Jasmine Guy spent years convincing audiences that Whitley Gilbert was real. The funny part? When A Different World began, Guy wasn't entirely convinced women like Whitley actually existed.
Nearly four decades after introducing Hillman's designer-clad Southern belle, Guy says Whitley was deliberately built to be far removed from her own personality. In fact, Guy hadn't even auditioned for the part. She initially went after Jaleesa Vinson, the role that eventually went to Dawnn Lewis, before landing the character that would become synonymous with her career.
“Our characters were new,” Guy told People. “I didn't know what Black Southern belle was, so I just made stuff up, you know what I mean? We were finding them as we'd go.”
That gave Guy plenty to play with. Whitley's unmistakable drawl, privileged upbringing, dramatic delivery and attitude weren't simply extensions of the actress playing her.
“I had to find something that was further away from my personality,” Guy explained. “The accents, her attitude, it gave me things to work on.”
Even Whitley's voice was carefully constructed. Guy, who was born in Boston and moved to Atlanta as a child, has said the character's accent partly traces back to her third-grade teacher, Miss Pinkard. Growing up in Georgia exposed Guy to different Southern dialects, and she became so fascinated that she imitated the people around her.
“I imitated the hell out of everybody I met and made these little tapes of all my different characters,” she recalled in a 2008 interview.
For Whitley, Guy deliberately chose what she described as “a white Southern accent” because she found it funnier. Once the character developed beyond the early episodes, Guy built an explanation into Whitley's background: she had grown up largely around white people, making Hillman her first sustained immersion in a Black community.
Guy was also determined to make Whitley funny without turning her into a caricature. She specifically remembered wanting to avoid building the character around a signature gag like J.J.'s “Dyn-o-mite!” on Good Times.
Then came the part Guy hadn't planned for: she started meeting Whitleys in real life.
“I really thought I made her up,” Guy said. “And then I met all these Whitleys at Martha's Vineyard... and I was like, ‘There really are Black girls like this.’”
Cree Summer experienced something similar with Freddie Brooks. “We hadn't really seen a Black Bohemian character like Freddie,” Summer said, describing Freddie and Whitley as different “facets of Black America” that television hadn’t regularly represented.
Netflix's A Different World has returned Guy's Whitley to Hillman as the mother of Deborah Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon), whose father is Kadeem Hardison's Dwayne Wayne. Summer's Freddie, Darryl M. Bell's Ron, Dawnn Lewis' Jaleesa, Glynn Turman's Col. Taylor, and several other Hillman veterans are also back.
