Jaleel White Says Playing Urkel During Puberty Damaged His Voice for Decades

I imagine that, the first time a vocal coach told Jaleel White that years of playing Steve Urkel on Family Matters had done serious damage to his vocal chords, his response would have been a question along the lines of, “Did I do that?” — if speaking wasn’t pure pain at the time.

White’s performance as the nosy, nasally and shit-stirring Urkel on Family Matters is best defined by the catchphrases and high-pitched tones that scored his rise from side character to series protagonist. White didn’t even appear on the show until the 12th episode of its first season, but as soon as audiences heard his heightened squealing and saw his eyes shifting mischievously from behind his comically oversized glasses, it became clear that one character on what was supposed to be an ensemble-led spin-off of Perfect Strangers was destined to outlive the rest of the series in terms of pop-culture relevance. Then, when Family Matters finally concluded in 1998, White found the character of Urkel hard to shake — both from a career perspective and physically.

Yesterday, White spoke on a moderated panel at ‘90s Con in Dayton Beach, Florida called “The Evolution of Jaleel White,” during which he revealed that neither ABC nor the various studios behind Family Matters ever bothered to hire a vocal coach to help him protect his voice as a child actor playing a distinct and demanding role on the hit sitcom. 

Now 47, White revealed that playing Urkel throughout puberty “damaged my voice” for many years after he returned from outer space.

“I spoke to a doctor,” White explained during his panel at the annual convention for fans of everything pop culture during the 1990s as well as the artists responsible for such properties. “And what happened is during puberty I spoke at the same pitch for extended periods of time. If the pitch had been going all over the place I wouldn’t have damaged it quite as much.”

Though White clarified that “it’s been in remission and I’m fine now,” he recalled how, between the ages of 15 and 16, the strain of creating such a loud and high-pitched tone for 25 episodes per season without any professional or medical guidance seriously threatened his physical development, as well as his job performance. “I felt like I was really losing it. I would constantly get network notes like, ‘We can’t hear him. Please be more clear,’” White recalled. “It was kind of a scary thing for me to go through.”

Today, White has the support that neither his studio nor his network ever bothered to give him, and he sees both a doctor and a vocal coach about the damage to his vocal chords in order to “get it under control.” However, for all the negligence that led to White nearly losing his voice at 15, he said of his time on Family Matters, “I wouldn’t do anything differently. It was a great experience, and it was a small sacrifice to make for one hell of a legacy.”

Well, maybe he’d do a couple things differently — a little “Do-Re-Mi” before the cameras rolled couldn’t have hurt.