The Good Place's William Jackson Harper grew up being compared to Carlton Banks, but now he's redefining the black nerd

The New York Times

Harper admits in a New York Times profile that his character, Chidi Anagonye, is him in real life "on steroids." “I definitely got the Carlton thing,” he says of being compared to Alfonso Ribeiro's Fresh Prince of Bel-Air character. “I was into a lot of stuff that a lot of little white kids were into. I definitely caught some grief for that coming up.” He added: "That certainly hasn’t changed since I’ve gotten older. I think now I’m less self-conscious about it.” "When asked, Harper describes himself as a nerd," writes his profiler, Kwame Opam, who explains that he's been compared to Chidi. "He claims he can go down rabbit holes with the things he is passionate about: He loves tabletop board games like The Settlers of Catan and Pandemic; he really likes indie rock and Steely Dan. None of these things would necessarily get you banished from the cool kids’ table at school. It’s just that, once upon a time, if you were a young black man who was into things that weren’t stereotypically associated with blackness, you were confined to a small box in the minds of others. With that confinement came alienation."