Jada and Will: Their First One-on-One Conversation"

you may learn how to act. Did you cut your hair? How do you do it? Beautiful makeup? Oh? Man? Happy? Yes? What time? Did your phone say? He's a minute late, Alice, So I'll put it in my pocket. In there, Mike check. Can you hear me? Why you got your clipboard? Yeah? How about that. This will be the last time I'll be here, but to's sitting in front of you with a clipboard. I'm trying to give you room for your damn clipboard. You look very handsome. I thank you. You

look quite delectable yourself. Yeah, I like this color in you. The first guest on the Red Couch. The Red Couch. Let me just say this, thank you for coming and talking about fatherhood. I haven't been a child that didn't grow up with a father. I understood and felt the absence of not having a father, But I've learned a lot about fatherhood through you watching you father. When do you think your fatherhood instincts? From the time I was

six years old, I wanted to be a father. I loved how my family was, but there were massive, critical deficiencies in my father's parenting that I wanted to correct. By the time I was ten years old, I remember looking at my father thinking I could do it better than him, And what made you think you could do it better? My father had a little bit of a temper, and I was a gentle kid, Like I was not

a kid that you had to slap or front your beat. So, you know, growing up in a household where physical aggression was approved of. That really chafed my hide, That hurt my spirit. What would you say was your father's superpower as a dad? He had a couple of things that were like spectacular. The strongest thing is he was a teacher. Every single moment was a teaching moment. He believed that school wasn't the only place you got in education, and school was actually in his way, and his thing was,

you can't father from a distance. He wanted his kids beside him while he was doing the thing that he was best in the world at, so he could be seen in his best light and he could teach from moment to moment. Got it Before Daddio passed, you did some interviews with him and a film crew over a few months before he died, and I don't know if you've seen I'll probably have it. I'm like, oh no, you will get me back for the time I was playing for the I used to buy used ice machines,

fix them up like new, and manufacture ice. I got a refrigerated truck, and along the way, I actually bought a building. It was really in serious disrepair. At one point, the whole roof cave den and was just laying in the middle of the floor. It looked like a bomb had actually hit it. The kids were up around fifteen and thirteen, and I said, you know, we had to rebuild this place. And the kids thought, there's no way

that we're going to get this done. And I said, yes, if we just lay one perfect brick at a time, we'll have a good foundation and it'll last and we started working on that thing in the spring, and it was Christmas Eve, and of course we were and out of money. It started to snow and we're just cutting little pieces of wood just to try to get the

roof closed up. And we got that last board on the roof and the kids were so happy, and I said, see, we can accomplish anything we worked hard enough to accomplish if we just put our mind to it. And I think that's probably one of the best lessons that I've ever taught. And it's true. If you build a good, solid foundation, then it's going to be long lasting and you're gonna have a much better building. And the building is you huh yeah, wow, you got me dank. Yeah,

that wall man. Of the lessons that he taught, I think that one's the one that I come back to most in my life. The whole wall was down and he said, y'all gonna rebuild it. It was impossible, it was utterly impossible, and he was overseeing. He specifically didn't want to touch one brick because he knew when we got to the end of it, he needed it to be our wall. And you saw how emotional it was

with him. That's how he wanted to teach. He didn't want to talk about it, and he specifically wanted you to be at work on things that served the family. How did that influence you as a man. The big thing is I lost my fear of things that are impossible. And that's for damn sure sure. It's like, how did that transfer to your fathering of trade Jaden and Willow. The major part was in not beating on them for school, right. I learned that everywhere at school that anything you do,

you have to do it well. Getting good grades isn't above cleaning the kitchen, and you have to discipline your mind and excel whatever you do, and all of the lessons that you need to teach are everywhere. That was the big one. And the idea of having to contribute. You have tough to contribute. Getting things for yourself is cool, but it will never make you as happy and as confident as when you build a wall for your family to eat. That's important because our family has been under

the public microscope for a long time. I think people didn't understand why we both valued that idea that the kids going to work. People thought we were forcing our kids to and then It was part of education of life for them in so many ways. Absolutely, you know, for Daddy O, he was an old school, hard military minded, get it done, get it done any means necessary. There was no quit in them. Yeah. And he was a firm disciplinarian. He was in the Air Force, so he

demanded order. The combination of order and teaching made him a very powerful role model and a psychological force. What he wanted to do is discipline natural reactions into your mind so when it got hot, you didn't have to think it's military. It's military. One time he sent me to the story to get some cigarettes for him. When we were growing up, you could go get your friends.

