EURweb |
JALEEL WHITE TALKS ABOUT HIS INTERNET DEATH: Actor tells EUR the “annoying” rumor actually showed just how many lives he’s touched.
*Last June, someone generated a story about actor Jaleel White having committed suicide, attached the Associated Press’ name to it and sent it around cyberspace.
The story said White was pronounced dead on arrival at a Los Angeles hospital after paramedics were dispatched to his apartment and found him dead of “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
White, known to millions as Steve Urkel on the sitcom “Family Matters,” tells EUR’s Lee Bailey that he was in New York City en route to a Sox/Yankees game when he first heard that he had died.
“It was incredibly annoying. What can I say, the Internet is the land of the great sucker punch,” laughs White. “It’s just unfortunate that people can do that to you and kind of hide behind anonymous names.”
To this day, the 29-year-old has no idea who was behind the Internet prank – “probably some Internet geeks” White believes – but he says there was one positive aspect to come out of the experience.
. “I really discovered just how many people’s lives I’ve been able to touch, because my cell phone just blew up for the entire month of June,” he says. “Even though it was for a negative reason, it was very beautiful to see that.”
The UCLA grad says he’s still very much alive and doing quite well these days.
“My life is terrific, I have two loving parents, I have great friends, I live in the Santa Monica area of Calif., I’m a college graduate, I continue to work, make money and earn a living,” he says.
White says his absence from the public eye probably gave the rumor more legs than the usual celebrity death rumors, like the latest one surrounding R&B artist Teairra Marie – who is not dead, by the way.
“When they do it to people who, let’s say, don’t have a series on the air at that particular time, or a movie coming out, it just lends more credibility to whatever it is they were attempting to do,” White says of the rumor starters. “If you did it to Brad Pitt or someone like that, of course the engines of the studios releasing his next movie are gonna rev up tomorrow.”
White says he’s been busy making his paper as a screenwriter and just finished working on a pilot, not to mention two movies this year.
“So it’s not true!” White screams of his suicide.
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