Malcolm-Jamal Warner let the tea spill about the behind-the-scenes issues with his ’90s comedy series with Eddie Griffin, Malcolm & Eddie.

Warner talked with PeopleTV about the issues he had with Griffin and the creative team had with setting the tone for the show.

“It was a hard show for me to do, it was a hard time for me. I had come from a history-making show that showed that people of color could be funny without being stereotypical. Once we went off the air and I went over to work for UPN, their whole marketing campaign and programming was really the antithesis of what we were doing on Cosby,” he said. “I thought the reason they were bringing me over there was because of my experience of doing a non-stereotypical show, and it was frustrating because that’s not what they wanted from me. They wanted me to do the work they were doing.”

“There was so much fighting that I did on this show, with writers, producers, the studio,” he continued. “There was a particular vision they had for the show that was different from the vision I had for the show.”

He said that some of the problems between him and Griffin came from their different styles of comedy. But they’d still come together each day before filming.

“We came from different schools of comedy. You’re putting the school of Bill Cosby and the School of Richard Pryor together as a team,” he said. “There were often creative conflicts that we had, so it wasn’t always harmonious between he and I. But wherever we were eye-to-eye wise, every single show for four years, we would get together, put our hands together, put our heads together and we’d pray.”

Malcolm & Eddie ran from 1996 to 2000 featuring Warner and Griffin as Odd Couple-type roommates and business partners, level-headed Malcolm McGee and scheming Eddie Sherman. The series also starred Karen Malina White, Jaime Cardriche, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Ron Pearson and Angelle Brooks.

Malcolm & Eddie

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