It has been quite the year for Will Smith. In addition to his award-poised film King Richard, he has released an autobiography, one Youtube series tie in called Best Shape of My Life and a Disney + series Welcome to Earth, about the wonders of planet earth.
Here is the thing about Will Smith.
I’ve been a fan of his since I was a teen. It started with the Dreamworks animated film Shark Tale in 2004, and remember being blown away by it and counting the days until I could rent it on DVD. Thanks to that film and its various references to mafia movies, I discovered many other gems such as Goodfellas, Carlito's Way, Scarface and all the other Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese movies.
I was aware of Smith since I saw Independence Day in the late nineties. My father had a VHS copy of it. After watching Shark Tale, I started researching Smith’s movies and I came to adore his work. I loved how sensitive he was and I loved his gusto, swagger and charisma. And for quite a while, I consumed all of his content as I do with Benedict Cumberbatch, my current celeb obsession (8 years to be exact lol)
Then came 2008.
He had two movies come out that year. Hancock & Seven Pounds. I really enjoyed both of them. But then he didn’t work for four years. At the time, he said that he wanted to get into politics, but that didn’t seem to come about. I had no idea why he took a break and I heard rumours it was because his film Seven Pounds was badly received and he had expected an Oscar nomination.
It turned out he was essentially being a stay at home dad while his wife Jada Pinkett Smith worked on her own movies and production companies and series.
So he was absent for four years. Then he made the second sequel to Men in Black, which I found to be completely useless, though it was a better film than the first sequel by a long shot - owing mostly to Josh Brolin’s performance as the younger Agent K.
Then there was After Earth. Oh boy.
I’ve never seen the film, and I don’t plan to. Apparently Smith was responsible for much of the writing and directing on the film, M Night Shyamalan being credited as the helmer. There was a lot of influence in the script from the teachings of Scientology - which, if you’ve done your research on, is an abusive cult with a lot of power.
The film bombed super hard and it left Smith depressed. He also admitted that around this time, his marriage to Jada Pinkett was on the brink of ruin.
He subsequently appeared in a cameo as the devil, named The Judge, in Winter’s Tale, but it just didn’t work. To play the devil, you need two things. One is charisma, that Smith absolutely has, and the other is the ability to scare the shit out of people, which he doesn’t have.
Then came Suicide Squad and this time, he made a different choice in his roles. He plays one of the bad guys- a hitman named Deadshot. This was a step in the right direction. Playing someone who was very different than him, and whose morals didn’t aline with his. Sadly the film was terrible, despite its stellar casting and brilliant anti-heroes.
In 2016 that year, he played the real life Nigerian pathologist Bennet Omalu, who becomes a whistleblower to the covering up of the damage done to NFL players when they repeatedly collide against eachother.
This film was actually good, but nothing really special, as I was reminded too much of the anti tobacco film The Insider (which funnily enough is mentioned in the movie)
Smith was brilliant in it despite his shaky Nigerian accent. He said he was reluctant to take on the role as he and his family were big NFL fans and the film portrays the multi billion institution negatively. He was nominated for a Golden Globe that year but not an Oscar, and he boycotted said ceremony along with several others due to the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Which I found to be a little immature on on his part, since the Academy Awards that year weren’t as white as people claimed. Many people of colour won that year, just not in the acting categories.
He then starred in a film called Bright, where he plays an asshole cop in a fantasy world full of elves, orcs and magic wands. And the same year, Collateral Beauty - where he plays a grieving father who writes letters to Love, Time and Death.
Trust me when I say that Suicide Squad is a masterpiece compared to these two films. Bright has all of the bad decisions a fantasy film should make while Collateral Beauty appears to justify the psychological torture of a broken, grieving man as well as gaslighting. It was also cringingly melodramatic to the point that it actually made people laugh unintentionally rather than cry.
I was beyond disappointed with how bad these two films were and I lost faith in his decisions as an actor.
But Will then did something even braver than playing a bad guy - he took on the role of the Genie in the live action remake of Aladdin. This character was made famous by the late great Robin Williams. It was created for him and he became that character. So in order to take on that role in the remake, Smith would have to play himself.
Which he did. Like a lot of the Disney live action remakes, this film fails in comparison to its animated counter part. Smith, however, managed to be the only thing in the movie that sparked energy and smiles. It must not have been easy bearing all of the weight of Robin William’s legacy on his shoulders.
