Jaleel White has opened up about how he feels when fans tell him he is their childhood.
The 48-year-old actor participated in a panel at 90s Con at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, where he reacted to fans’ frequently telling him, “You’re my entire childhood.”
White, who was there with Soleil Moon Frye, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong, quipped, “The reality of it was, you’re my childhood too, but in a different way.”
For the unversed, the Grown Ups star depicted the awkward, love-lorn Steve Urkel in the famous sitcom Family Matters.
He had to make a cameo in the show, which aired from 1989 to 1998, but eventually acted in 200 episodes, portraying various roles, such as Urkel’s alter ego Stefan Urquelle and other Urkel family members.
White also revealed how the long-running TV show shaped his own childhood, as he was studying while filming the show.
Reflecting on this, he added, “I went to public school the entire time. We’d shoot three episodes, and I’d go back on hiatus. I was constantly popping back in, and in the spring I’d be there the entire time. I played on the high school basketball team, [and] they changed the entire shooting schedule [to accommodate me].”
“I was learning these life lessons backwards, on a social level. But I was interacting with adults on an insanely high level,” the Sonic the Hedgehog star noted.
“I never could imagine people would still be so emotionally connected to the ‘90s,’” White stated.
