Jaleel White, 40, best known for his role as the nerdy Steve Urkel in the ’90s sitcom Family Matters, takes on a new role on Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry. In the episode, airing on Wednesday, Aug. 9, Jaleel meets with medium Tyler Henry, 21, who approaches the situation not knowing who he is meeting with to avoid bias. In the teaser from the episode from E!, Jaleel is visibly shaken as Tyler asks him if the letter “E-L-L-E” mean anything. “You’ve got to be kidding me?” Jaleel said as he nervously laughed in the clip. “Come on, man. You’ve got to be Googling this stuff before you come in here.”
Viewers see Tyler shake his head and push Jaleel to reveal who the person coming through is. “You messing with me,” Jaleel said still shaking his head, as Tyler admitted to not even knowing who Jaleel was! “This is embarrassing, I don’t even recognize you,” the medium said as Jaleel laughed and replied “Don’t worry about that part. We’ll talk about that part later. It gives me joy that you don’t know who I am.” The child star is then seen putting his head in his hands as her starts to cry, knowing that the person coming through is his friend and former co-star Michelle Thomas, who died of stomach cancer in 1998. “You’re talking about Michelle Thomas. She was my old co-star from Family Matters and she died from stomach cancer quickly. She had a lot of friends in the music industry,” he told Tyler. “Come on, man. You’ve got to be Googling stuff. This is crazy. Her birthday is September 23, 1968,” he continued.
Michelle played Jaleel’s girlfriend Myra Monkhouse when the two were on Family Matters until her sudden passing. She portrayed Theo’s girlfriend in The Cosby Show before starting on Family Matters in 1993. In August 1997 at the age of 28, Michelle was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, intra-abdominal desmoplastic small-round-cell tumor and underwent surgery to remove the lemon-sized tumor. However, the cancer returned in October 1998 and a tumor ruptured. Michelle died two months later in December 1998.
Jaleel recently tweeted about his experience on Hollywood Medium, writing that Tyler “absolutely blew my mind.” We can’t wait to see the rest of his emotional reading. HollywoodLifers, you can watch the full episode tonight, Wednesday, August 9th at 9 PM ET on E!