Sinbad

Question: Here's an obscure one, but maybe you know something about it. Didn't Sinbad get in trouble on A Different World? I seem to recall something about him getting kicked off the show, or almost getting kicked off. Am I nuts?

Answer: You may be nuts, but you ain't wrong, Amy. (And what do you mean maybe I know something about it? Ouch, babe.)

The stand-up comic did indeed get in trouble early in the NBC Cosby Show spin-off's 1987-92 run for refusing to stick to the script, ad-libbing to avoid what many agreed were subpar jokes. "I was supposed to play this older graduate student who was crazy and just into all kinds of mischief," he said of his character, Walter Oakes, in 1990. "But it never went that way. I was wearing corduroy suit coats. I was everything I hated...." So he started making up his own gags. "I would change the whole concept to read more