‘A Different World’ put Atlanta’s HBCUs to good use for Netflix reboot
The original “A Different World” shot fictional HBCU Hillman College on a soundstage in Hollywood.
But 33 years after the now-classic sitcom concluded its six-year run on NBC, Netflix is bringing Hillman College back to life using the actual campuses of three historically Black colleges in Atlanta: Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta University. All 10 episodes are out on Netflix Thursday.
This time around, there is no laugh track or live studio audience. “A Different World” in 2026 drives in the “dramedy” lane, offering a more grounded representation of its characters. It incorporates “Different World” OGs and a new slew of students, two of whom are offspring of the originals.
Atlanta University Center also provides the Netflix version with a level of authenticity the original show wasn’t always able to replicate on a stage.
“We wanted to have an immersive HBCU experience,” said Felicia Pride, the Atlanta-based showrunner, creator and executive producer of the new show, said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The AUC really provided that and we are grateful for Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta to open their doors like that for us.”
Pride, who moved to Atlanta last year after serving as co-executive producer and writer for two seasons of Peacock’s “Bel Air,” didn’t attend an HBCU, but her parents did. She also noted that Jasmyn Lawson, a content executive at Netflix, is a Spelman alum.
“She was instrumental in making sure that we were shooting at Spelman in certain locations and just being a champion of the show,” Pride said.
The reboot is happening in large part because of Howard University graduate Debbie Allen, a key creative on the original “Different World.” Allen returned as producer and director on the reboot. (She also plays a small but amusing role as a blunt academic adviser.)
Pride and Allen also went out of their way to ensure the students felt included.
Nearly 60% of the background actors were HBCU students or alums. Netflix also hired dozens of students to work in multiple departments and created an advisory committee of 10 HBCU students to either be on set or sit in the writers’ room.
‘We got so much insight from the students themselves,” Pride said. “It was invaluable. And the background performers who were students knew the assignment. For instance, we didn’t have to tell them what the convocation was. They knew. When we were at the homecoming with (Atlanta R&B artist) Summer Walker, they knew the songs. It was just so beautiful to have them.”
One of the advisory board members was in a roller skating club at Howard. So Pride recruited Atlanta roller skaters to perform in the background of episode 9 while Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) talks to Lena (Jada Pinkett Smith).
“These are just small bits of texture,” Pride said. “But they make a difference.”
Pride was also moved by the reception this past Monday night at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, where the first episode was screened before 2,500 students, faculty and cast and crew.
“The mayor came,” she said. “All the college presidents were there. Atlanta showed so much love.”
Spelman associate professor Michelle Hite, who watched the show as a teenager, admits the staff was as excited, if not more so, than the students about the show being on campus. She admitted that a security guard castigated her for peeking out the window at one point to watch a scene.
“This really shrinks the distance between fiction and reality,” she said.
Here are a few locations featured on the show both at AUC and elsewhere:
Bessie Strong Hall
Jasmine Guy, a longtime Atlanta resident, returns as the iconic Whitley Gilbert for the reboot. Gilbert runs a skincare empire and contributed enough money to have her name slapped on a building.
The show chose the exterior of Bessie Strong Hall, an upperclassman residence hall built in 1917 on Spelman College that was also featured as a backdrop in the original series. It was built through funds provided by John D. Rockefeller, whose oldest daughter was named Bessie Strong.
Century Campus
The heart of the Morehouse campus is its expansive green space, dubbed Century Campus, where graduation is typically held.
On a breezy day in March 2026, “A Different World” shot a Friday Fest homecoming event there featuring singer Summer Walker for the third episode. The AJC watched several scenes featuring several key cast members.
More than 100 extras, a mix of students and alums, some in sorority and fraternity gear, shot a scene over and over, semi-choreographed to the song “Knuck if you Buck” by Crime Mob.
One scene featured Ron Johnson Jr., played by Darryl M. Bell, having a heart-to-heart talk with his son Shaquille Johnson, a freshman quarterback for the Hillman Falcons who passed on opportunities at bigger colleges to attend an HBCU as a promise to his late mom.
Bell, wearing a blue fraternity hoodie for Kappa Alpha Nu, took a break between takes to express the nostalgia he felt being in the same area where he shot Spike Lee’s “School Daze” in 1987.
“There is a symmetry here for me, Jasmine and Kadeem,” he said. “When the show began, we were just starting our careers. Now we are here to help launch this new generation. We are not just paying homage to the original series but telling new stories.”
Robert House and Kilgore Campus Center
This shot, in the opening moments of the first episode of “A Different World” and in the trailer, features two iconic Morehouse buildings.
On the left is Joseph T. Robert House, a residence hall built in 1916 for high-achieving students. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived there as a student in the 1940s.
To the right is Kilgore Campus Center, erected in 1992 in honor of Rev. Thomas Kilgore Jr., a Morehouse alum and prominent civil rights activist who helped organize the March on Washington in 1963.
B.T. Harvey Stadium, Morehouse College
A good portion of the second episode revolves around the first Hillman football game for Shaquille, who is miffed that he isn’t starting.
Shot at B.T. Harvey Stadium at Morehouse, the end zones were rebranded as Hillman. The shoot featured members of the Morehouse College Maroon Tigers football team and the Morehouse College “House of Funk” Marching Band.
Travion Moore, a Morehouse junior majoring in cinema, television and emerging media studies, was a production assistant on the show and a band section leader during the football game scene.
“We had to educate the director on band culture,” Moore said. “They didn’t know how to count off when we are about to start a song. We had to teach one of the actors how to properly play the drums. They listened to us and took our suggestions.”
LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson Performing Arts Center, Spelman
“A Different World” shot both the convocation in the first episode and a talent show in the seventh episode at Spelman’s Rockefeller Arts building in the theater named after Spelman alum LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Morehouse alum Samuel L. Jackson in 2024.
The power couple donated $5 million to help renovate the performing arts center in 2021, the largest alumni donation to Spelman in the college’s history at the time.
In the opening episode, protagonist Deborah Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon), daughter of Whitley Gilbert and Dwayne Wayne, confronts the provost about possible financial malfeasance at Hillman.
Tongue & Groove nightclub
Trendy nightclub Tongue & Groove, which opened in 1994 in Buckhead Village and moved to the Lindbergh area in 2007, is used for a party scene in episode 6, which features all the key regular cast members.
The club was also a set piece for the Jamie Foxx/Cameron Diaz 2025 Netflix action comedy “Back in Action.”
Biltmore Ballrooms, Midtown Atlanta
Midtown Atlanta’s Biltmore Ballrooms event space, built in 1924 as part of the original Biltmore Hotel and Biltmore Apartments, is used for a major black-tie gala in the season finale.
The hotel shuttered in 1982, but in 1999, the two ballrooms were restored with crystal chandeliers and handcrafted plaster ceilings and have since hosted hundreds of weddings and fancy parties.
For several years, Bravo shot the reunion episodes of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” with Andy Cohen in one of the ballrooms.
Cinespace Studios Atlanta
Interiors of Freddie Brooks’ classroom, the dorms and the Pit, the gathering space for many of the students on the original show and the reboot, were built at Cinespace Studios near Lakewood Amphitheatre, former home of “Stranger Things.”
Pride said they wanted to ensure common spaces from the original show maintained a similar layout, but with a modern feel. And Cree Summer, who plays Brooks as a tenured professor at Hillman, provided feedback to ensure the details in her classroom, from books to wall hangings, felt legitimate.
“The conversations got surprisingly granular,” Pride said. “For Whitley Gilbert Hall, we had a 30-minute conversation about whether the front door swings in or out from the original series and do we do the same in this series.”