Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison reflect on “A Different World” characters
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison from “A Different World” reflected on the impact of their character’s Whitley Gilbert and Dwayne Wayne’s iconic love story and how they think the characters would be in modern-day times.
“It’s boy meets girl, girl’s not interested in boy, boy’s not interested in girl,” Hardison said. “Then the writers came up with some great idea to put boy and girl together, and then we ended up married and happily ever after.”
A wealthy Southern belle, Gilbert was known for her bourgeois persona and exquisite taste for the finer things in life.
“It’s boy meets girl, girl’s not interested in boy, boy’s not interested in girl,” Hardison said. “Then the writers came up with some great idea to put boy and girl together, and then we ended up married and happily ever after.”
“I realized that Whitley becomes another kind of character when she’s with him,” Guy said. “Dwayne brought out her vulnerability, which she was never comfortable with. She always had to think she was in control.”
On the show, Gilbert eventually falls in love with Wayne, who comes from an average background. Guy stated that Gilbert and Wayne’s relationship was a matter of class rather than race.
“I don’t think I looked at our love story as a Black love story. It just seemed like a story that people can go through,” Guy said. “People that keep missing each other and then somehow find a way back and then split again. I think at the age that our characters were, you always think there may be something else. That there may be something better. And then we both had familiar pressures too because we were in different classes. I don’t think it mattered to us as much as it did to our moms.”
Where would Gilbert and Wayne be today? Hardison said they’d still be hanging out, while Guy said they would have experienced a midlife crisis.
She explained, “She may say, ‘This is the only man that I’ve ever known. I want to explore the world.’ Whereas Dwayne is more, ‘I’m finally where we’re stable, our kids raised, we’re in a good place.’ And just how we used to do on the show; when somebody is just in another lane and we’re missing each other, we need to intersect.”
