Willow Smith learned early on that art can carry a high cost. In a recent interview, she revealed that her father, Will Smith, routinely turned down dark or heavy roles to protect their home from negative energy, choosing his family’s peace over high-stakes film projects.
Making an appeance on Kid Cudi’s “Big Bro” podcast, Willow broke down her father’s decision to accept and turn down certain roles.
“My dad has specifically said no to certain roles because he felt like the energy was too heavy to be bringing into the house,” Willow shared around the 55-minute mark of the video below. “Like, ‘Nah, I’m not even gonna touch that because I don’t want to be coming home to my family in this.’”
“That’s a deep one. You really have to embody it if you’re doing it right,” she added.
In his Oscar-winning career, Smith has turned some roles into blockbusters, including Django Unchained, The Matrix, and Inception.
SMITH ON THE IMPACT OF CERTAIN ROLES
In a 2022 Red Table Talk episode on Facebook Watch, Smith shared about turning down Django.
“I was going to do Django,” he recalled. “We had a family meeting, and we all talked about Django. I wasn’t all the way in, but one of the main reasons that I wasn’t was the looks on your faces ’cause you knew what that would mean. And those characters seep back into the house.”
That potential impact was also one of Smith’s primary concerns before starring in Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation.
“It was emotionally, physically, spiritually taxing,” he said of playing Peter. Willow said that she was “very concerned” when speaking to her father on the set. “I was getting called the N-word a hundred times by very good actors, by very, very good actors. It’s rough,” Smith said. “It twists your mind up.”