You can't stare through that no more. I went up to the corner Mr Bryant, and Mr Bryant said, my father he smoked terraton hundreds and they didn't have them. And Mr Brant said, you know, tell your father, I'll hold the carton for them. They come in tomorrow. Oh cool. They didn't have them. So I started walking home and my friends were playing, so I just got distracted and

I'll never forget the image. And I turned and I see my father with no shirt on, walking up the middle of the street and I was like right, and I was like Mr Bryant said, they didn't have them in there. He'll hold the carton for you. And he said, when I send you to do something, there's two possibilities. One you complete the mission or two your dad. And I was like shoot. He said, when you don't come home, I need to know to grab my gun and come shooting.

Because there was nothing that would keep you from finishing the mission. You are very disciplined man today, would you say that that was an imperative part of your what I now consider man training. It's like everything in his life was man training. He didn't separate anything. Eating dinner is the same as war. I know that you were able to really value your father's imperfections once he had passed on. Well, there's such beautiful qualities that he instilled.

That or a big part of what made me me. And as the end to every yang, I watched him beat up my mother out, so the biggest emotional scar that I have in this lifetime he delivered that. Also, he showed me a lot of things that I wanted to do, but he also showed me the things I would absolutely positively never do. To my children. He was so smart. Yeah, and then when he would get angry, he would turn into the dumbest person I've ever met. As a kid, I couldn't understand it, but all of

his wisdom disappeared as he got older. He had cancer, among amongst other things. He smoked from the time he was eleven years old, and he drank from the time he was twelve, every day every day. As he got feeble and frail, I could just see the little boy in there. Ye. Will married Shari's Zampino after meeting on the set of the hit sitcom A Different World. Later that year, they welcomed a beautiful baby boy, Willard the Third, and decided to call him Tray. I'm teaching my son

how to be being around rosy, happy birdie Tray. But not long after Trade's second birthday, they divorced. So Will Smith becomes a father at it's so gay. What was that like, Trey being your firstborn, firstborn? Yeah, bringing him home from the hospital, I think that was my first moment of the real weight of parenting. And I brought him home and I remember we put him in the basster net and Sari went to sleep, and it was like start terror. And it was like I'm totally responsible

for this life. And I just couldn't stop going and checking. I was like, oh no everything, I gotta make sure he's breathing and all of that, you know, all that new parenting stuff. But I just cried so hard, like it makes me teary right now. It's like from what was the I can't do it? Yeah, like I'm not the guy. I'm not the guy, you know. And it was like, oh man, um, I just knew I didn't know nothing. Oh man, because I need to get myself together. Um, I'm gonna have to walk this one off. Hold on,

I'm gonna try. Um. It's like in that O man, it was like how much better than me my father was. Wow. It was like it's on me now, I need a tissuee oh did you see that's perfect? See. I thought the red couch wouldn't get me like this. The red table always get you like this. But the red couch was safe. But like my parents was in Philly, you know, so it was on their way and I'm in here with my baby. Yeah, And it was like, you know,

my father did this, my father did that. When I'm a parent, Yeah, and then I'm like, and I'm shaking him to make sure you're breathing. It hit me how fragile parenting is. Yes, And just in that moment, I could see all of the spectacular lessons what my father had instilled in me. And I was like, there's no way, right, I'm not that good. Wow, But you know my mind works. You know my mind works. I got a good, nice sleep game on game on right, right, which was part

of what your father. Instead, I want to talk about one interesting concept that you've brought up quite a bit in regards to trade and divorce, and the idea being that just because a man might not be the best husband, he's not a good father. With Shari and with Trade, that was a really facal time. I love you. Divorce was the worst thing that like in my adult life.

Divorce was the ultimate failure for me. I've been hurt a lot in my adult life, but I don't think anything touches the failure of getting divorced from my two year old son's mother. Yeah. Um, Shari and I ran into that. You know, if a man is not a great husband, then he loses his parental rights. And I'm a way better father than I am a husband. In that process, you start fighting for your rights and the

kid is in the middle. Shari and I had that for a couple of years, and I called daddy O. And because of my experience of seeing Daddy O punch my mother, I knew that my kids would never see me do anything violent towards their mothers. But in the first couple of years of trades life, because Sheari and I were divorced, I think my desire to never have my son see me in that way made me more

absent as a father. He wanted to create distance and you want to We're not gonna be cursing, We're not gonna be We're not gonna be fighting and are called daddy O and DADDYO told me you'll never win if you fight a kid's mother. And I was like, what I'm supposed to do? She don't get to just do that.

