Janet Hubert has discussed the strength it took to "forgive" Will Smith decades after her controversial departure from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
On Thursday (October 16), the Damascus star visited talk show Sherri and expressed that her 2020 reunion with Smith made her "so happy." Hubert left The Fresh Prince after three seasons due to contractual issues and an ongoing rift with Smith, which was fueled by her postpartum depression and marriage difficulties. Hubert would divorce her first husband, James Whitten, in 1994, one year after she left the former sitcom.
"30 years of my life was gone. 30 years of a career was gone. House was
gone. Money was gone. I lost my mind, too," Hubert told talk show host Sherri Shepherd around the five-minute mark of the interview below.
Hubert recounted that it was "tough" while filming her final season of The Fresh Prince and that she had lost 70 pounds "in a matter of months" while breastfeeding. But on making amends with Smith, Hubert said their renewed relationship is "so good."
"People ask me, 'Well, how do you get past that? How do you forgive someone?' You have to forgive someone to release yourself," she told Shepherd. "And I want to once and for all squash it with people bringing it up constantly and constantly saying, 'Well, I wouldn't I don't know if I could have forgiven him for that. And I'm like, 'But you're not me.'"
Hubert added that Smith helped the actor with her children's animated film, JG and the BC Kids. Last month, the entertainer gave Smith his "props" while on The Big Tigger Show for helping her launch a website and promoting her to streaming platforms.
During a 2020 episode of Red Table Talk, Smith explained that the breakdown in his relationship with Hubert was caused by the actor not laughing at his jokes in between filming on The Fresh Prince.
"Janet was Julliard trained. Janet can sing. She can dance. She can act. She’s brilliant. And she was in the parental figure, so my little boy desperately needed her approval," he said at the time. "I just noticed now in this moment that I fell back into my family dynamic with my television family...I needed everyone to feel joyful so that I could feel safe."
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