When they joined the NBC-turned-UPN sitcom In the House, LL Cool J was a hip-hop star just starting his acting career. Alfonso Ribeiro was coming off his fan-favorite Fresh Prince of Bel-Air role. And Debbie Allen had the most comprehensive television experience of the bunch, having earned eight Emmy nominations for choreographing and starring in the TV show Fame.
In the early 1990s, Allen was focusing on directing and producing shows like A Different World. It was famed record and film producer Quincy Jones who convinced her to return to acting. “He’d been trying to get me back in front of the camera for about four years,” Allen told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “I told him, when you get a script that makes sense, about a woman who is on a certain level, we have something to talk about.”
That project was In the House, which counted Jones as an executive producer. The script, by Fresh Prince EP Winifred Hervey, got Allen to sign on the dotted line as the female lead. Allen’s Jackie Warren is a mother of two who splits from her philandering husband and answers a newspaper ad from someone named Marion Hill, who’s renting rooms in a house.
But Marion, as viewers saw in the 1995 series premiere, turns out to be an injured former professional player, played by LL Cool J, setting up an odd-couple dynamic. Ultimately, Jackie lands on her feet with a legal assistant job and hires Marion to nanny her kids, played by Maia Campbell and Jeff Wood.
Like Allen, LL Cool J also had convictions about his character. He wanted Marion to be not a dumb jock but a strong, spiritual man with emotional depth, as he told the Times in 1996. “In a way, [Marion] is like me in that he’s feeling, loves kids, and is health-conscious,” he said. “But he’s different than me in that I wouldn’t sit around the house just waiting to heal. I would go out and make something else happen.”
NBC canceled In the House in 1996, but UPN snapped it up and slated the show on its schedule within days. Amid the shakeup, Allen and Wood left the series, and Ribeiro and Dee Jay Daniels came board, playing physician Dr. Max Stanton and football expert Rodney, respectively. Plus, Season 2 recurring player Kim Wayans got bumped up to series-regular status in her role as physical trainer Tonia Harris. In the latter seasons, Marion teams up with Dr. Max and Tonia to run a sports clinic.
The show ended in 1999 — 25 years ago, in fact, on August 11, 1999 — after a fifth season that aired in first-run syndication. But several of its stars stayed in showbiz. Allen is a star and executive producer of Grey’s Anatomy. LL Cool J recently wrapped a 13-year-run on NCIS: Los Angeles. Ribeiro is the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos and co-host of Dancing With the Stars. Wayans has directed recent episodes of Bunk’d and The Neighborhood.
Critics remember the show fondly — and it’s on our list of the best black sitcoms of the 1990s — and fans still have a lot of love for the show, as seen in a Reddit thread from earlier this year. (“This show was gas,” one Reddit user wrote.) And luckily for those fans, In the House is currently streaming on Tubi.
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