Tempestt Bledsoe earned herself major fame as middle daughter Vanessa Huxtable on the popular
family sitcom The Cosby Show. So what has she been up to since the show went off the air in 1992?
Just a few years after her time on The Cosby Show ended — and not long after completing
her studies at NYU's Stern School of Business — Tempestt Bledsoe switched career lanes yet again
when the actor signed on to host her own syndicated talk show. The concept was similar
to other tabloid-style talk shows of the era, like Ricki Lake and The Montel Williams Show,
which typically featured guests discussing and debating personal issues in front of
studio audiences. The shows were also hugely popular at the time.
For Bledsoe's part, The Tempestt Bledsoe Show premiered in 1995. The star was just 22 years old,
making her the youngest television show host on the air at the time.
Not too shabby. Bledsoe told the Chicago Tribune in 1996,
"My viewpoint's pretty unique from all the other hosts on television [...] Whether it's
the fact that I'm young, and I just got out of college, or that I'm African-American and
a woman — there are lots of things that come together that make me different."
Unfortunately, Bledsoe's "unique" place in the talk show circuit of
the mid-'90s wasn't enough to keep the show on the air.
Despite her approachable and bubbly personality, the series was soon canceled.
After her short-lived attempt at talk show TV, Tempestt Bledsoe jumped back into what
she previously knew best: scripted television. But it had noticeably been five years since she was
last seen acting on the small screen. Bledsoe later told Access of this unplanned hiatus:
"I never intended to stop [acting]. I really wanted to just experience something different
that was going to be of real use to me and take me into a whole other realm."
In 1997, Bledsoe returned to acting on Jenny McCarthy's sitcom,
Jenny. She had just a one-episode, guest-role stint, but it seemed to be a jumping off point
for her future in television, as she went on to appear on quite a few shows.
Typically, these were also one-off roles, but in 1998 she nabbed a three-episode run
playing a single mom named Roberta Baylor on popular legal drama The Practice.
Bledsoe's longest-running onscreen acting gig after The Cosby Show, however,
was on creator Jimmy Fallon's sitcom, Guys with Kids, on which she played "Black-ish"
star Anthony Anderson's wife and a mom-of-four in 18 episodes. While NBC canceled the series after
just one season in 2013, it was a good fit for Bledsoe, who told HipHollywood:
"I tend to mother people, so it's not really alien to me as far as being an
actor to kind of assume that role. I always want to take care of people."
Tempestt Bledsoe's only lead role in a TV movie was in the teen film,
Dream Date, back in 1989, which she filmed while still starring on The Cosby Show.
"Stacey you won't believe what just happened. My father told me I looked like a good girl."
It was a genre she'd dabbled in a year before, when she appeared in the NBC Sunday Night Movie,
Dance 'til Dawn. After The Cosby Show ended, Bledsoe landed supporting roles in
several made-for-TV movies. Throughout her decades-long career,
she's worked with networks like The Hallmark Channel, Oxygen Network, and BET Pictures.
By the early 2000s, Bledsoe was appearing in a different movie or TV series almost every year.
She has even been in some of those cheesy televised Christmas movies we all know and love.
More recently, she appeared in the 2018 Lifetime flick, Jingle Belle,
in which she reunited with her former co-star on The Cosby Show, Keshia Knight Pulliam.
Bustle called the duo's "on-screen chemistry" with the movie's lead — The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
alum Tatyana Ali — "powerful." Recapping its interview with Ali, the outlet noted,
"She describes their love as sisterly and says working together was amazing and effortless
because they had known each other most of their lives as '90s sitcom kids."
Back in 1989, Tempestt Bledsoe made a guest appearance as Vanessa Huxtable on The Cosby
Show's spinoff, A Different World, where she met Darryl M. Bell. Bell was an actor
10 years her senior who played fan-favorite Ron Johnson Jr.
throughout the series' six-season run. Five years later, Bledsoe and Bell began dating.
"What do you say?"
"Rouge is our color. Oui?"
But in 1993, Bell was sued by his two aunts and his father's widow after he lost the majority
of his late dad's New York City-based security firm's $14.9 million fortune,
of which he'd been left in control following his father's 1988 death,
per Jet magazine. However, a judge ruled that Bell "mismanaged" the funds out of, quote, "imprudence,
rather than wrongdoing." Tempestt stood by Bell's side through it all.
"Our relationship is like cockroaches. It's, it's lasted."
These two have been together ever since,
but they chose not to get married or have kids, according to the New York Daily News.
When asked by BDO about her longtime partnership, Bledsoe had this to say:
"I think we are very compatible. I think that is really the heart of it. People ask
us what it is. I think a lot of couples find themselves together and find out
that they are not really a good match. And laughter is also very important."
Although they weren't technically married, Tempestt Bledsoe and Darryl
M. Bell appeared on the 2009 reality series, Househusbands of Hollywood.
The show aired on the ill-fated Fox Reality Channel and seemingly attempted to piggyback
on the success of Bravo's Real Housewives franchise — only without quite as much drama.
"If I'm the one that has to clean the vomit, I know how to get it done. Blah!"
Bledsoe and Bell were featured in nine episodes of the series. Bell was one of five
stay-at-home husbands featured on the show, but it unfortunately only lasted one 10-episode season.
