Biting The Curse That Feeds You
by American Way StaffA crowd-pleasing role is great for an actor. Until they have to
please the crowds again.
By Ken Parish
Perkins
Jaleel White is on the phone, which is startling enough, seeing
that he's supposed to be, well, you know, dead. Last we'd heard of
the Guy Formerly Known as Urkel, he was facedown in a pool of
blood, a suicide note resting next to his firearm.
That was the pitiful info streaming across the Internet over the
summer with the speed of heart-breaking news. Condolences poured in
by the dozens, all punctuated with exclamation points ("I feel as
though I've lost a friend!" … "Can you believe he's gone!? Who will
make me laugh now!?"), the authors being television watchers having
an awful time believing that the guy who played the lovable nerd
from
Family Matters was out of our
lives.
Of course the death wasn't true, not in the literal sense, anyway.
"Some computer geek in front of his terminal just made it up,"
White says, with a chuckle, but the kind you get right before
punching somebody. "Yeah, the Internet's mob mentality was in full
effect."
White - now 30, a
UCLA film school grad, a man who didn't squander
his money or end up on
America's Most
Wanted in a special fallen-child-stars segment - is alive
and well and, as you might imagine, royally annoyed. Annoyed that
someone was messing around with his future employment
opportunities, seeing that producers and casting directors tend not
to call if you can't actually show up to an audition.
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