On the Shelf
‘Rising Up Urkel’
By Jaleel White
Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $29
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Jaleel White is feeling form of cool. “My wife cranked up this air conditioning,” he says from his resort room in New York whereas on tour to advertise his new memoir, “Growing Up Urkel.” However Steve Urkel, as any client of ’90s popular culture can inform you, was something however cool. The character White performed from 1989 to 1998 on the healthful hit sitcom “Family Matters” outlined the Black nerd for TV watchers: saddle sneakers, suspenders, thick glasses, excessive, nasal voice. Certain, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” had Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro), however he was extra of an entitled, clueless preppy. Urkel was Poindexter personified.
White, now 47, will eternally be linked to the character he created in a sequence that he primarily picked up and placed on his shoulders; Urkel didn’t arrive till halfway via the primary season however rapidly turned the primary attraction. He’s not hiding from it; that will be pointless. “Growing Up Urkel” is just not “I Am Not Spock,” Leonard Nimoy’s insistent memoir about what differentiated him from the logic-obsessed Vulcan he performed on “Star Trek.” As an alternative it’s one thing uncommon: a memory from a remarkably well-adjusted and good-humored former baby star that also manages to inform some tales about what he calls “the shark-infested waters of show business.”
His main motive for writing the ebook, he says, was fairly easy: “I wanted to give my parents their flowers while they’re still here. All I see are these showbiz tragedy stories. My parents didn’t know what the heck they were doing, but the most important thing was they had good intentions for me. My family and I, we really had very little understanding of leverage. We were stuck in appreciation mode. And I think that’s good to some degree.”
Born in Culver Metropolis and raised in a middle-class Pasadena household, White was taught to work laborious and be thankful for what he had. He recalled that his mom made certain to maintain him from getting a giant head, asking individuals on the “Family Matters” set to maintain fixed tabs on him. Costly vehicles and designer garments weren’t an possibility; when he realized to drive he was pushing the household’s hand-me-down Acura. He was pleased if he might keep outfitted in fly Nike gear (which turned simpler when professional sports activities groups bought phrase that he was a basketball fanatic and despatched him packing containers of the newest stuff).
“When I started on the show, I was a 12-year-old kid who wanted an audition and wanted to get the job so my parents would give me a Sega Genesis,” he stated. Well mannered and chivalrous — his mother and father despatched him to etiquette college so he might learn to be a gentleman — he writes about his early courting expertise with a mixture of laughter and chagrin: “My mom had done such a miraculous job sheltering me from negative influences she had effectively made me an overconfident, generous-minded dunce for teen girls to roll over.”
Briefly, he was a superb child with good mother and father, qualities that didn’t all the time turn out to be useful when it was time for ABC to pay him commensurately with different TV stars. He writes that the sequence’ producers dissuaded him from pursuing ancillary Urkel alternatives lest he turn out to be “overexposed.” In one of many ebook’s most telling anecdotes, a 14-year-old White is grounded by his mom after an argument. When his mother and father inform the “Family Matters” producers that he’s sick and unable to return to work, a sequence of present baskets arrives on the White household dwelling, together with a proposal to ship a health care provider. White writes that ABC assumed his household was pulling a ”sick-out,” a standard ploy utilized by mother and father of kid stars angling for more cash. However when White returned to work the subsequent day, his household made no calls for. Seems they have been simply disciplining their son.
“That was probably my greatest moment of leverage that we never realized,” White writes. “All of those gifts were received by me and my parents so earnestly. My parents may have even felt badly that a family dispute had led to so many people being concerned about my health.”
White has labored loads within the years since “Family Matters.” He voiced Sonic the Hedgehog in a sequence of Sega video games; extra lately he has had roles within the TV sequence “The Afterparty” and alongside Adam Sandler within the underrated basketball film “Hustle” (a shoot he fondly remembers for its pickup hoops video games). He is aware of he’ll all the time be Urkel to followers of a sure age, however he’s pleased when somebody on the road acknowledges him for one thing else, like his present gig internet hosting the CBS sport present “Flip Side.” “I’m a game show host now for the Boomers who were calling me Urkel,” he says.
And millennials, who’ve grown up Googling the whole lot, usually name him one thing else totally. The title he grew up listening to.
“They call me Jaleel,” he says.
