Three decades after 'A Different World' ended, it's back: 'This is the time thats right'

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Set us as preferred It’s never too late to go back to school.But after years of deferred admission, can a new generation of students at Hillman College score high at delivering a compelling, modern take of the groundbreaking sitcom “A Different World”? The foundation for an updated version of the popular sitcom set at a historically Black college was set three decades ago.

In the 1993 series finale, the show’s central couple — smart, bespeckled math whiz Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and high-maintenance Southern belle Whitley Gilbert-Wayne (Jasmine Guy) — were embarking on their next chapter as newlyweds, relocating to Japan and expecting their first child.Before their departure, a professor jokingly quips to Dwayne: “I can’t wait to have your child in my class in the year 2014.”The only guide you need for fall entertainment.But plans for a revival — the original series itself was a spinoff of “The Cosby Show,” centered on the Huxtables’ free-spirited daughter Denise (Lisa Bonet) — to suit that time frame were in limbo for years.

Producer and director Debbie Allen, who joined the original series in its second season to help it better reflect the HBCU experience, actively pitched and tried to relaunch “A Different World” in the early 2010s, but those efforts were derailed by the highly publicized sexual assault allegations against the show’s creator, Bill Cosby.“It’s very difficult,” Allen told The Times.

“The biggest difficulty, just being totally transparent, was people’s hesitation to work with Mr.Cosby; to have anything to do with him.

[But] we were so independent.He kind of put us on a boat and said, ‘Go.’ And that’s what we did.

And he was happy to know that we were going on our way.” In early 2023, another push began to revive the series while also distancing itse...