Source: Prince Williams / Getty

Actor TC Carson who played the playboy character “Kyle Barker” on the classic hit show Living Single, is speaking out about the unfair conditions that the cast was at times subjected to during their five-season tenure.

On Monday (Mar 30), during an interview with Comedy Hype, the 61-year-old veteran actor revealed that he was fired from Living Single and subsequently “blackballed” from Hollywood for speaking out on behalf of the cast.

According to Carson, from scripting to off-stage treatment, the all-Black cast was treated unfairly and when he declined to be the voice to “get everyone inline”, it resulted in his career being put on halt.

“There were times when we had issues on the show and we would come to them as a cast but I would be the spokesperson for it,” Carson recalled. “That last season before I left, they called me in and they basically said ‘All these problems that we’ve been having they [the cast] listen to you…so if you said something else, then they would do that.’ [So in response] I said, ‘Well, first of all, we’re dealing with five grown people and they have their own minds and their own ideas about what we’re doing. Everything we come to you with is a group decision, but if you think I have that much power then I need to have a different job,’ and I don’t think they liked that.”

Carson added that initially, he didn’t know he was being let go even after he raised questions in the final season after noticing in the script that his character was “being sent to London” after the first few episodes. According to the actor, after the episode aired, he got a call from his lawyer telling him that he was fired from the show; noting that he wasn’t upset with the dismissal but the way it was carried out before adding that it was a Black casting director who advised him that his former employer was ruining his reputation.

“It wasn’t that I got fired, it was the way it was done,” Carson continued. ““He said, ‘I heard you were difficult, that you came to work unprepared, and I said ‘You know what? This interview is over. Thank you so much for your time,’ and I got up and walked out because I’m not going to let a Black man berate me in front of these white people.”

Despite the ill-treatment, Carson says that working alongside castmates Queen Latifah, Erica Alexander, Kim Fields, Kim Cole, and John Henton among others was one of his best experiences and he reflects on the time fondly.

Check out the interview below.

Source: HipHopWired.com

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