Will Smith and His Kids Take Over The Red Table

all right. I just want to clarify it because y'all might be looking at Willow because usually yeah, but in today's episode, she's like my guest. That's yeah's my guest. Alright. So with this movie, Emancipation was one of the most grueling and transform pnmitive and ultimately rewarding films of my entire career. You guys saw the movie I really wanted to as an actor. When I make things, when I put things in the world, you guys are my first

round of thought. I'm making things to leave ideas for my children, and then it extends to other people's children and then to the world. So I'm excited to be able to talk about it. So it all started with this devastating photograph that many say is the first viral image. The photo quickly spread across the country, shocking millions with the horrors of slavery and exposing the line that enslaved people were treated humanely. Peter's portrait inspired many free black

men to enlist in the Union Army. I'll never forget the first time I saw that picture. It was so moving in such a just heartbreaking away. And for that to be like the first like viral image is crazy. Yeah. So emancipation is the story behind the famous picture. It's based on the life of a slave named Peter. Give thanks to God. Do no ities with us. I will come back to you many meany you walk the earth man, because the election I'm your God now slaves off we man.

We must get too better Bush through this one Ncoln Samy East then that many least to die in a swamp. Jim's persistent running Hiden surviving. I fight him. They beat me, they whipped me, they break the bulls in my body more times than I can come to but they never never bring me. Wow, I have not seen the trailer. Crazy. There was some deeply moving moments. Yeah, it was rugged. We had some calls while you were shooting. Yeah, I

was very concerned. Yeah, he was just it was he can say, you guys been around for most of my career. It's like, as the years have gone on, I've gotten more and more locked into these characters for longer periods of time, and it's just the weight of this story, the weight of these experiences, the quality of the actors. It was emotionally, it was physically, it was spiritually taxing. One of the first days on set, there was a

scene with one of the actors. He leans down in my face and he says, you're a cold one, ain't you, And then he ad lived. I was like, right, no, but it was like I was like whoa. Every actor on this set was taking it really, really seriously. When the first teaser came out, as people were like, why another slave movie, and it's like, this is not a slave movie, this is a freedom movie. There were some parts of me when you said you were making a slave movie that I was like, m M, well, you know,

originally I was considering doing Django. Did you guys know that. You guys we had a family had about and we all talked about dang. Yes, yes, yes, I wasn't all the way in, but one of the main reasons why I wasn't was the looks on your faces, because you knew what that would mean, and those characters seep back into the house. So I invited college students to watch the movie and to share any questions that it brought

up for them. So first up is Devin, I just finished watching the film, and honestly, it feels like I just woke up from a terrible nightmare. My whole body physically hurt as I was walking out of the movie theater. That's how powerful the film was. It's one thing to read about slavery and all these terrible things that happened in history books, but it's another thing to watch it right there on the big screen. Well, how did playing a slave for months on end with people saying horrible

and dehumanizing things to you affect your mindset? And what did you learn about yourself? Question? One question? I was getting called the N word, you know, a hundred times a day by by very good actors, very very good actors. You know, it's rough. It twists your mind up. You have to be really careful because you definitely, you definitely twist your mind up. There's like a magic moment. As an actor, you look for the best way I can describe it, it's like you feel the character wash over you.

It'll be wardrobe, it'll be a scene, it'll be the dialect something. What happened is we were trying on the neck chains, so where it's you know, six weeks before we're shooting and they're trying to get the right size and the right weight. This feels horrendous. It won't be too much work to find this character putting the chains on. As an actor, you're always trying to find a thing that makes you understand the character who won't pursuit of happiness.

Chris Gardner took me to the bathroom and him and his son had to sleep in and I walked in the bathroom with him and I was like, got it. And as soon as those chains went on, I was like got it. It turns off your agency. You don't want to step, you don't want to move, you don't want to look anybody in the face. It's deeply dehumanizing. M hmmm, yeah, yeah, that just put me back in there. That put me back in there. Um, yeah, well take

a moment. Sorry, Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So they put it on and doing so I'm standing there and then he goes to take it off and it doesn't work, so it's a locked on and my heart jumps and I'm like, oh no, oh no, oh no. So I'm sitting there. Now he's running around looking for the keys, and for fifteen minutes, I'm stuck there in the chain and my heart is pounding and I'm like, will do not freak right, And I'm sitting there and then it's like,

