Key Points
Tahj Mowry skipped an episode of Smart Guy over salary demands, according to costar Omar Gooding.
Gooding believes that the negotiations played a role in the sitcom’s cancellation.
The Baby Boy alum concedes that Mowry deserved a raise, but he took issue with the way that his leading man went about trying to get it.
During a salary negotiation, Smart Guy star Tahj Mowry was apparently a missing guy.
As a preteen, Mowry, now 40, headlined the WB sitcom as child prodigy T.J. Henderson. Smart Guy was canceled in 1999 after a three-season run, and Mowry’s former costar Omar Gooding says part of the reason was his young leading man’s tactics in angling for a raise.
“They should have paid him more, because he was the lead,” Gooding told The Art of Dialogue. “It’s not his fault that the show got canceled…directly. But sometimes you’ve got to bite that bullet, and it sucks. We all agreed to do the show, and we knew we’d all get paid the same. It’s tough, when you’re the lead, there’s responsibility.”
Gooding shared that Mowry, who turned 13 the day after the series finale, allegedly decided to negotiate for a new contact “halfway” through season 3.
“No, you got to say ‘f— this’ before the season starts,” said Gooding, who played Mo, the lovably gullible best friend of T.J.’s older brother. “You’re disrupting too much s—. Make your stand before the season, then there may be time to negotiate. But if the season’s already going, now you’re f—ing s— up. Now you’re causing problems that could have been avoided. So they’re like, ‘Well, how about we just cancel your show?'”
Omar Gooding; Tahj Mowry
Credit: Hollywood To You/Star Max/GC Images; JC Olivera/FilmMagic
Season 3’s “Get a Job” is the only episode in which Mowry did not appear, and Gooding shared that the cast turned up to the table read and was told he wasn’t there “because of money issues and contract.” Gooding dismissed the suggestion that the rest of the actors should have backed Mowry and sat out as well.
“We didn’t feel the same way,” he explained. “Sure, it was unfair. We’re on the WB, we’re a Black sitcom, one of the last, you’re fortunate. I think you make your demands, you make yourself known, but then you show up to work, bro. You got to do your job. ‘No? Okay, no more, that simple.'”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Mowry’s representatives for comment.
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Last year, Mowry reflected on the struggles that came with being a kid who is the star of his own show.
“I’ll never forget. It was the first day of sixth grade,” he said. “I had all the friends in the world, went to go shoot three episodes of Smart Guy, came back — everyone hated me.”
He continued, “And I was like, ‘What is happening?’ So those dynamics were hard, but I’m grateful for them because I was that kid that got made fun of at school. I was that kid that had to stand up for myself at school. And so I’m able to have sympathy. I was able to grow in that way.”
In recent years, Mowry has expressed interest in a Smart Guy revival, teasing, “I have a really cool, fresh take and idea on how I would do it.”
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