Bel-Air season 3 adds new cast members
Bel-Air has added Vic Mensa and Alycia Pascual-Peña to the cast for its upcoming third season.
The Peacock series reimagines the iconic 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, with the update following Will Smith (Jabari Banks) as he moves from the streets of West Philadelphia to the pearly mansion gates in Bel-Air.
The show will return later this year for a third season, and Deadline is now reporting that Mensa and Pascual-Peña have joined the cast in recurring roles, playing Quentin and Amira, respectively.
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The second season saw stars from the original show appear in the reboot, with Tatyana Ali, Daphne Maxwell Reid and Vernee Watson-Johnson all playing new characters upon their return.
The return of Ali was especially highlighted given her major role as Ashley Banks in the original series, with executive producer Carla Banks-Waddles noting that the star's return happened organically behind the scenes.
"In the writers' room, we talked about this character of Mrs. Hughes, this teacher who was very important to Ashley," began Banks-Waddles. "Once we started talking about the character, then it became, 'What if Tatyana Ali was that person?'
"Knowing how important she was to the Banks family, knowing that Hilary would have had her as a teacher, that Carlton would have had her as a teacher, and now Ashley has her as a teacher, it just felt perfect," she added.
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Fellow producer Morgan Cooper also spoke about the return of former stars, revealing they had conversations with Smith about how to reintegrate these stars seamlessly into the narrative.
"Will and I had conversations as we were developing Bel-Air [that] if there are organic moments where we can include some of the original cast in the Bel-Air universe, we should try to do that, but always in a way that felt organic and never forced," he recalled.
Bel-Air streams on Peacock.
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