Alfonso Ribeiro’s ‘Carlton Dance’ Was Inspired By Eddie Murphy and Courteney Cox
Eddie Murphy and Courteney Cox probably don’t get asked to do the “Carlton Dance” nearly as often as Alfonso Ribeiro does, but maybe they should.
In all of sitcom history, no single dance move has become as inextricably linked to its performer and its character as the great “Carlton Dance.” And, most likely, no sitcom actor ever gets asked to do the same fucking dance for the 100th time that week than Ribeiro, who appeared on a recent episode of The Rich Eisen Show to tell the origin story of the iconic two-step that still follows him everywhere he goes 26 years after the finale of Fresh Prince.
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Ribeiro reported that the inspiration for the dance came from two places: a 20-year-old Cox in her first acting role as a starry-eyed white girl who is pulled up on-stage with Bruce Springsteen to dance to “Dancing in the Dark,” and a 26-year-old Murphy making fun of people like Cox in his classic special Raw. One fateful night in the early 1990s, those two dances met and made a lovechild that would change the way strangers talk to Ribeiro for the rest of his life.
