Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: What Geoffrey the butler did after the reunion

Joseph Marcell back together with the Fresh Prince cast at last year's 30-year reunion

This is a story all about how an actor's life got flipped, turned upside down - from hanging with a Fresh Prince to lockdown in the fresh Welsh air.

And for the man most famous for playing the butler with the stiff upper lip in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it was an unexpected break from being mobbed by fans of Will Smith's cult TV series.

"You name a country - and when any one of us go there, it's chaos," said the man you know best as Geoffrey Butler.

Only occasionally is he Joseph Marcell.

Fame in Spain doesn't end on the plane

"Neither one of us from the Fresh Prince can go to Spain for example, because that creates riots," said the 73-year-old.

"They just go mad, we just can't go. Once they find out the hotel that you're staying in, it's just unbearable.

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"It's flattering and it's wonderful, but you're trying to have a vacation for goodness sake!"

So swapping the glitz and glamour of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion last September for a spring lockdown in south Wales to star in a new BBC comedy was a "different and pleasant world".

Then, to cap a productive pandemic year, it was a starring role in Shakespearean West End production - but Marcell can't shake his starring role in a sitcom staple for a 1990s generation that liked chillin' out, maxin', relaxin'.

He found fame in the smash hit show that catapulted Will Smith from a prince of Bel-Air to a Hollywood king and made the supporting cast celebrities the world over.

A lifetime of selfies

Geoffrey - the Banks' adored family butler Will Smith lovingly called 'G' - was the well-spoken housekeeper who tried to keep cheeky lead 'Master William' in check and was in some of the show's most loved scenes.

The show starred a streetwise Will Smith sent by his mother to live with family and their butler in a Bel-Air mansion

The Fresh Prince's legacy for Marcell is a lifetime of selfies, where the Royal Shakespeare Company actor is recognised more for playing a witty butler than some of the Bard's best.

"Sometimes you're in your bubble," he explained. "You're going to the dry cleaners, having a walk in the park, pushing the trolley and people bring the Fresh Prince back.

The show originally aired from 1990 to 1996, with 148 episodes broadcast

"It's all right if it's new and it's fantastical - but this has been going on for 30 years!

"I don't do lines, though! You watch the show for lines. I get paid for my work, I don't do it for free.

"We were playing Hamlet and it was the hit of London, it's iconic in the sense that it was the first time a black woman played Hamlet and it was extraordinary.

Adrian Dunbar, Tara Fitzgerald and Cush Jumbo played alongside Joseph Marcell in Hamlet at London's The Young Vic

"Then I come in and it's like Fresh Prince all of the time. People asking 'Can I have a snap?'

"But fans forget that the people who are employing you now have no interest in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

'Success can be a double edged sword'

"All they want to do is to get from the first line in the show, to the last line of the show - and do it as best as you can without forgetting your words.

In a spectacular example of nominative determinism, Geoffrey the butler's character was named... Geoffrey Butler

To be or not to be Geoffrey isn't even in question for Marcell these days - the board member of Shakespeare's iconic Globe Theatre understands something would be rotten if he wasn't recognised for playing one of comedy's best-loved characters.

"The success of it is a double edged sword because it does intrude, but by intrude I don't mean it breaks in uninvited, it's just inconsiderate," he said

"It's fine, because when they forget you, you've got to worry. In fact if I go to a function and nobody recognises me - or people pretend they don't recognise me - I get quite cross," he jokes, laughing out loud.

Will Smith certainly recognises him as the Fresh Prince crew meet up every few years for "food, drink and mess around" - before Smith, now among Hollywood's A-listers, called him up for 30-year reunion in the Banks mansion's famous front room.

Marcell with actress turned singer Tatyana Ali (who played Ashley Banks) and Jeffrey Townes (Jazzy Jeff) at the reunion

The bright lights of Tinseltown dazzled when his cab took him back to Bel-Air for the hugely anticipated reunion, with not a dollar spared.

'Highly emotional'

"This was not the first time we've seen each other as we usually meet up for a day together every two years," said Marcell.

"But that was just us, not the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air lives in that set and to actually go back there was highly emotional.

Sadly missing was James Avery, who died in 2014, and played judge and patriarch Uncle Phil Banks.

"And we felt James Avery's presence. Without being superstitious, it was like the seven people that started this adventure were all there when we walked back onto that set 30 years later.

"There were 75 crew around the set, they all just stood there agog to watch the seven us walk onto the set, they were waiting for that moment when the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air walked onto the set of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 30 years later.

"It was extraordinary. You can't buy that stuff, man."

Within months of schmoozing with acting royalty, he was alone in the midst of a Welsh Covid lockdown in a hotel room in Cardiff while playing a supporting role in a BBC Wales comedy pilot.

'It's just the job that I do'

Talk about from one end of the showbiz spectrum to the other - but that suited Marcell, born in St Lucia but raised in the south London suburb of Peckham, just fine.

"There's a Hollywood-type aura about me and it's not me, it's just the job that I do," he said.

Joseph Marcell felt a magical chemistry working with comedian Mike Bubbins on Mammoth

"People have this idea that I'm kind of unapproachable because I played a character who was but I'm not - and I did that 30 years ago so it's got discombobulated.

"Some producers also might think, 'We can't offer it to him because all people will remember him for is Geoffrey from the Fresh Prince and he'll mess up our film'."

'No black man suffering in Mammoth'

"But when somebody wants me to do Geoffrey again my answer is no, I don't want to do that, I try not to repeat myself."

So he was flattered to be asked to be in Mammoth, a show about a PE teacher who was feared dead in a 1979 avalanche, but brought back to life 40 years later. He described Mammoth as marvellous, and the product of the "extraordinary talent" of writer, comedian and lead actor Mike Bubbins.

"I had a wonderful time and enjoyed Cardiff, it was during lockdown so the place was deserted, but everyone was friendly and I enjoyed the team I worked with."

For Marcell, who had been in the Fresh Prince's all-black cast and played alongside the first black woman to play Hamlet in London's West End, this low-budget comedy was the chance for him to be in another "ground-breaking" moment.

"I'll just use a phrase, there ain't no black man suffering in Mammoth," said Marcell.

Joseph Marcell has starred in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, The Tempest and Hamlet

"There's no black character you feel sorry or pity for. There's a couple of old guys just having a good time.

"That makes it so not only for our time but ought to be lauded and applauded. It's what it should be, it's just normal so it's progress. It is uplifting and positive.

"I had a wonderful time and enjoyed Cardiff, it was during lockdown so the place was deserted but everyone was friendly."

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