LOS ANGELES — Most of each episode of the America’s Funniest Home Videos is scripted for host Alfonso Ribeiro. That includes the clever introductions to the video clips sent in by viewers in hopes of winning $10,000 and the commentary Ribeiro delivers during and after each funny on-screen moment.
One thing not written ahead of time for the 47-year-old host is the final interview Ribeiro does with the family whose home video has been deemed funnier than the two other contenders by a vote of the studio audience. Adults are just happy they have a thicker wallet. Where Ribeiro earns his money is in the impromptu chats with the younger members of a family. Often, the children are too young to even understand what has just happened.
Ribeiro has been dealing with those moments since taking over the hosting duties in 2015 after Tom Bergeron ended a 15-year stint hosting the show, which airs Sundays on ABC. To make the interview with the winning family come across as honest and unscripted as possible, Ribeiro never meets any of the finalists ahead of time. The only information he is given is a little history of the three videos.
His approach to dealing with the interview is to just be himself.
“For me, it’s just doing my natural thing,” Ribeiro said. “I love to connect with people. I love to talk to people. I love to make people feel warm. I always feel like when we have an opportunity to make someone feel special and make someone feel at home and comfortable, that’s what I want.
“When I’m on TV, my first thought always is that I want people to smile. I want people to have fun, be relaxed and enjoy themselves.”
Ribeiro was making people smile long before he took on the America’s Funniest Home Videos hosting duties. The New York native has been working as an actor, TV director, award-winning dancer and Broadway star for more than 30 years.
He began his career as a child actor, most notably playing the lead role in the Tony Award-winning musical The Tap Dance Kid. His leap to TV came when he was cast opposite Ricky Schroder in the long-running NBC sitcom Silver Spoons. But it was his 1990 NBC series, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, that gave him the most fame. The same year Ribeiro and Will Smith were starring in the launch of Bel-Air, ABC debuted American’s Funniest Home Videos as a regular weekly series with Bob Saget as the host.
America’s Funniest Home Videos is the longest-running prime-time entertainment show in the history of ABC. Each week, thousands of user-submitted home videos are evaluated to put together the show. Each week, three are singled out and the families attended the taping. They are not allowed to be in the audience until the three finalists are announced, so there’s no way they can sway audience voting before the winner is selected.
Being a finalist and a winner can be very lucrative as those who win the weekly competitions on America’s Funniest Home Videos move on to the next competition round, where they vie for a $100,000 prize. At the end of the season, the $100,000 prize winners compete for a grand prize vacation package. Through the first 29 seasons of the show, more than $15 million in prize money has been awarded to those selected from nearly two million videos sent in.
Hosting the show has been a great job for Ribeiro.
“Working on this show definitely leaves the door open for me to go off and do other jobs,” he Ribeiro said.
