Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places, like walking a dog in a park or buying a fluffy coat at the mall. For Morgan Cooper, he arrived in 2019 on Route 71 in Kansas City, Missouri. After filming a low-budget beauty commercial, Cooper returned home and hatched a plan to remake a ’90s sitcom. The new prince of Belle Nation Made into a tough short, Will Smith’s cult character is reinvented as an unfortunate teenager Phil caught with a gun arguing on a playground. Instead of being left with a secure future behind bars, his uncle Phil works as a lawyer magician and arranges for Will to start in affluent Southern California, where he will attend an elite private school.
Featuring eight-day local and local performers in Kansas City and Burbank, three-and-a-half-minute kettles were never meant to use a Hollywood concert resume; Morgan just wanted to have fun. “I built my career by focusing on what I could control and not focusing too much on the result,” recalls Cooper, now 30. “But I knew the idea was special. I knew it had great potential.
The day after the film was uploaded to YouTube, Cooper overheard Will and Jada Pinkett Smith of the Westbrook Production Company, who used it as the basis for Peacock. beautiful air– Now the most played original series on Streamer. “Honestly, I’m not a fan of reboots,” said Cooper, who was named executive producer and director of the series, which received an immediate two-season take. But when there is an honest reinvention like dark KnightNow someone gets something and really does. There is no truly honest place, no studio production that does not stem from a corporate takeover. It comes from my highway 71 ″.
Cooper loves to say it. ᲐNew prince I found. Improving his self-taught filmmaking skills (he bought his first camera at 18 and spent his days in Missouri shooting music videos and lighting up subjects), he loved spending time watching a 90s sitcom. He always repeats “on his local channel 38 an important element of the community, actually,” said Cooper, who has never attended film school before starting a successful business. screen and see California, everything about him was very attractive.I didn’t grow up around wealth in Kansas, so to see all these different perspectives of blacks … The sitcom was ahead of its time.
So for Cooper, flying to Miami and meeting Smith in person was a little surreal. “It was like meeting a friend I already knew,” Cooper said. “It was so incredibly hot, it has been like this from day one. he was drinking bad guys for life And I saw it on the beach. I saw the silhouette of her saying, “Me, me, me”. Her hands were open wide. He looked like an older brother hugging me.
The men immediately began filming the drama. as inside ᲐNew prince, beautiful airIts main character is a bubbly teenager named Will Smith, who naturally likes basketball and excites girls. In other words, it seemed nearly impossible to find someone who embodied Smith’s swagger and charm in the original sitcom, until they met Jabar Bank. “I’m naturally charismatic,” says the 23-year-old rookie. “I’m a human being. The character is nice and that gets him into trouble at times. I naturally entered this current.”
The next crucial role was played by Carlton Banks, cousin of Will’s older brother, whom Alfonso Ribeiro loved in the original. In the updated version, Carlton (Nigerian-American actress Ollie Sholotan) is the big man on the Bel Air Academy campus hiding his pernicious bedroom anxiety with Xanax sneezing. He and Willie quickly clashed over sport, cultural identity and a very charming girl, but find a moment of humor when Willie reveals that he never met his real father. (spoiler alert! Willie will eventually face him in the final, but more on that later.)
The cast includes Cassandra Freeman as Vivian, Willie’s aunt, Adrian Holmes as Uncle Phil, April Parker Jones as Will’s single mother, V, Coco Jones as Will’s entrepreneurial cousin, Hillary, and Simon. Joey Jones as Will’s love interest. After their false departure with their first great writer Chris Collins, they resigned in August 2021, Tage Brady and Rashid Newson. Who Y 100 He gained popularity as an accomplice. Fortunately for them, much of the foundation has already been laid.
“We had a Morgan trailer to start with,” Brady said. “A lot of the debates that take place in other shows are about looks and voices, feelings. It had already been fixed. That’s why I wanted people to do this show. In many ways we were ahead thanks to that trailer. Where the debate comes from is the extent to which you have to force what the characters are doing. What did we do with Carlton, did he go too far? How much can Aunt Vivi and Uncle Phil argue? And what will these arguments be like? This was something to look for and it happened in the first sketches and scripts we tried to navigate. “
“The problems are African American, but the biggest stories are universal,” Newson said. “It’s a family story. One of the things we did, and I’m proud to say, is that we decided that parents should have real, carnal stories that didn’t always apply to children. The show would not have survived if it had only been the love lives of sixteen year olds. We built something so that middle-aged people could have some kind of relationship. “
Realism remained at the heart of modern high school history, so Morgan and the show’s founders made the bold decision to add dialogue (and use rap music) with explanations and N words. The highlights of the pilot are when Willie discovers that several White kids in school are singing an obvious rap song and spitting out an N-word so Carlton doesn’t blink. “People are cursing,” Cooper says simply. “They are cursing. We wanted to create authenticity, so that’s exactly what appeared on screen. “
“I can tell you that in the pilot we counted the use of the N word and narrowed it down,” continued Newson. “It’s a balance between authenticity and also the knowledge that a lot of people reject you every time you use that word. The rule that emerged is that it can appear during the accent, during anger, but it can’t be “hey, N-word”. You cannot enter the room like this. There are a lot of African Americans working on this show and there are a lot of opinions among us. Like so many other things on this show, it became a conversation we needed to have ahead of time to make sure we were doing what we were doing on purpose. “
Now, let’s get back to that rock at the end. Cooper and the writers completed the 10-episode first season in March with Marlon Wayans as Will’s missing father Lou. Before his sudden arrival in California, Will’s mother and uncle believed that Lum had left the family; In fact, Lou was in prison and never wanted to see his child behind bars.
“That’s one of the things that comes with shooting a sitcom and turning it into a drama,” Newson said. “In Sitcom you can expose the fact that Willie was realizing his rich relationship, which he hadn’t seen in years. In this it is necessary to explain why there was this break in the family. The natural question is: should these stories come out? When Willie was four, his father was convicted of a violent crime and sentenced to jail, telling Willie’s mother and Uncle Phil, “Don’t bring my son here. If you bring it here, I won’t go out to see it. I don’t want them to see me like that. I grew up when I saw my father in prison and I think he confused me and I don’t want to do this to my son. ‘ Uncle Phil and Willie’s mother couldn’t tell a 4-year-old, “Your father is in jail and doesn’t want to see you anymore,” so they let him think his father was dead. That’s what they think now, because their father is at the door. “
The episode ends with Will-Storm coming out of Belle’s Mansion, the perfect setting for the second season. There is a strong possibility that the young hero will return to a good life (otherwise where would the show be?).
Either way, Cooper is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. “I have a lot of ideas, but I will continue as an executive producer. beautiful air“- he says and clearly hopes that others will learn from his well-being. “I think for filmmakers in 2022 and beyond, we need to be entrepreneurs and create our own opportunities. There is a big difference between proposing an idea and conceiving and creating it. Believe in the 10,000 hours you dedicate to your job. Invest in yourself. People will respond. “
Source: Deadline
