Family Matters actress JoMarie Payton is speaking out about an alleged altercation with her co-star Jaleel White who played Steve Urkel. The actress claims the two nearly got into it while filming the show’s ninth season.
“There was something that he wanted to do and I said we can’t do that, standards and practices will not let that pass. It’s not gonna happen. He wanted to do it anyway,” she said. “He was so mad, he started kicking and screaming and stuff.”
That’s when Payton detailed how “she walked off” but as she was doing so, she heard White make a comment, to which she says she asked costar Darius McCrary to clarify. “He said something about, ‘She must want to melee.’ I said, ‘What’s a melee?’ He said, ‘a fight.’ I turned around — if he wanna fight, I would,” she told ET. “Darius [McCrary] grabbed me. I was gonna whip his behind.”
‘Family Matters’ Star JoMarie Payton Says Jaleel White Once Threatened to Fight Her on Set (Exclusive) https://t.co/vsYjHDs3B8
— Bollywood Science (@BollywoodSci) May 4, 2022
Jaleel White.
Between SatAm, AoStH and Family Matters, he had childhood on lock down.
Then I watched In Living Color and found Jim Carrey hilariousNever thought there would be a connection
— Sonic the Cosplayer (@sonic_cosplayer) May 4, 2022
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Urkel actor had recently implied there were onset tensions between him and his Family Matters costars during the show’s run. During an interview with TV One’s Uncensored in 2021, White indicated that tension was due to him not being “welcomed to the cast at all.”
That response, according to several stars who was featured in an episode of E!’s True Hollywood Story, was about White’s character being heightened to a main character in the show. The actors were told by producers that the “dynamic was going to change” to make the show more about Urkel.
I believe it since the original main cast hated the fact that producers turned “Family Matters” into “The Urkel Show” https://t.co/07UT02Uosw
— Charles (@ChuckyT3) May 5, 2022
“And we said ‘OK,’” Payton said at the time. “We weren’t happy about it. I think along the way it got to be a little resentful but it was just an adjustment that we had to make.”
“My arrival to Family Matters was a rocky start at the beginning,” White said. “They kind of had to accept that I was there. That was a process.”
Eventually, though, he claims the cast started to accept him, he says. “Over time, figuring out that ‘if you do this and I do that, we win’ — that’s ultimately what evolved.”