In this op-ed, writer Jerusalem Truth explores how Bel-Air portrays anxiety and PTSD in different ways with Will and Carlton, and what that means for portrayals of young Black men and mental health onscreen.
In the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will and Carlton are enemies turned confidantes, playing off each other in ways that are funny yet relatable. In the heightened world of Peacock’s Bel-Air, now airing its third season, Will and Carlton maintain this dynamic, but with a darker, more dramatic flair. Although Will and Carlton are from different worlds, Bel-Air reveals them as two sides of the same coin, each grappling with anxiety in distinct yet deeply interconnected ways.
In fact, it is through the individual and collective struggles of both young men that viewers get a rare look at an often overlooked aspect of the Black adolescence: mental health. Will and Carlton’s anxieties and fears manifest differently — Will tends to peacock, transmuting anxiety into pseudo-confidence while Carlton spirals inward, absorbing the fears and anxieties around him. How those manifestations are received and perceived by other characters, and viewers alike, highlight several ways anxiety can manifest in young Black people. As such, Will and Carlton’s stories are crucial to propelling the mental health conversations that have slowly but surely started within the Black community.
These stories are already present in season 3, as we see Carlton and Will strive to overcome their respective mental health struggles. Will begins exploring life outside of basketball, and takes it upon himself to heal his tumultuous relationship with his father, Lou. Carlton, in turn, is battling for his own sobriety, and a future beyond the picture perfect trajectory he mercilessly pushed himself toward. Bel-Air creator Morgan Cooper and the showrunners and writers not only redefine the cousins’ relationship, they push it to once inconceivable limits. Where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air kept it light, only briefly indulging in more serious topics, this Bel-Air revels in them. It takes the roots of both boys and amplifies them to what can feel like their most chaotic, and simultaneously, their most loveable.
Will, still charismatic and goofy as ever, has a harder edge to him this go round. West Philly is in him, not on him, and he is not afraid to show it. In fact, he thrives in “any hood,” making the most of his hard-fought street smarts, all to conceal a more vulnerable, pulpy sense of insecurity. Basketball is still his heart, but not all of it. Now in the thick of season three, Will starts to desire a life away from the sport, exploring the possibilities of entrepreneurship with a new business, while the world around him wants him to just keep dribbling.
Meanwhile Carlton’s pseudo-conservative Bel-Air sensibilities are the first of many layers of privilege, ego, and anxiety that viewers see peeled back in real time. Viewers learn early on about Carlton’s anxiety disorder diagnosis, then quickly see how he copes with it (for better or worse). Where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air would go on to codify what many now as “Black Excellence,” Bel-Air, explores all that it takes and what can even come of the presumed respectability and side effects of such a feat. After facing his drug addiction head-on in the season 2 finale and going to rehab, Carlton must now figure out life with everyone presuming the worst of him. He is far from anyone’s Golden Boy, only now he feels the pressure to “redeem” himself. He struggles to face his new realities at home: a room without doors, a locked wine cellar, a rebuff from his dream Ivy League university, and, above all, the hurt and distrust of his parents and siblings. This is all magnified by the introduction of a new love interest, one he is discouraged to have during his early stages of sobriety.
Like many young Black people, Will is acutely aware of the racial tension and potential danger that police officers can pose. While not named within the show, Will’s outbursts and hyperfixation with the event align with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a common and at times debilitating mental health disorder characterized by negative intrusive thoughts and emotions about oneself, flashbacks of the traumatic event(s), and emotional arousal that can lead to irritability or angry outbursts.
A 2022 study on the Trauma and US Minority Children and Youth found that Black children are disproportionately affected by community violence, with them being at higher risks of being exposed to higher amounts of adverse childhood experiences and physically harmful forms of violence. Not only are BIPOC youth more likely to witness more violence but they also tend to face more barriers to care and receive low-quality care. Will’s experience is not only common, but unfortunately true to life. What sets him apart — and makes for the hook of Bel-Air — is the difference in his access to support. But that same support does not take away the scared boy that just wants to feel loved that exists in Will. Ball as he might, no pickup game or well timed joke can help Will escape the insecurities and fears that he holds.
