Actor, dancer, TV host Ribeiro to bring talents to parade
He tapped his way into the heart of Broadway, taught the world how to do “the Carlton,” and danced away with the title in 2014 on “Dancing with the Stars.”
Now, Alfonso Ribeiro, the new host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” may be doing “the Carlton” down the shortest street in the world as the celebrity grand marshal of the First Ever 14th Annual World’s
Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Friday. Maybe.
“We’ll see on the day,” Ribeiro told The Sentinel-Record in a recent phone interview. “There wasn’t a plan to do it. I always make fun of the fact I literally get asked to do that every day that I leave the house. The show has been over for 20 some-odd years now, and so imagine every day of your life from the first time you did it on, you’ve been asked to do it.”
Ribeiro said he has never been to Hot Springs before and had never heard of the parade before being invited. “It was definitely something different than anything I had ever heard,” he said, laughing. “You want me to be grand marshal of your parade? It’s only a block? What? OK. Sure. Why not? That sounds pretty easy.”
Ribeiro began his career as a child actor, most notably on Broadway, playing the lead role in the Tony-winning musical “The Tap Dance Kid.” Surprisingly, Ribeiro didn’t know how to tap dance when he auditioned for the part.
“It was a long search and they had kind of gone through all the kids that had agents. I had an agent, but my agency didn’t send me in on it because I didn’t tap dance. Then they started calling schools in the New York area looking for kids who could dance and my principal told them, ‘We have a kid here. He’s pretty talented,’ and that’s how it happened.”
He said the cast of the show spent a year learning how to tap dance and “there were some who could tap dance, some who had never tap danced and everywhere in between. So for a year we learned to tap dance and by the end the one who could be the best in all the areas ended up winning (the role).”
As news of Ribeiro’s dancing and singing skills spread, he was offered a recording contract with Island Records, releasing several dance/pop singles, and landed a memorable spot in Michael Jackson’s 1984 Pepsi commercial. He was then cast opposite Ricky Schroder in the long-running NBC sitcom “Silver Spoons,” making him an instant teen idol.
Ribeiro said he was only 12 at the time, about to turn 13. “It’s interesting. For a lot of people they look at fame and they have an opinion of what fame must be like, but when you’re 12, fame is just life. All of a sudden people recognize you,” he replied when asked if it was overwhelming as a child.
“I was actually a person who never really liked being famous. It’s not that it’s tough. It’s about perspective. I don’t allow anything to get me too high or too low. It’s just what it is. There are things you can’t change and I can’t change the fact I’m famous. You just accept it as fact. I don’t think of it positively or negatively.”
He said most of his friends at the time were famous so “we were all kind of in the same boat experiencing the same things together. Like if you’re on the football team and you hang out all the time with everyone on the team. It doesn’t feel out of the norm. It was just life as we knew it.”
After earning a Theater Arts education from Cal State University in Los Angeles, Ribeiro was given the opportunity to choose a role on the established sitcom “A Different World” or a new pilot called “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” He chose the latter and created the memorable character of Carlton Banks opposite another teen idol, Will Smith, for six seasons.
“I felt like that was the show that had the greatest up side,” he said. “Joining a show that was already on the air was great, but it didn’t have the greatest potential. At the end of the day it was going to end sooner than the other one would end if the other was a success. Being part of an ensemble where you’re coming in as the new guy versus being on the ground floor of a new show where you kind of create your own excitement.”
Ribeiro stressed that regardless of his choice, at the end of the day it was still just a job.
“Looking at something from a fan perspective, I think it’s seen as more impactful than just going to work. But the truth is you wake up in the morning, put your pants on and go to work. It isn’t glamorous. It isn’t easy. You need to study and work on the material, and you go in the next day and they’ve made script changes and you have to adjust, and you do it every day. Don’t get me wrong. I’m lucky enough to do the thing I love to do, but it’s still simply work.”