He was like, surrender, m He said, when he's thirteen, he's going to come look for you, right, And then I just kind of backed up a little bit and it was like, you know, if if Trey wants to come over, he can come over, but I'm not going to force you two do anything especially if your mother wants something different. And that was a really difficult time. And then, just like Daddio said, as soon as trade was ready, was ready, he came looking for his father,

my literal father and best friend, doing big things. Father and best father and best friend. We had our core. A lot of parents don't get to hear that. I appreciate that. Thank you. So one of the things with you and I that worked well is you didn't demand that I do it the way you want to do it, and I didn't demand that you do it the way I wanted you to do it. Now, sometimes we had to just leave, you know. But Sharie and I really struggled with each other, needing the other person to do

it their way. She needed me to father the way she wanted tray father. And I'm not that guy. I'm not the parent teacher meeting drawing baseballs with the kids. And I beat myself up for that for a while, wanting to be that dad. I am the we're gonna build something together for work dad, like your father was like my father was to me. Right, I'm always looking for things that we both enjoy doing. When did you come upon that discovery? I think Trays Football solidified it

for me, young Smith. We were shooting Karate Kid in Beijing and it was during Trays football season, so it was you know, that was a very every difficult time for our family, and Jaden and I commuted from Beijing every single Friday. We would fly and land Friday afternoon in l A go to trades football game. We would stay home for Saturday, and then fly back and be at work on Monday morning in Beijing. I remember, for ten weeks, I would say, that's the high point of

my parenting. There's very few things in my life I enjoyed as much as watching that by played football, and he loved you watch and he loved me watching him do it. He could feel my authentic joy to be there, not because I'm his father and I have to write. Going from the Karate Kid and flying home every weekend to watch Trey play, I was like, I'm fathering the hell out these kids the Karate Kid experienced. I look back today because I used to be very angry about

that experience. You didn't have a good time. I did not have a good time. One of the things that I recognize out of that now when I look at Jaden's work ethic and I look at I call it his sage like drive. He knows how to hunt, okay, and that's because of you. And I do believe that Karate Kid and his experience there was very pivotal in regards to the young man that he is today and how he knows how to build things and how he knows how to get it done. He knows how to suffer.

If there is a central lesson that came from daddy, oh, that was you can't build anything if you're not willing and even sometimes seeking suffering. And I think that is one of the differences between, Yes, a mother wants to protect your absolutely okay, and a father teaching you how to find your strength, your strength in suffering through applied suffering. Baby. People used to say to us all the time, Oh, my goodness, how do you feel about putting your kids

in Hollywood? Liked I grew up in Philly and she grew up in Baltimore. If these kids can't take Hollywood, Hollywood a couple of people writing some bad stuff and saying some crap about them, Yeah, we got some issues. Yeah. Part of my parenting belief system is I want them at the edge of the maxim him amount of suffering that they can manage. That's where the lessons are. That's where you find your strength, That's where you learn things about yourself. Do you remember the moment with Jaden with

the splits, right? That moment was when I knew that the bulk of my father ring was done. Jaden was doing splits and Jackie Chan is hardcourt and the master who the master. So Jaden was trying to learn how to do the splits for for karate kid, and so he's in the splits and he can't quite get down into the splits, so he's trying to get it. He's trying to get it, and tears are in his eyes, and Master Wu walks up behind him and steps on his back and pushes him down into the splits and

he's holding them and Jaden is crying. He's crying, he's crying, and he gets up out. He lets him up out of the splits and he comes over and I said to him, I said, I went over there. He was in tears, he was in tears, and he said, are you done? Are you done? Because we're going to stop stop right? He said no, And he's like no, Mommy, I'm not doing again. And he turned and looked at Master Will and he said one more time. Yep. I was like, yeah, one more time. I was like, yes,

that was a turning point. Daddio would have made me do it one more time, he decided. Jaden decided on his own with the option of not doing it again because I made it very clear. I made it very clear we're done. Yes. I was like, he has learned the lesson that I learned with the wall. Yeah. That whole experience was very pivotal for Jaden. So yeah, my superpower um as a father is teaching in the moment, in the moment, right, Yes, it's teaching. I would say,

teaching and preaching. Eddie, what I'm going to tell your joke? Why didn't the Howard go to the movies because it was reading a baby? Say that's not funny, Jaden, I look a little disappointed. Okay, what did the cups say to the coffee, Oh, you're hot? Say that was worse than the first one. The first one. You don't give my comedy love. Don't put all that on it. She hurt your feelings a little bit. Will you tell a joke there? Why the party goes to movie. Because I'm

