggered, but they didn’t have the channels to leave comments and send emails and Tweet. So, I don’t know if that one would come back. I definitely miss a good live studio audience, so the game show helps.
Fans love your “Family Matters” character, Steve Urkel, and his crossover episode on “Full House.” What’s your fondest memory from filming with Jodie Sweetin and John Stamos?
Just messing around with John Stamos. I was so familiar with the guys because we had the same producers, and so we were only one stage over. It was a great week of double pay of me just going back and forth between stages. We were really encouraged to play back then. I had no idea that that little cool walk between myself and John Stamos would turn into what it did. It’s been remixed with different music and stuff online, and I love that stuff. I try to extract the funniest and the best of the internet only and put it on my IG stories.
On the topic of social media, young Hollywood celebrities from Hudson Williams to Chappell Roan have complained about heightened invasions of privacy. What’s your relationship to paparazzi and social media mania, given you’ve been in the spotlight for so long?
I never had an overwhelming issue with the paparazzi. I wrote about it in my book “Growing Up Urkel” that I put out not too long ago. I went to public school the entire time I was shooting that show as a kid. Thank God we didn’t have smartphones back then because I really think by the time I got to college, that would’ve really impaired my college experience. I was able to just go to apartment parties and have people just be shocked that I’m there. Then, we get over it and we get down to what we’re here for.
Jaleel White reveals how his parents protected him as a child star
Jaleel White shares his favorite moment from the iconic crossover episode, how his parents protected him and what his daughter thinks of Steve Urkel.
Video Team – USA TODAY Entertainment
What is your 17-year-old daughter Samaya’s relationship to Steve Urkel?
My mom gave my daughter the full indoctrination when she was four years old during a weekend that she watched her. I was away and I came back and she had the Urkel doll. I’m like, “What are you doing?” [My mom said,] “She needs to know who her daddy is and what he did. That was great work.” Okay, mom, we’re not having this argument. So my daughter got over that between age four, five and six when “Fuller House” was actually running hot. She loved “Family Matters”. She loved “Fuller House,” and she quickly moved on. By the time she was nine and 10 years old, she was in love with “Modern Family”.
You became a megastar at such a young age. Who was your mentor or biggest protector during that time?
When you talk about protection, I’m only going to mention my parents. That’s the common denominator, to be quite honest, between the success stories and the tragic stories. Typically, in the success stories, there’s a strong bond between the child and the parents that managed to survive a lot of the negative influences that can happen along the journey. My parents may have not gotten everything right, but they sure as heck got a lot more right than they got wrong. I’ll always be grateful for that.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.