Jaleel White Opens Up About His Family Matters Costars Believing He Was 'Difficult' to Work with: 'I Digress'

Jaleel White is addressing his Family Matters costars’ comments about his “difficult” behavior on the set of the hit ’90s sitcom.

The actor, who played nerdy neighbor Steve Urkel on the series, joined Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM show Andy Cohen Live this week to discuss his just published memoir, Growing Up Urkel. The host asked White about his off-screen relationship with his Family Matters costars, specifically Jo Marie Payton and Reginald VelJohnson, whom Cohen noted have spoken publicly about the challenges of working with White back in the ’90s.  

“They, at one point, said publicly that you were not that easy to work with,” Cohen said. “Did that surprise you to hear?”

“They're also over 70, and I've been told not to argue with my elders from the time I was 12 years old,” White, 47, responded. “So you know, with Jo Marie, it's always like, what day did I catch her on or what day did the interviewer catch her? I talk about it in the book.”

“So, when you say ‘difficult,’ I'll be self-aware enough to say, okay,” White continued. “You know, as a 13-year-old kid, anytime I was called to set, I always brought my basketball. I dribbled my basketball everywhere, and I can hear the script supervisor to this day, Joyce Webb, going, ‘Oh, here he comes with that basketball.’ It was tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap constantly.”

“It annoyed everybody,” Cohen interjected.

“Yeah,” White said. “If that is the extent to which I was called ‘difficult,’ then okay. I digress.”

In a 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Payton acknowledged that White was “just a kid” when Family Matters was on the air, and blamed “some of those adults” on set for allowing the young actor to “run wild and do whatever he wanted to do, thinking he can say what he wants to say, you know, and hurt people's feelings and all that.”

via #PeopleMag