Could you imagine what history would be like if Brandy was not Moesha Mitchell? As it turns out, that could have been a reality.

The music icon, who played the titular character on the classic UPN show for five seasons from 1996 to 2001, originally did not want to audition for the role.

For those unfamiliar, Brandy was coming off the heels of her multiplatinum self-titled debut album when Moesha co-creator Ralph Farquar requested that she audition.

“She [Sonja Norwood, her mother] gave me a script that Ralph Farquhar and the other creators of Moesha gave to her,” Brandy told Essence in an interview with Essence from 2019, noting her mother/manager advised her to audition. “And I was like, ‘Mom, I’m not an actress.’ I didn’t really take my acting seriously.

However, Brandy didn’t exactly excel on her audition the first go-around in the table read.

“She was so horrible, she was so bad. If the network had that reading, they would have pulled the plug,” Farquhar said in the VH1 special, Driven (as reported by Showbiz Cheat Sheet).

However, Brandy nailed her audition with the help of acting legend Kim Fields. And the rest is history.

“I sucked in the beginning…Everybody thought I sucked,” Brandy said in her interview with Essence. “She [Kim Fields] snapped me into major discipline. Without her, I wouldn’t have nailed it.”

Rumors of a Moesha reboot have run rampant for years. Most recently in October of last year, Shar Jackson said she would be down for one.

“It would really have to be strategic on how they would put it together,” she said. “I think that’s what it would come down to…how they put it together, considering we have lost so many amazing people from our show–Yvette Wilson, Lamont Bentley, Bernie Mac, I mean, the list goes on and on, unfortunately. So it would just be a matter of them putting something together that made sense where we could still represent and show love for the people that aren’t there anymore, given their amazing talent to that product.”

Moesha is currently streaming on Netflix.