At the end of the show's run, Bledsoe concluded that this sort of docu-style reality series
wasn't the right fit for her. The actor told CNN a few years later:
"I'm a little too private for that so it's not my forte. The genre is so huge at this point
and can be so many different things it's just another way to communicate with an audience,
but as far as talking about my private life and stuff like that, it's not my thing."
It was in 2006 that Tempestt Bledsoe first began to seriously dabble in reality TV.
She appeared on Season 3 of the VH1 celebrity reality competition, Celebrity Fit Club,
in which she attempted to lose enough weight in order to achieve a body fat percentage of 25
over the course of 100 days. Bledsoe, who is a vegetarian, told People at the time:
"I've always worked out, but I thought the opportunity to focus
on it solely for 100 days would be really good."
The Cosby Show alum did have some weight loss success while appearing on the show,
in the end losing 19 pounds, which she managed to keep off after her run on
the series ended. In another interview with People five years later, Bledsoe revealed,
"For me, what works best is to try to eat healthy and not worry about the scale."
After Tempestt Bledsoe and longtime partner Darryl M. Bell's time on Househusbands of
Hollywood ended, she returned to scripted TV and movies for a couple of years. However,
when a new opportunity arose in 2011, Bledsoe took it. The multi-talented star took over as the host
of The Style Network's now-defunct long-running reality series, Clean House, in which a crew that
also included future American Ninja Warrior host Matt Iseman would show up at the messy,
cluttered, and downright dirty homes of participants and completely overhaul them.
When comedian and Reno 911! star Niecy Nash, who was quite popular as the home
makeover series' original host, left the show, Bledsoe stepped in. Bledsoe explained to Access:
"This is a show where people are really helped and transformed each and every week and you
can feel good about watching it. [...] Every time I've talked to a family member that says,
'You've really helped me, you've changed my life...' You can't replace that."
Unfortunately, this venture was also short-lived. With Bledsoe's time as host marking the show's
final season, she hosted just 14 episodes before Clean House was canceled for good.
From 2008 to 2009 — prior to her reality TV hosting stint on Clean House — Tempestt
Bledsoe did a bit of voice acting on the Disney Channel original animated series,
The Replacements. She worked on quite a few episodes in the roles of Abbey,
Claudia, and Abbey-clone, and her skills were apparently impressive because a few years later,
she scored the role of Sheriff Cooper in the full-length animated feature film, ParaNorman.
Hitting movie theatres in 2012, ParaNorman was nominated for an Oscar in the best animated
feature category, further making it one of the most notable projects of
Bledsoe's long and varied career. Bledsoe told ST Media at the red carpet premiere,
"The movie is so emotionally, you know, connective. It just makes you feel like you
can do anything, you can accomplish anything, that it's okay to be a little bit different,
so, I'm in love. [...] I think it's very important for kids to see that message over and over again."
As of October 2021, Tempestt Bledsoe has yet to speak out on former TV dad Bill Cosby's
2015 arrest and subsequent conviction in 2018. The man known as "America's Dad" was found guilty of
drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in a 2004 incident at his Pennsylvania home.
To date, 60 women have made similar accusations stemming back to the '60s, according to NBC News.
Cosby was sentenced to three-to-10 years in prison, but ended up serving less than
three when his conviction was overturned by the state's Supreme Court in June 2021.
According to Forbes, his counsel proved that a previous prosecutor had promised
not to charge Cosby while encouraging him to testify in an early 2000s civil suit.
The decision shocked many, but Cosby was released from prison.
Several Cosby Show alumni have publicly addressed these allegations,
but Bledsoe — who's long credited Cosby for not only kicking off her acting career,
but for supporting her NYU studies — has never commented on the controversy.
She's therefore avoided the fate of her former TV mom, Phylicia Rashad,
who's faced much backlash after repeatedly voicing support for Cosby, once professing,
"What you're seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it's orchestrated."
But as Vanity Fair once noted on Bledsoe and others' continued silence,
"Whether that choice stems from pragmatic business-related reasons, or a desire to
keep their emotions private, these women aren't talking — as is their right, especially for former
celebrities who have been living privately for many years, removed from the spotlight."
In 2019, Netflix premiered the original series, Family Reunion. The popular show is about a
family who moves from Seattle to the suburbs of Atlanta to be closer to extended family,
but struggles to adjust. With its fourth season premiering in August 2021,
the comedy features an all-Black writing staff led by "Family Matters" writer-producer Meg DeLoatch.
It's a true throwback to the classic Black sitcoms of the '80s and '90s that we all know
and love, and often features guest appearances by the TV
stars who defined that era in entertainment — including Sister, Sister alum Jackée Harry,
former Hangin' With Mr. Cooper star Mark Curry, and one Tempestt Bledsoe.
Bledsoe joined Family Matters actor Jaleel White on the final episode of Family Reunion's first
season, titled "Remember When Our Boys Became Men?" Together, they play a bubbly but competitive
couple who rope the show's main characters into a couple of game nights. The guest appearance
marked Tempestt Bledsoe's latest acting credit as of October 2021 — as well as her most high-profile
TV appearance in more recent years. But with an estimated $6 million to her name, per Celebrity
Net Worth, this former child star can afford to be a little picky about her onscreen prospects.
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