TV - Movies
Family Matters'
JoMarie Payton
Reveals That
Jaleel White
Tried To Fight Her
By JEFF LITTON
JoMarie Payton, who played Harriette Winslow on the long-running sitcom “Family Matters” recently sat down for a retrospective interview celebrating her role as one of the most iconic TV moms of the '90s. It's well known there was tension between Jaleel White and the cast thanks to the producer’s decision to refocus the show on his character Steve Urkel, but things were even tenser than fans realized.
Allegedly, the incident took place on the set of Season 9 Episode 10, "Original Gangsta Dawg," in which Urkel uses the Urkel Transformation Chamber to transform into his titular alter-ego. "There was something that he wanted to do and I said we can't do that, standards and practices will not let that pass [...] He wanted to do it anyway," Payton explained.
White then began kicking and screaming and told Payton he wanted to "melee." "I turned around — if he wanna fight, I would," she said. Her co-star Darius McCrary had to hold her back, “I was gonna whip his behind.” In hindsight, Payton admits that White was just a kid at the time and she blames the adults on set for "[l]etting him run wild and do whatever he wanted to do.”