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The 'Fresh Prince' cast all hung out yesterday - and it's weird how young most of them look

The main cast of the popular sitcom - minus the sadly deceased James Avery - have resurfaced on Alfonso Ribeiro's Instagram

The 'Fresh Prince' cast all hung out yesterday - and it's weird how young most of them look
28 March 2017

A whole 21 years after the show left our screens for good, the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air have reunited on Instagram, once again setting rumours into motion that there’s going to be some kind of remake.

Alfonso Ribeiro, who played Carlton Banks in the hit sitcom between 1990 and 1996, posted a picture yesterday, in which he lined up with his former co-stars, Will Smith, Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Daphne Maxwell Reid and Joseph Marcell.

He wrote: “Always amazing to spend an afternoon with my Fresh Prince family. Wishing that James Avery was still with us to make this complete.”

Avery, who played Riberio’s on-screen father Phil, died aged 68 in 2013, following open-heart surgery.

Fans hoping the reunion might translate into a return for the show are bound to be fairly disappointed, however. Will Smith pretty heftily put the kibosh on the idea during promotion for Suicide Squad last year, when he said: "I don't think ever, like pretty close to when hell freezes over... like we're going to leave that one alone."

Ribeiro is also apparently not keen, saying: "Since the passing of my favourite dad in the world, ever on TV, James Avery passed, the chances of a Fresh Prince coming back together will not happen. I don't think we feel as a cast that we would do even our fans justice. We all felt like he was the centerpiece or the nucleus of that show. Without him, it just doesn't work... we're not looking for that to happen. And that's OK."

Despite this, there have been occasional rumours that Smith was perhaps interested in producing a reboot of the show, featuring himself as Uncle Phil. At 48, he’s four years older than Avery was in 1990, and according to one Reddit user, in a selfie he took while bungee jumping, from upside-down, there is a remarkable resemblance between the two.

Will Smith is Uncle Phil