Whatever Happened to the Hillman Class?
This Thursday, September 24, A Different World reopens Hillman College on Netflix, 39 years to the day after the original premiered on NBC on September 24, 1987. Maleah Joi Moon, who won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Broadway's Hell's Kitchen, plays Deborah Wayne, the rebellious youngest child of Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert, arriving for freshman year at her parents' alma mater. Kadeem Hardison and Jasmine Guy play those parents again. All ten half-hour, single-camera episodes arrive at once, Debbie Allen directed the premiere, and Brandy Norwood sings a new version of the theme.
The announced cast reads like a roll call. Darryl M. Bell, Cree Summer, Charnele Brown, Dawnn Lewis, Glynn Turman, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jenifer Lewis, Karen Malina White and Ajai Sanders are all on it. Method Man joins as Coach Coles and Tichina Arnold as Darlene Duvall. Three familiar names are not: Lisa Bonet, Marisa Tomei and Sinbad.
So where did the class go between 1993 and now? We followed the credits. First, though, a position you are free to fight us on.
Start the rewatch at season two
Season one is a The Cosby Show spin-off with good intentions and not much else. It belonged to Bonet's Denise Huxtable, and critics were cool on it. After that first year the producers concluded the show was not portraying life at a historically Black college accurately, and they hired Debbie Allen, a Howard University graduate, as chief creative officer. The Hollywood Reporter's verdict was that she turned the show "from a bland Cosby spin-off into a lively, socially responsible, ensemble situation comedy."
She did it partly with homework. Allen sent the writers on a yearly spring trip to Atlanta to meet students and faculty at Clark Atlanta, Morehouse and Spelman, and episode ideas came out of those meetings. She also rebuilt the cast. When Bonet announced a pregnancy in the summer of 1988, Cosby ruled that Bonet could be pregnant but Denise could not, so Denise dropped out of Hillman. Allen wanted to keep Tomei's character and give her stories about race from the other side; the network said no. Summer and Brown moved in, Bell and Sinbad were promoted to the main cast, and Turman arrived as Colonel Taylor. Dwayne and Whitley, a math whiz and a Southern belle, became the center of a real ensemble.
The sequel knows who built it. Allen is an executive producer, and What's on Netflix puts her original tally at 122 episodes produced and 83 directed.
Where the class went
- Kadeem Hardison (Dwayne) played Junior in White Men Can't Jump the year before Hillman closed, then settled into a long second act as a TV dad: Craig Cooper on Disney Channel's K.C. Undercover and Bowser in Netflix's Teenage Bounty Hunters.
- Jasmine Guy (Whitley) won four straight NAACP Image Awards for the role. She had already played Dina in Spike Lee's School Daze, and later spent eight years as Sheila "Grams" Bennett, Bonnie's grandmother, on The Vampire Diaries from 2009 to 2017.
- Cree Summer (Freddie) became one of the busiest voices in animation. Her Susie Carmichael on Rugrats earned an NAACP Image Award, and since 2024 she has been librarian Rosalyn Inez on Abbott Elementary.
- Glynn Turman (Colonel Taylor) had the most decorated run: Baltimore mayor Clarence Royce on The Wire, a Primetime Emmy for his guest role on In Treatment, and a lead part in Netflix's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 2020.
- Dawnn Lewis (Jaleesa) co-wrote the original theme song. She left after season five to star in Hangin' with Mr. Cooper and has since voiced LaBarbara Conrad on Futurama.
- Jada Pinkett Smith (Lena James) got her big break at Hillman in 1991, then moved into film: Menace II Society, Set It Off, and Niobe in The Matrix Reloaded.
- Charnele Brown (Kim Reese) kept a quieter screen career after Hillman closed, mostly guest spots on other sitcoms.
- Darryl M. Bell (Ron) had shared the screen with Guy and Hardison in School Daze before Hillman, and he sounds the most eager of anyone to go back. "We want to know what happened next," he told Tudum last December.
- Lisa Bonet made her last appearance in season three and went on to a supporting turn in High Fidelity.
- Marisa Tomei lasted one season, then won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for My Cousin Vinny at the 1993 Academy Awards. A generation now knows her as May Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
- Sinbad (Coach Oakes) went from Hillman to family comedies, including Jingle All the Way.
- Debbie Allen joined Grey's Anatomy in 2011 as Dr. Catherine Fox and later became an executive producer and director on the show.
Four episodes to watch before Thursday
If you only have a few evenings before Thursday, these are the ones. All four were directed by Allen.
- "Forever Hold Your Peace" (season three, November 2, 1989). Dwayne drives Whitley to New York for her father's wedding and stops at the Huxtables, hoping to win Denise back. She tells him she married a Naval lieutenant in Africa. It is Bonet's final appearance, and the snowbound car ride home is where Dwayne and Whitley start to make sense.
- "If I Should Die Before I Wake" (season four, April 11, 1991). Tisha Campbell plays Josie, who reveals in a speech class that she is HIV-positive, and her classmates have to rethink everything they believed about AIDS. Whoopi Goldberg guests.
- "Save the Best for Last", parts one and two (season five finale, May 14, 1992). Dwayne visits Whitley the night before her wedding to Byron, and the question hangs all the way down the aisle. It is also Dawnn Lewis's last episode.
- "Honeymoon in L.A.", parts one and two (season six premiere, September 24 and October 1, 1992). The newlyweds' honeymoon in Los Angeles collides with the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. Pinkett Smith, Sanders and White become regulars here, Jenifer Lewis debuts as Dean Davenport, and Allen cameos cleaning her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Note the date: season six premiered on September 24 too.
Watch those four, and when Deborah Wayne walks onto campus on Thursday you will know exactly whose shadow she is standing in.
