Janet Hubert Goes from Aunt Viv to Martha’s Vineyard in New Lifetime Movie With Paula Patton

Janet Hubert’s next role takes her from Bel-Air to Oak Bluffs. The original Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has joined Paula Patton and Derek Luke in Love on the Vineyard, a new Lifetime movie set on Martha’s Vineyard. Hubert will play Shirley Evans, though the network has not said how her character figures into the story.

According to Deadline, Patton stars as Jordan Wilson, a Washington, D.C., real estate executive who returns to the island with her teenage daughter after years away. An effort to save a historic Oak Bluffs inn puts Jordan back in the orbit of Eric Robinson, her former summer love, played by Luke.

Patton and Luke previously appeared together in the 2013 romantic comedy Baggage Claim.

Oak Bluffs has long been a destination for Black vacationers; its Inkwell Beach has been a gathering place since the late 1800s. The film comes from executive producer Tracey E. Edmonds, whose credits include Soul Food and Jumping the Broom.

For many viewers, Hubert is still inseparable from Vivian Banks. She played Aunt Viv for the first three seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before leaving in 1993; Daphne Maxwell Reid played the character for the rest of the series.

The change became one of television’s most recognizable recastings, while Hubert’s dispute with Will Smith followed her well beyond the show. Hubert has said the fallout came at a steep professional and personal cost. “30 years of my life was gone. 30 years of a career was gone,” she said last year.

Hubert and Smith addressed that history together during the sitcom’s 2020 reunion special. Smith later said he had made “a horrible error” in judging her contribution to the series. Hubert, for her part, has said their relationship is now “so good.”

She also appeared in the final season of Peacock’s Bel-Air, taking a new role in the franchise that introduced her to audiences more than three decades earlier.