The Memoir Of Ms. Butterfly

Jo Marie Payton was born in Miami, Florida, on August 3, 1950.[Sometime during her early teens, her family relocated to Opa-Locka, Florida.

Payton attended high school at North Dade Jr./ Sr. High School and later graduated from Miami Carol City Senior High School in 1968.

Continuing her education, Payton graduated from Albany State University. She then moved to California, where she joined the national touring company of the musical Purlie.

Payton’s big break came when she was cast as Harriette Winslow, the elevator operator on the ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers, in 1987. Audiences received her performance so well that she was given her own sitcom, Family Matters, in 1989.

Continuing her character Harriette Winslow from Perfect Strangers, she played a mother in a middle-class black family living in Chicago, Illinois.

Unfortunately, Payton left Family Matters partway through its final season, appearing for the last time on December 19, 1997, during increasing tension between her and star Jaleel White (the two nearly came to blows and had to be physically separated during Payton’s penultimate episode). Harriette Winslow was played by Judyann Elder in the show’s remaining eight episodes.

Jo Marie Payton was cast alongside a star-studded cast of actors, including Reginald VelJohnson as the police patriarch and husband, Carl Winslow, Kellie Shanygne Williams as the well-liked Laura Winslow, Darius McCrary as the big bro jock, Eddie Winslow … and of course Jaleel White as the nerdy neighbor Steven Q. Urkel.

“I actually decided to leave the show two years before I left. I was unhappy about many things; I was going through a divorce, I wasn’t happy on the show — it didn’t mean I did not want to perform as an actress or an artist,” Payton reveals.

“The way I explain it is that, when you’re a baker, you don’t always want to bake cakes or cookies; you want to bake pies, you want to bake bread. So I wanted to do something else.”

Jo Marie Payton recalls an unusual incident that allegedly occurred on the Family Matters set.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Payton opened up about her then-costar Jaleel White’s alleged behavior while working on the series.

In fact, the actress who starred as Harriette Winslow once had an encounter with White — who played Steve Urkel — that she claimed nearly turned physical.

“There was one time he actually wanted to physically fight me,” Payton, 71, said while recalling the season 9 episode “Original Gangsta Dawg.” The episode saw White, 45, doubling as Steve’s gangster cousin OGD.

[There was a scene where] I said we can’t do that, standards and practices will not let that pass, it’s not gonna happen.

He wanted to do it anyway… He was so mad, he started kicking and screaming,” she continued. “He said something about, ‘She must want to melee.’ I said, ‘What’s a melee?’ He said, ‘a fight.

‘ I turned around — if he wanna fight, I would. Darius [McCrary] grabbed me. I was gonna whip his behind.

Looking back on the alleged incident, Payton now recognizes that White was “just a kid” at the time. Because of this, she doesn’t give him “all the credit” for how she says he behaved.

“I give some of those adults credit, too,” she said. “Letting him run wild and do whatever he wanted to do, thinking he can say what he wants to say, you know, and hurt people’s feelings.”

Payton left in the middle of Season 9. According to the actress, her contract ended after Season 8, and she had no interest in renewing it.

Although Payton had played Harriette since the character’s introduction on Perfect Strangers, she felt the role interfered with her pursuit of other projects.

Ms. Butterfly Genesis