Asked what it was like working with Smith, and if he was as crazy as his persona, Ribeiro said, “He’s not. He’s very thoughtful. He’s a thinker. He’s a studier. The character you see is a part of him, but he is certainly not the character. Neither was I. When were on the set doing our roles, it was a blast. We got to rehearse and play with things and create and ad-lib and do things that we were very comfortable doing with each other. Will is a wonderful person and an incredible talent. We both learned a lot from each other.”
In fact, Ribeiro found himself in the role of teacher to many of the cast, including Smith, James Avery and Janet Hubert-Whitten, because he had more television experience, especially having done a sitcom before.
“Everyone had obviously been acting and working before, but I was able to tell everybody and show everybody what was going to come and how things were going to happen,” he said. “I could give insight into what to expect throughout the process. But we were all students of each other. We learned from each other and respected each other and listened to each other and created with each other and it was a wonderful experience.”
Having grown up in front of the camera, Alfonso soon ventured behind it as a television director, racking up an impressive resume on such programs as “In The House,” “Shake It Up,” “Are We There Yet?”, “The Wannabes,” “Meet The Browns,” “Cuts,” “Eve,” “One on One” and “All of Us.”
“That’s pretty much what I was doing” after “Fresh Prince” and before DWTS, he said. “I was mostly directing for the 10 to 15 years in between.”
Ribeiro said he would like to do more directing, noting, “My schedule is so all over the place I haven’t been able to lock down that many episodes (directing). When I was acting, I studied behind some great directors that did our shows. I felt like it was something I understood and could do.”
Asked if he would ever consider directing a feature film, he said, “Yeah. Definitely. I plan on doing that one day when the timing is right and the project is right and I have the right script. It’s single camera versus multicamera. I grew up on the multicamera stage and know that world incredibly well. Doing four cameras is a lot harder than one camera. It’s a different medium. But I always say in this business they don’t believe you can do it until you show them you can do it even though what you are doing already is harder.”
Ribeiro won the 19th season of “Dancing with the Stars,” and later hosted the countrywide DWTS tour.
Asked about his win, he said, “I had a certain amount of experience dancing, but the only professional dancing I had done was with ‘The Tap Dance Kid.’ I always said I was a really good mimic. There is a big difference between tap dancing and (DWTS). The things that might make you a good tap dancer don’t make you a good ballroom dancer and vice versa. If you were a jazz dancer or ballet dancer, you could take that information and use it. But I couldn’t use having done the Michael Jackson dance and then do the cha-cha or the samba. They don’t connect in any way. I had to really start anew. It was a completely different animal.”
Not only does he still keep in touch with his winning DWTS dance partner, Witney Carson, but she was joining Ribeiro and his wife that weekend for a birthday dinner.
“We were like family. That’s my little sister. We’re all like family now, all the dancers from the show,” he said. “We will have Thanksgiving and we will invite all the dancers that don’t have a home to go to over to our house to be together.”
Ribeiro is now host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” taking over for DWTS emcee Tom Bergeron, who left in 2015. “Everyone knew Tom was leaving,” he said.
“After (DWTS), I sat down with the network at ABC. All these years with (DWTS) you had these great entertainers who would win or place very high and then go off and work for other networks and ABC felt like they were constantly losing this talent. They wanted to keep me at the network and asked me what I wanted to do.
“There happened to be a poster of Tom there with AFV and I pointed to it and told them, ‘That, actually.’ I thought it would be the perfect show for me growing into the audience and fan base I have. As it turns out, that was kind of what they were interested in having me do. So I did a screen test and all the rest and got the gig.”
He said when Bergeron found out he was interested in doing it, “He gave me his full support. He told them I would be the best person to replace him.”
Ribeiro said he has actually met professional wrestling icon Ric “Nature Boy” Flair, who will be serving as the official starter for Friday’s parade. “We met at some autograph signing event. I honestly don’t even remember where it was at, but he was a really nice guy.”
Ribeiro said he is looking forward to the parade and meeting his Hot Springs fans.
“I can’t wait to come and hang out with everyone,” he said. “It should be a lot of fun.”