I'm I'm a teacher, and I'm a preacher. There's nothing like on the job parenting Jaden and Willow. They were home school for a couple of different reasons. One of the critical ones is because I had learned from the situation with Trade you can't father from a distance. I felt my hands tied in parenting Trade for that, you know, the first eight or nine years of his life, and my kids being with me is of a higher value than sitting in a classroom, spending time with me on

set or wherever I had to be. But I would be gone for four months at a time, and I just feel like, just for me, the nature of my job has me physically and mentally distracted. So I have to make up for that with presents. You have to be with me. We've talked a lot about the boys. I want to talk a little bit about Willow because believe, I really do believe that Willow she could just penetrate. Yeah, she made you have to fall back on your militant. Trey kind of got the most old school daddy O

version of me, and then Jaden. I got midway through that and I started to see that I was hurting him. He's not that dude. Trey actually gets riled up when you lean on him a little bit. And then I tried to put that same lean on Willow and she rejected it thoroughly, rejection, full rejection of the military mindset. I was raised military. I succeeded in the material world following these precepts, discipline, hard work, You write the plan

and you die versus not sticking to the plan. It's really simple, yes, And it was the Willow with With My Hair, my new video with My Willow was just nine when she dropped her debut single, Whipped My Hair, which quickly went double platinum. She signed with Jay Z's record label and announced a multi city tour with Justin Bieber. But after a few shows, Willow had different plans whom she had committed to, these thirty days on With My Hair.

We were in Dublin, Ireland, and she did her fourth or fifth show and came off stage and was like, I'm ready to go, daddy, And she was ready to go home, you know. I was like, well, no, you can't go home, baby. You committed to thirty days, you can't go home. She kept asking She was like, Daddy, it doesn't matter how I feel. And I was like, yes, baby, it does matter how you feel, but you have to finish what you started. And she was like, but I'm

I'm finished. It was so devastating to me when she shaved her head ball really well, because her record is Whipped my Hair. I'm like, that's a protest against me. Whether or not it was, it was a brilliant thing to do to come off of Whip my Hair being because it was like a top ten record, Michael Jackson had done it younger than her and blah blah blah, all of that kind of stuff. And then she just shaved her head ball right. So I took that as

a sign from the gods. I was like, this little girl is rejecting what I'm trying to do for her. She doesn't want it right. It's hard. She told me. She a whole bunch of big dogs. Jay z No, She's like it was. It was like she had made music, she she did it, she had enjoyed it, and she was finished. She retired. She retired, and nobody was going to change it. Was going to change that, and she wasn't hard with it. She was crying. She was scared, but what she wasn't going to do was do something

she didn't want to do. Yeah, it was pretty gangster. It was really gangster. Yea. She was like, I'm done and then rebuilt her career the way she wanted that process. Absolutely, that was like wow, Yeah, I saw how much I was making and forcing and pushing the things that I wanted, and in that moment, I just saw it was starting to hurt her. My desire for her was overriding her desire for her. Yeah, And I had a real epiphany on that and how bad a person will hate you

if you keep forcing your wishes onto their life. And I like stopped in the middle of it before I broke, before I broke her, and I was like, baby, I think I understand. I got it. You know, she introduced me. It feels so weird. What I say is she introduced me to feelings because I don't care how I feel. So if I don't care how I feel, I'm damn sure. I don't care how you feel. We got to achieve

the mission. We need a number one record. And I would say that with my hair thing put a pause button on my overt parenting I stopped and I just started watching my kids. And with Willow I started to see there was a higher value in talking to her about how she feels about the situation versus how to fix the situation. And it became the new thought process for me. It's like, oh my God, Like Daddy, don't never cared how I felt. It was about how I felt.

We gotta win, right. I remember it happened with Willow. Then it happened with Trade. Got all all these colleges wanted Trade to come play football, and he's like, I'm not doing it, and we were like right, but they could cut you. I made that sound a dog makes when you step on his foot. Right, you had to just go, hey, this is this is what he wants. So when do you think it happened for Jaden? When you really had to let go With Jaden, it was

after Earth. That was a big one. After Earth was so painful because After Earth was my first test run of caring about how the kids were feeling from moment to moment versus accomplishing. And you know how I make movies, and it's twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until it's finished. Ye, And what I did sighted on after Earth was I'm not going to have a single moment where I push him or pound on him.