Two other movies came out after that that I skipped: Gemini Man and Spies in Disguise. I did however watch Bad Boys III in the cinemas, one of the few ones I actually got to see in theatres in 2020. And I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was relieved that Michael Bay wasn’t going to direct it. There are some jokes and situations in the first two movies, especially the second one, that are unforgivably bad.
And now we come to King Richard, in which he stars in a biopic of Venus and Serena Williams’s father Richard, telling the story of how the two tennis champions started out and the struggles their father went through to lead them to success.
After premiering at Telluride, there was an outpour of praise for Smith’s performance, calling it the best of his career and sure to win him his first Oscar. He was nominated in 2001 for playing Muhammed Ali in Michael man’s biopic Ali and for playing Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness.
What I really wanted to see from this performance is once again something different. A flawed character with charisma. And it delivered. He captuured all the nuances, the flaws and the empowering moments of the character brilliantly. Not only is he great in it, the film is great too. And I’ve been waiting so long for Will Smith to be good in a film that is well written and directed.
My favorite scenes are actually when he gets confronted and called out for his overbearing, controlling attitude towards his children, especially the peanut butter sandwich scene with his wife Brandy. It’s here that we find out that he’s not the saint that his children and the audience thought. He has had several other children besides his daughters with Brandy. When he pushes her too far, she refuses to stay quiet - but remains on his side. Later he goes to his daughter and tells her a story about how, as a young teen, he was beaten in a racist attack for touching a white man accidentally. And he saw his father run away from him. He breaks down in tears saying that he’ll never do the same to Venus.
I won’t lie, I was sobbing during this scene. It reminded me of my own father, how he wasn’t really too present in my life and he’s no longer with us.
The film won me over in that regard. But it sadly did not erase all of the other disappointments in his filmography.
Now to his memoir, released at the same time as not one but two of his docu series Best Shape Of My Life and Welcome To Earth (ironically named after one of his lines from Independence Day)
And I have to say, I and many others out there know more about him, his wife and his family than I would probably have cared to know. Mostly because excepts of his various crazy sexcapades went viral online.
The strongest parts are definitely in the beginning. His childhood was rough, growing up with an abusive, controlling father who regularly beat his mother and the children and was a control freak with the way he handled family life.
Such was the way for many low income families back then. Will talks about how he used to comedy to not only gain sympathy but also survive. He labels himself a coward for not protecting his mother and other people from harm.
There are also sections in which he contemplates the relationships he has with different people in his life - from his girlfriends, his wives, his father and other well known figures such as Nelson Mandela, James Avery and Muhammad Ali.
There are quite a few important details of his life and career that are missing. One of course is the Janet Hubert debacle. Hubert played Aunt Janice on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and was one of the reasons the show was so popular. During the third season however, she was pregnant and was going through a difficult time. She didn’t laugh at Will’s jokes and Will at the time was extremely immature and insecure. He went on to call her a difficult diva in the press. He didn’t realise the implications of what that could do to a woman like Janet, a dark-skinned woman in Hollywood at the time. She literally lost everything. Her family disowned her, Hollywood blackballed her. She had just gotten out of a very abusive marriage and had a newborn baby. She was completely alone. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for her. She was a talented Broadway actress on her own with no one to support her. While he became one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. Not a good look.
There are also many films that he worked on that I would have liked a bit more insight on, such as refusing to kiss Anthony Michael Hall in Six Degrees of Separation out of fear of what the black community would think of him kissing another man on the lips. Or playing a doctor who whistle blew on the NFL when they covered up life-threatening head injuries of their players. He doesn’t really go into the social issues surrounding him or the films he’d been a part of. Or how other people are really feeling. Except when it directly affects him and when his family and friends confront him about it.
Then there is the Scientology school he and Jada set up in California that went bust. Though it’s clear that Will and Jada aren’t actual Scientologists, they were affiliated with it at some point. He was good friends with Tom Cruise after all, and even had Cruise’s adopted son play the younger version of Will’s character in Seven Pounds. After watching several documentaries and documentary series on the matter, and seeing the horrific practices they enforce on people and their families, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that he and Jada see it as a religion and not for what it really is: a cult. There is a moment in Leah Remini’s book Troublemaker in which she recalls the Smiths attending a party held by Tom Cruise - and Cruise insisted all of them, all grown adults, to play a game of hide and seek. Very weird. And it makes me uncomfortable that he doesn’t address it.
