My worst moment: Jaleel White — Urkel from 'Family Matters' — on partying with the Yankees and going to work with an hour's sleep

Jaleel White became famous as a child actor playing Steve Urkel for nine seasons on the sitcom “Family Matters,” and he talks about the ups and downs of this unique experience with other former child stars on his new podcast “Ever After.”

White is a thoughtful interviewer and his conversations with his peers go deep. Each episode features a different guest — Keke Palmer, Haley Joel Osment, Raven-Symoné, Mayim Bialik, Melissa Joan Hart and more — and the topics range from the perils of dating when you’re famous to the kinds of business deals that were (or weren’t) happening when they were kids.

“I remember Pepsi wanted Fred Savage this one time,” White said, “and we had the same agent and Fred wasn’t available. So my agent said, ‘Hey, listen, you’re in luck — my other client is available.’ And they said, ‘Who do you represent?’ He told them and they said, ‘Oh, we’re not doing the Black thing right now,’ and that was it. I wasn’t even insulted hearing that, it was just like, ‘Aw, that sucks, man. I like Pepsi.’ I just took that on the chin as a kid, not understanding just how much of an opportunity that would have been.”

Like the guests on his podcast, White has continued acting as an adult, though he still has strong feelings about “Family Matters,” which was filmed in Los Angeles but set in Chicago. “They tore our house down!” he said, referring to the home at 1516 W. Wrightwood Ave. seen in the opening credits, which was demolished and replaced with a boxy multi-unit condo building. “I know that (show creator) Jeff Franklin purchased the San Francisco home for ‘Full House’ and it’s like a landmark now and people go to visit it, but our stuff got torn down and now it looks like a small bank.”

His roles are often in comedies, but when asked to share a worst moment from his career, he recalled a story from the first time he was cast in a TV drama.

My worst moment …

“This was my most painful day on set. I was shooting a pilot in Toronto called ‘111 Gramercy Park.’ It was a drama for ABC that did not get picked up (about wealthy New Yorkers and their upscale apartment building) starring Frank Langella and Peter Strauss. I was playing an assistant doorman.

“I was a lot younger then — I was around 25 — and had a lot more vigor. And life was different back then; you got $300 a day in per diem in cash and I was hanging out with a very hunky guy named Shemar Moore, who was doing a different pilot but he was also staying at the Four Seasons. And so were the New York Yankees.

“So we were going out and having a ball every night. The Yankees were playing the Toronto Blue Jays and it was just, walking around with those guys as a collective, and then stick me in there, it was like nitroglycerin. You can imagine the fun that we had. Derek Jeter would kind of glide into the room, skim and see what’s there and before you knew it he’s a ghost and two girls would be gone too. But at that age, everybody was like, ‘Meet us at this bar! Meet us at that bar!’ And your per diem is piling up. They put your per diem in your check now, but back then your per diem was cash. So you’re in Toronto at 25 years old for 12 days — 12 times 300, it just starts to pile up. So it’d be like, ‘Great! Get us bottles! Whatever you want!’

“And I remember dancing back to the Four Seasons one night — it was early April and I remember it was snowing — and I get back to my room around 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning. And I saw that blinking light on my hotel phone and I just instinctively knew: Check that message.

“I checked the message and it was like, ‘Jaleel, your days have been switched. We’re picking you up at six.’ (Laughs) I had under an hour to compose myself and learn all my dialogue — and I had a ton of dialogue. I had not slept, I was hungover, I was still a little drunk, I was everything.

“I effectively hid it on set — I was drinking coffee around the clock — and I’m proud of the fact that it did not spill over onto my work. But just the sheer pain of trying to keep my eyes open and say my lines, I remember it to this day. Physically I was just breaking down; I was lightheaded, I had to vomit a couple times; I was hungover and I needed to go to sleep.

“That was when going out hard on location came to a stop for me.”

Did anyone on set notice he was hurting?

“No, because I have that ability to keep it together. I was using every ounce of energy to keep it together, but when I was in my dressing room I was sweating and puking.

“I’ll give you an example: When I played Bruce Lee on ‘Family Matters,’ that is the sickest I’ve ever been while shooting an episode. I had gastritis and literally vomited before they did the take. They were going to cancel the taping at that point, we’d already gotten most of the show in the can and they were like, ‘If he’s that sick, we’ll just pick this up next week and shoot it next Thursday.’ But you know how if you throw up, you feel really good immediately after? Well I was like, no I got it — so I threw up and then I just powered through that scene. And if you go back and watch it, you would never guess. That was my Michael Jordan flu game.

“Learning to push through like that, that’s definitely what happens when you grow up in the business. It’s a big honor to be called a trouper and you would generally start to hear that word when they had to make that long walk and go ask your parents, ‘Is it OK if we go past the legal limit?’ (State laws limit the number of hours minor children can work each day.) The studio teachers have far more say about that now, but back then it was the parents’ call entirely whether or not the kid would work (overtime). And everyone’s patting you on the head: ‘Thanks for coming through for us.’ And my mom’s looking at them like, ‘Yeah, hm-mm, this is the second time this week.’ But it becomes a badge of honor: The show must go on and you’re always capable of stepping up. So I’m proud of that.”

Was it an ego boost to go out at night and get attention because he and the group were all famous?

“You know, it used to be like that. The second my daughter arrived, life changed. Seriously. It changed on a dime.

“But even before then, the ego boost was going to the mall back in the day. Do you remember the movie about people on a soap opera, it was with Sally Field? It was called ‘Soapdish’ and whenever she would feel bad, she would go to the mall to get recognized (laughs). That was real! When we were teenagers — and it didn’t even have anything to do with feeling sad — but you’d go, ‘Hey, I’m going to the mall to get recognized!’ (Laughs) The whole social stratosphere, the whole social ecosystem stemmed from the mall. Everybody had a hot mall somewhere.

“I remember Darius (McCrary), who played Eddie Winslow on ‘Family Matters,’ we would go to the mall at Christmas and we would go into the toy store and go wild just buying gifts for random kids: ‘Here, what do you want?’ Of course you’re creating a spectacle and whatnot … so we made much use of the mall.”

The takeaway …

“When you’re on the road, you gotta chill. It’s not for partying. That’s when it clicked for me: You’re there for work.

“At the age where I’m at right now, I don’t even like going out when I’m on the road. At most, I’ll grab a meal at a nice restaurant and then take myself back to the hotel.”

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