Cyprus-Rhodes student Ashleigh Howard's pop is no less than Hillman College grad Dwayne Wayne.
Kadeem Hardison, who played Dwayne on the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World, will guest-star on ABC Family's Greek next season, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively. He will play proud parent Brian Howard.
Ashleigh is played by Amber Stevens, daughter of TV/radio personality Shadoe Stevens.
Ashleigh's pop pays a visit as part of Cyprus-Rhodes University's father-daughter weekend event.
For that same occasion ...
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Question: I just read your response to L.C.'s question and would like to say thank you. I am an African-American woman and have never found humor in any of Tyler Perry's buffoonish material. You will probably get slammed for your response, but I want you to know I really appreciate what you said about overembracing this show just because it has a black cast. I remember great shows like Frank's Place and A Different World, which had great writing and realistic characters. And while Seinfeld and Friends did not have a black cast, my experience is more in line with those shows than with House of Payne. I just wanted to say thank you for responding to that reader the same way I would have.
Answer: Fair enough, and thanks for bringing up the remarkable Frank's Place, which deserved so much better than it got on CBS way back when. The truth is that there probably should be room on TV for sitcoms that aim both high and low, and this takes me back to the earlier High School Musical 2 question.
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Question: As an African-American TV viewer, I am happy to watch a TV show that has a diverse cast. My current favorites are Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs. But sometimes I miss the days of watching family shows like The Cosby Show and A Different World, where the central cast are African-American. I know that UPN at one time had a number of shows geared toward an African-American audience, but since the merger with the WB, that is no longer the case. Don't get me wrong, I still like to watch Girlfriends, but the other "urban" comedies on the CW I can do without. Do you think that, with the success of Ugly Betty (diverse cast, but built around a Hispanic heroine and a Hispanic family), good shows centered around a minority family are coming soon? Along those same lines, I also remember hearing about a new sitcom created by Tyler "Madea" Perry called House of Payne. Has the show been picked up by any networks, and if so, when will it be on? If not, why do you think that it hasn't ...
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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
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