Where Will struggles in a way that feels familiar but remains unnamed, Carlton’s journey with anxiety is made known from the beginning of the show. Shortly after Will’s arrival, Uncle Phil tries to persuade Carlton to put himself in Will’s shoes, alluding to how their struggles are similar. Carlton, however, is adamant about the way his anxiety disorder sets him apart and isolates him from his loved ones.
If Will is struggling with the expectations of his new reality, Carlton was forged in the fire of them. He is charming and sociable in his own right, Carlton embodies what some know as the “token Black kid” of the affluent Bel-Air bubble. He plays lacrosse, loves race cars, and at times, feels isolated and rejected by his Black peers. Behind the armor of “perfection” he developed throughout childhood, Carlton is crumbling under its weight.
In season 1, Carlton parties and does drugs with the neighborhood terror, Connor, and shames Will for “trying to play the race card” when he is confronted about letting his non-Black friends say the n-word without recourse. Where Will sees Carlton as too enmeshed in the whims of his white counterparts, his assimilation into the privileged world of Bel-Air can also be read as self-protection.
The only son of the ever imposing, ambitious self-made Phillip Banks, Carlton uses everything and everyone in his power to maintain an air of perfection and respectability, that many young Black folks know well. The idea that we have to be “twice as good to get half” [of what our white counterparts receive] is an age-old adage that unfortunately causes Carlton more harm than good. As the class president, captain of the lacrosse team, and the title of Bel-Air Academy’s “golden (Black) boy,” Carlton internalizes the racism around him, and moves out of fear of disappointing his father.
While any person of color in a majority white space can relate to his struggles, Carlton’s specific experience as a young Black man carries a different weight. His need to be perfect is driven internally and reflected back to him externally. As told to him by a Black teacher, a win for him is a “win for all of us.” In the same breath, he is rejected by his Black peers for rejecting them, seen as only using them for clout during school elections. At every turn, he is rewarded for pushing himself further as a young Black man, while also further isolated from his community because of his strivings. Yet Carlton understands, perhaps more than any other Bel-Air character, optics are everything. That is what makes his admittance of his drug addiction while accepting a prestigious award as its first Black student recipient so powerful. In order to break free of the pressure and inflicted self-harm, he must crack himself open in front of the very people that demand his composure.
Will opts for bravado and brash anger in place of vulnerability, and for nearly two full seasons, Carlton reached for drugs. Their methods look vastly different, but the hyperfixation they have on their imperfections, and subsequent harnessing of that emotion in less than productive avenues communicate the same fear and self-loathing. Carlton would rather control a situation, because he is so used to being controlled by his family, his lacrosse coach, even his demanding, racist “best friend” Connor. Will, on the other hand, is used to being out of control, and instead chooses to lean into it, becoming the very chaos that can surround him and give him a sense of comfort.
It is these multilayered, sometimes ugly expressions of insecurity, self-doubt, and anxiety that eventually bring Will and Carlton into the unshakeable bond that has blossomed in the most recent episodes of Bel-Air season 3. Where they initially experienced each other as polar opposites, Will and Carlton’s shared experiences as young Black men coming into their own, and the tumultuous path to doing so is actually what brings them together. It is Will who first discovers Carlton doing lines of Xanax in his closet, and Will who holds Carlton as he breaks down during a particularly volatile moment. Likewise, Carlton coyly slips Will cash ahead of his brief departure from the Banks’ house. The boys come to understand each other because they are living parallel lives. As viewers, we get to see two Black young men figure out the worst of what the world has had to offer them, with each other.
Now in its third season, it is safe to conclude that Bel-Air has found an audience that enjoys the departure from its sillier, feel good predecessor. Bel-Air has found its footing, building succinctly on the foundation it was given. More nuanced portrayals of mental health, in Black children and adolescents specifically, are much-needed in the media that seeks to represent us. By exploring anxiety, named or unnamed, they are providing a new face to a problem that plagues the Black community, yet is relegated to white people or rich people problems.
That is not to say the new series does not address the ways the Black community can prioritize respectability over vulnerability. Aptly said by Ashley in Bel-Air season 3, “Sometimes looking the part is more important than what’s really going on.”
Yet, in having Will and Carlton experience their mental health so vividly, Bel-Air is bringing much needed exposure, while fostering the necessary empathy and understanding. In doing so, they are eroding long-standing barriers that have needed to come down.
