‘A Different World’ Icon Kadeem Hardison Takes Us Back to Hillman with Behind-the-Scenes Memories & More

PureWow: Can you believe it's been nearly 30 years since the finale of A Different World? Where do you think the characters would be now if the show didn’t end? Where would Dwayne and Whitley be? 

Kadeem Hardison: I think Dwayne and Whitley would still be together—Jasmine and I have talked about this, and her feelings are great. She loves the idea of a midlife crisis for Whitley because she's known this one guy, she's been with this one guy through all of this, and right about now, the child is about to go off to school. And maybe there's some, you know, ‘What happened to me? I spent all this time doing this, this, and this. I was with him and then we had a baby before I could really get into my [career].’ You know, she was curating art for a minute. And that might drive her a little stir-crazy.

That is absolutely perfect because she was such an all-over-the-place kind of character, and now would be the time for her to really do some searching and find out you know, what is it that she missed? What is it that she wants? What's going to fill her life now? 

PureWow: That sounds accurate. And we imagine that Dwayne would be thriving at Konishiwa.

Hardison: Dwayne would still be trying to teach the kids, trying to impart knowledge. And I think Konishiwa was probably lucrative, and he might have made a good amount of money—maybe a boatload of money—and came back to doing what he really loved, which was teaching students. I think his success in business with Konishiwa would be the beginning of really intense video games or learning programs or AI, or whatever he was brought there to do. And then what he learned from it, he would bring that back to Hillman and teach the kids all he learned about business about being an executive.

And I always thought Dwayne would probably be rubbing Whitley's feet with one hand and grading papers with his other hand, you know what I mean? Or on the computer, figuring something out. That would be his perfect night.

PureWow: As you’re speaking, we can already envision this as a spin-off series. There’s Dwayne and there’s Whitley, but then the show would focus on the next generation of Hillman students—including their child. Are there still talks of a potential reboot? 

Hardison: Oh, we've been trying to get this going for at least 10 years, but the owners of the show don't have the same interest. I guess they're not fired up about it enough to say, ‘Okay, you think you can do it? Let's see what you can put together.’ Because we know there’s a bunch of people out there that want it, that would love to be a part of bringing that back. But since we don't own it, we can’t just do it. It's really not up to the cast at all. We've all kind of, in our own way, said, ‘Sure, I'd be down.’ But, ‘I'd be down’ doesn't really get it done.

PureWow: Going back to Dwayne’s character, we’ve seen him evolve from the quirky kid with a perfect math SAT score to the brilliant, well-rounded engineer and professor. Were you involved in the development of his story arc?

Hardison: Absolutely, but not as much as you may think. The first season was kind of in its own capsule. And then from the second season on, the show started to take shape with me. When Debbie Allen got there, one of the things she had us do was write a Bible on our characters. Nobody remembers it, and she might have them in a vault somewhere. But we all wrote some pages, saying ‘This is what I think’ and ‘This is where I’d like to be’ and ‘This is where I want to go.’ We wrote all this down, and then she would take it to the writers, and they would keep it just to kind of be like, ‘Hmm, this is what he thinks…’ Some stuff got pulled in, and some stuff got thrown out. 

PureWow: Were there opportunities to change certain things about Dwayne?

Hardison: There were a whole bunch of times when I read something that didn't feel true. So I would rebel a little bit and be like ‘Hold on. Wait a minute.’ So there was lots of collaboration. The writers were all fantastic and accommodating in that sense. I noticed that Jasmine had a really good ear, a sense of what worked and what didn't work for Whitley and how to fix it. Me, I'd have to get down on stage and walk it out a little bit and then go, ‘Okay, yeah, this doesn't work.’ And then I’ll improv something that would work or give them somewhere to go. You know, I’d show them something like, this is what I think would be more in line, and then they’d take that and remix it and put it back in, and it would keep us all happy.

PureWow: We’re curious to hear more. 

Hardison: Okay, case in point—you’re taking me down memory lane. The little vacation we went on with the drug dealers [in season 3’s “Getaway”]. I was like, ‘Why am I wearing a dress? This is not gonna fly. Who's gonna think I’m a girl? Then there’s guys flirting with me, calling me cute and I’m like, ‘I’m not a girl, I’m not buying this at all.’ So, right there. That was me having to make do with what I had. And as an actor, the only thing you can do is commit.

PureWow: That’s fair. On the flip side, did you have any moments where you felt like Dwayne was right in line with your true personality?

Hardison: There's a scene [from season 4’s “Ex-Communication”], where I'm recycling cans. I'm stepping on the cans to recycle them, and Ron comes in and jokes about Whitney going out with Julian and how I’m getting played. And Kadeem was not in the mood for that, because he knew how I felt about it. I made myself vocal about how I felt about it. I had to go through it anyway. So me getting angry with him, telling him ‘Don't start, yo’, was very me. And then I stomped on the cans, and then I got so mad at the end that I went to the door and yelled. I think the line was, ‘I don't need this, and I don't need her.’ I yelled because her apartment was across the way, and I wanted her to hear. Then I applauded myself and exited. I liked the fact that I got that kind of aggression and anger out. The words were written in the script, but just how I did it, I was like, ‘Nah, that felt real.’ 

PureWow: Absolutely, we got chills just watching it.

Hardison: Yeah, it might have been some relationship drama with me and my real life at the time, so maybe that was some stuff that came out, like, fighting through it and living it, then using it.

PureWow: Which other episodes stood out for you and why?  

Hardison: The date rape episode, when Freddie went out with Garth, and he was not on the up and up. It's probably my favorite scene with Sinbad because we had a lot of great scenes together and a lot of time together. The episode is called “No Means No,” and there's a scene where I'm trying to piece together what I've heard and what I think. I try to, without snitching, get information and pick his brain on how that sounds. And there's a scene where I've never seen two guys—two Black guys—sit down and talk about when a girl says no, what do you do? When you know there's a whole bunch of her saying yes, but what are the next steps and how do you handle it? So that one is special to me.

PureWow: That was a pretty intense episode, but it ended on such a beautiful note.

Hardison: Yeah, and then her saying “Thank you for being my friend” and the end always kills me. I think [Cree Summer and I] were dating at the time, and I knew she was great at comedy and physical and voices and sounds, but when she got serious and dropped that, I was stunned at how quickly she called that up.