Alfonso Ribeiro is hosting ABC Family’s new game show, “Spell-Mageddon,” but the former “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star says he’ll never escape his Carlton Banks dance past.
“I get asked to do the [Carlton] dance every day of my life,” the actor told Billy Bush and Access Hollywood Live guest co-host Holly Robinson Peete on Wednesday. “It’s been the pleasure and the bane of my existence, all in the same.”
Alfonso was tasked with creating the snappy dance, as the actor said the initial script simply stated, “Carlton dances” – without any further detail.
Using moves he’d seen in a music video starring a former “Friends” star, the Carlton dance was born.
“I had seen the Bruce Springsteen ‘Dancing in the Dark’ video where Courteney Cox gets pulled up onto the stage and she does that dance,” he explained, when asked how the famous dance came to be. “Then it’s also from Eddie Murphy’s ‘Delirious’ video where they call it The White Man Dance…
“Altogether, that inspired this dance,” he added. “And I tried to make it my own, in terms of the Carlton character’s version of it – him being so excited and happy every time. I added a little flair to it – I get a little wave-thing going on.”
And for “Fresh Prince” fans hoping for a Carlton and Will small screen reunion, Alfonso said he wouldn’t count on it.
“I would certainly love to do it. I can pretty much guarantee that that, more than likely, will never happen… unless there was a storyline we felt like we had to tell via these characters,” he said. “It just feels like we did something amazing in the past and we loved it.”
“Spell-Mageddon” airs Wednesday nights at 9 PM on ABC Family.
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