Despite hating abuse against women due to what he witnessed in childhood, he not only doesn’t recognise feminism for what it is, or realise how it affects black women, he also engaged in chauvinistic behaviour in his youth, and continues to make questionable remarks about women both in this book and in real life.
In a few chapters, I was also put off by the amount of times he mentioned how much money each of his films made. Nothing about his co stars, his craft or the directors (apart from a select few such as Michael Mann, Gabriele Muccino and Stephen Spielberg).
It’s clear that he’s a flawed guy who is really just trying his best. But he also wants be the best at everything (something I noticed in his docuseries best shape of my life) and that is impossible.
He talks about how as a black man in Hollywood he felt he had to be super successful and chose all the right roles in order to be the perfect role model - or at least be super accessible to white audiences. He admits that he is an adrenaline junkie - incapable of sitting down and enjoying himself, due to what’s happened to him in his past.
It was definitely an interesting read, but I wanted a bit more from this memoir. Maybe in the future he’ll write another one and fill in some gaps.
With these two docuseries and the memoir, I feel that although I see an interesting, flawed yet very human character in Will Smith, it kind of cheapens the characters that he plays on screen. Because they all inhabit some force, a desire, a memory or a person in his life that we already know very well thanks to him revealing all of his secrets. Although that’s what a lot of actors do, most of them keep it private. and want to focus on the message and the story they are telling.
Knowing so much about Will and Jada’s private lives and then watching them perform on screen is like opening a present on Christmas Day that is no longer a surprise.
My 15 year old self loved Shark Tale and loved Will Smith. And when you’re that age you don’t really care what your fave does, as long as he entertains you. And while it maybe too late for him to be the ultimate role model for me now, a comeback that is both inspiring and tear-jerking will always be welcome in my books.
Despite rooting for Benedict Cumberbatch at the 2022 Oscars to win Best Actor for The Power of the Dog, I would ultimately accept that he deserved to win for King Richard.
But then the slap happened.
During an opening monologue for Best Documentary, stand up comedian Chris Rock poked fun at Jada’s haircut, calling her G.I Jane, possibly unaware that the actress suffered from alopecia. Will at first was seen laughing at the joke, but when he saw how upset Jada was, things escalated quickly.
And I mean quickly.
He walked up to Rock and violently slapped him across the face, before calmly returning to his seat. Rock pulled it together, saying in surprise “Will just slapped the shit out of me!”
People thought it was staged - until Will screamed loudly twice from his seat “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!’
What followed was the most still, deadly silence ever, with tension that could be cut with a knife. He later went on to win Best Actor for his role in King Richard. In a teary speech, he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees, but then went on to justify his actions, saying “love can make you do crazy things.”
There was so much irony in that action - that Benedict Cumberbatch, who played a nasty, mean, abusive and toxic character in a film about the deconstruction of toxic masculinity, would lose to a man who on the night of the Oscars, displayed immense amount of toxic masculinity, and was cheered for it.
This wasn’t the first time he’d slapped someone. He slapped and punched Charlize Theron by accident on two separate occasions. Both times was when he worked with her on the films Bagger Vance and Hancock. The second time he appeared to blame her for the incident when she didn’t perform the blocking right, and played it down to "two kids messing around on the playground."
It told me three things: One was that he still hasn’t handled his issues with his marriage. Two that he’s still the entitled man-child who hasn’t yet grown up, and who doesn't think about what the consequences of his actions would have on other people. And three, that he still feels he needs to control those around him.
He had based his character Richard Williams (the caring yet infuriatingly controlling egomaniac), on his own father, the abusive tyrant. As well as himself. His unfortunate clinging on to his father’s approval, and defending his actions, no matter how horrible they were, is concerning.
In perhaps the same way that in the film, Richard stops his daughter Venus from training and turning pro, as well as adding pressure and promoting his own ego, Will defended his wife’s honour by committing violence against another person who dissed her.
His version of love and his notion of what a man needs to be, is sadly very skewered and misplaced.
What should have been a lifetime achievement for him, turned out to be an embarrassing display of egotism and lack of self control.
Denzel Washington told him after the incident that “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you. ”
Hm. If Mr Washington had such skills in foresight, maybe he should have told him beforehand?
Chris Rock may have been the recipient of the assault, but Will will have to contend with this incident for the rest of his life.
A sad end to a legacy, indeed.
