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Tatyana Ali and Jan Ravnik tease their Viennese waltz honoring her Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star and mentor, James Avery.
(Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: Andrew Eccles/Disney)Sponsored by Evenity
LOS ANGELES, Calif. —To Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fans, James Avery was Uncle Phil. To Tatyana Ali, he was someone whose encouragement stayed with her long after the cameras stopped rolling.
Now, she’s preparing to put that gratitude into motion. During Dedication Night on Dancing With the Stars, Ali and her professional partner, Jan Ravnik, will perform a Viennese waltz honoring her late TV dad, a tribute she calls “a love letter” to the man behind one of television’s most beloved father figures. Ali will also lend her voice to the performance, prerecording Nancy Wilson’s “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am.”
“Nancy Wilson is one of his favorite, favorite, favorite jazz artists,” Ali tells me. “He’s a real lover of music and jazz music.”
When I visit Ali and Ravnik at a Hollywood rehearsal studio, Ali’s affection for Avery comes through as she recalls how readily he offered his encouragement. The actor, who played Avery’s daughter Ashley Banks on the sitcom from 1990 to 1996, says making it to Dedication Night on Oct. 20 has been a milestone in itself.
“He was really a mentor to me, and I wanted to honor him,” she says.
Avery died in December 2013 at age 68 following complications from open-heart surgery. His career included voicing Shredder in the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a credit Ali makes sure to mention alongside the role that connected them.
To generations of Fresh Prince viewers, his Philip Banks was an imposing patriarch whose stern exterior housed an enormous capacity for love. Ali remembers that warmth in the man himself.
“He was very encouraging, and very protective,” she says. “He was like a giant of a man, but also such a sweet, sweet, sweet teddy bear of a man.”
Asked what she imagines Avery would say about watching her take on the ballroom, her answer comes back to the encouragement he gave her.
“I think he’d be really proud,” she says. “Because he always told me he was proud of me.”
Getting to this point in the competition has meant embracing the discomfort of being a beginner, even after a career spent performing.
“It’s extremely humbling,” Ali says. “I came in here knowing that I didn’t know anything.”
She describes herself as a student, constantly learning. At one point, she even offered Ravnik an image to explain how unfamiliar it all felt.
“I think there was one point where I was like, ‘I’m just like a baby bird,'” she says. “I was like, ‘Just remember, I’ve never done any of this before.'”
In rehearsal, just four days before their performance, Ali and Ravnik are still putting the pieces together. He patiently offers corrections and demonstrates positioning as they work through the choreography; he tells me they only began learning it late the previous night.
Ravnik understands the responsibility that comes with helping his partner tell this particular story.
“It’s always pressure for us, for things like that,” he says, “just because it’s so close to their heart, the performance.”
He’s keeping the details of the routine under wraps.
“We can’t say too much, but I think it’s going to be special,” he says.
Ali will also have a familiar face beside her on the dance floor: Alfonso Ribeiro, her former onscreen brother and now the DWTS cohost, will join her and Ravnik for the tribute.
Ali revealed the reunion in a rehearsal video shared by the show, teasing a special addition to their duo before bringing Ribeiro into the frame. For viewers who grew up with Ashley and Carlton Banks, the performance will see the TV siblings join forces to celebrate the man who played their dad.
Ali says she thinks some of Avery’s family members will be in the audience too. And for viewers watching at home, she hopes the performance conveys something about the person behind a character they loved.
“He was as wonderful as you imagined,” she says. “He was that protective. He was that father figure.”
She remembers his belief in what young artists could do.
“He planted seeds in people everywhere he went,” she says. “He was just the most incredible humanitarian. And he loved the arts and believed it had power. And he tried to express that to every young person he came across. And I was lucky enough to be one of those young people.”
On Tuesday, she’ll carry that encouragement onto the dance floor.
“I just want to honor him,” Ali says. “I think that’s how we keep people alive in our lives.”
Dancing With the Stars’ Dedication Night airs Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and Disney+, with next-day streaming on Hulu.
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