I was going to be a loving father. And then the movie didn't work, and I was like, that's what happens when you give a damn how people feel. You can't win. It's like you can't. You either you either have a beautiful, loving relationship or you succeed in the world. How old was Jaden? Then? Was he? Or so? It was like the first test run of paying attention to people's feelings ended up in a movie that didn't work at the box office. I was furious, because I know

how to win. If everybody just do what I say, we're gonna win. Right. Worried about your feelings, but you know, I knew, I knew to to back up. The kids aren't ours, They're not ours, they are their own people. And I just completely let go of my needs and my desires for their lives, and I started shifting into what I called the gardener flower concept of fathering the seed already is what God designed it to be. The gardener is not trying to make the seed become what

the gardener wants. The gardener wants to create an environment where the seed can become what it wants to be. Where I'm going to provide nourishment and I'm going to provide support, but I am not going to preconceive what you need to be. There is a real arrogance in that talk, and it's like letting go of my picture of what I wanted them to be and allowing them to lead for me. That's really all you can do

for your kids. Absolutely, that's all you can do. They're gonna have to figure it out for themselves, but they're yeah, you know, and just to have something that they can come back to where they know it's not impossible. When I think about your father's fathering of you and then this journey of your fathering, how you are breaking your familial cycle and allowing it to evolve absolutely true your parenting. Ably do you see that? Absolutely? You know. It's like

I love doing a lot of things. I love being an there, I love putting stuff out in the world. I love husband and wife relating, but parenting, there's something really rewarding and challenging about delivering human beings to the world, to the world. How do you think we can help fathers feel better about their fathering. I think they're a

couple of cultural roadblocks to fathering. In the black community specifically, fathering has been somewhat assaulted, and there have been historical and systemic hurdles to African American fatherhood and attempts to dismantle it systemically. There's a touchy area to talk about, and I'm not relinquishing the responsibility. Let me say, first and foremost, if you have kids, take care of your kids. Do whatever you have to do as a man to

father your children. Now, with that said, there's a necessity that mothers make room for fathers. Mothers have the kids, they're yours, They're yours. It's hard. I can't get them from you, you know, can Those are your kids that came from your body. They're yours. I can't father if you don't make room for me and you don't support me. That's true. And you have to make room for me in my imperfections. You can't say you're going to make room for me if I get perfect, because I'm not

perfect and I'm not gonna get perfect. And I've had both situations, and you know, it feels very true for me that motherhood is the doorway to successful fatherhood. That's important. There has to be a partnership. The mother has to value fatherhood. So it is Father's Day and your kids have a few words for you, loving father, Happy Father's Day, my guy. I love you beyond life. I am truly thankful for our relationship the first time. Every step of

the way, the journey has been magnificent. I wouldn't change anything. I was so thankful for you, for your teachings, for your wisdom, your heart. I'm truly truly appreciative of you, and that the Divine shows me to be your son. I love you, Honor you, big love to your father. That it's me, Jaden. This is me officially giving you the Best Dad of All Time award. I mean it, it's real. I might not have the award physically here with me, but that doesn't mean that it's not real.

I love you. Happy Father's Day. You're the best dad of all time. Thank you for creating a world that we can flourish and love your son, Jaden, Rock and roll lives and rabels are real. Happy Father's Day, Daddy. I love you so much. Wow, beautiful makeup? How you doing being good? I'm crash, Daddy, I am infinitely grateful for all of the love, support in wisdom that you have given and continue to give to me throughout my life.

You're amazing. We appreciate you, and I just want to say thank you for everything I do will but no really because you are you. You know, you're really a great father. M hmmm, Braby Okay, yeah, it's really you know, even as the kids are older, you know, and you've been such a great partner. I really appreciate the parenting partnership. Yeah, we are. I think there's like there's no rules. Everybody

wants rules. There isn't. It's more it's more art science. Yeah, you know, and you know, I love what we're painting. Love what painting. It hasn't been easy, but it's definitely been worth it. It really has. So thank you happy Yeah. Game said it was great. Games always gonna say anything you do is amazing. She thought it was special though, Like that's gonna be like one of the best table talks. Was really impactful. See that's how Marvel and laws do.

Especially that one yes to join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation. Follow us at Facebook dot com, slash red Table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast, produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.