I got it. It's like I'm will Smith with people running around looking for keys, and my heart is still pounding and I'm still scared. Imagine what it was like for Peter to have that stuff on barefoot and nobody cares. And it was like, whoo, yeah, I got it. Yeah, that was a powerful moment for you and Claus. Yes, absolutely really dehumanizing. And I haven't been able to articulate why,

but I felt embarrassed. I was embarrassed while I was standing there and I was waiting, and it was emasculating, dehumanizing, all of that, and it was like like got it, Yeah, got it. Once you experience those things, they go into the same banks as your actual memories. You don't have a separate place for acting. Your brain and your body recognizes it the same way it recognizes actual memories. You have nightmares about it the same way, and so it's

all of that kind of stuff. But six degrees of separation was the only other time in my career where I got lost, where I went too far with with a character. Um, I wouldn't say I went too far with Peter. I just lost track of how far I went. Okay, got it? I got twisted up in there, Um a little bit. What does that look like for you? Like losing track of that? You go into a state and when you go that one click too far, Will Smith disappears.

And then what happens is psychologically you go farther and farther into Peter and you don't realize that you are slipping away, and then it's over and you go back and you look for you and you're gone. It's a it's a hard thing to explain, right, So what happens You play these characters, and when you play them long enough, it's like moving to another country and speaking in another language.

If you speak the other language long enough, you'll start to lose your native tongue, and you can forget how you walk your previous personality right, and you know, you can see when actors get out on that edge, right, when you you touch that edge of no self. Yeah, and it's terrifying. It's terrifying out there, Peter is as far as I've ever been with a character. And you have to actually train yourself to be able to go

farther and farther and farther. It's it's it's blissful out there, right to be in a scene and you have that moment on camera when you forget and you're lost, It's like it's blissful, except when they say cut and you reach back for you yeah, right, and you it's a weird thing. But I got I got out there to that terrifying, blissful edge. So I wanted to show you guys, in real life some of the brutal, dehumanizing devices that were used during slavery. When you're say, in real life,

do you mean right now here? Right? Yes? Oh no, no, no, no no no, why I just want you have to know so you have to know, Wow, this is insane. So that would go around your neck, yes, wow, keeps you from running. This is like the ones that were in the movies that had like the bells on them and stuff. Somebody would run. But like, who even dreams this? Like that's what I'm figuring right now. To make it feel the way to that m hmm yeahs oh my gosh. And just feel the weight of that what it would

do in your neck. Imagine somebody puts that on your neck, they can take and if you're a way like rape anybody they want whenever they want. For me, as an actor, my image was you guys, and imagine and being pulled away right Just imagine somebody comes in here right now and beats me and snatches me away, and you guys don't know if you'll ever see me again. That is

the legacy of slavery in America. It creates generational trauma, even on a cellular level, you know, scientifically, exactly as brutal as it is, there's also the other side of how resilient and powerful that blacks in America. It's incomprehensible. Honestly,

it's incomprehensible. Let's talk a little bit about your physicality and what you had to go through to get your body into the place making this movie because Willow kept noticing in the movie, like he's getting skinnier, He's getting skinny. You guys may remember I posted out of Shape the dad Body picture. The Dad Boty picture was my beginning of preparation to lose weight for Peter. I was probably to five ish when I started, and at the lowest on the movie, I got to one. For me, the

physicality is a big part of what makes people go WHOA. Yeah, you know, to be able to transition and manipulate your body as an actor is a big part of the suspension of disbelief for people. And actually being out in the swamps. Yeah, I'm sure you were just losing weight just being yeah, just it's it's hot, it's nasty, you're in the swamp. Your hands are dirty, so you don't really want to grab food and eat really in it. Yeah, when I went in there deep, it's insane. What's the

most impactful part of the movie for you? So? So there was um And I can't even talk about Peter without being Altieri. So but y'all see me cry all the time. You'll see me cry all the time. So um, Peter said in his writings or that probably dictations to somebody, but the things that exist. Historically, Peter was beaten into a coma, and in the coma he said, he met God.

And it's right in the middle of the movie. And he's been running for a few days and there's no food and no water and out in the swamp and he's there and he's feeling lost, and he's feeling turned around, and his hearing is going a little bit, and he stops and he gets himself together and he goes, oh shock, and he finds the gratitude to praise God in the middle of that. It was one of the things that I wanted to be able to share with you, all

the ideas that I learned from Peter. So the concept is that nobody gets out of this life without having to bear their cross. Facts from facts. So you may not have to bear it to the level that Peter had to bear it, or to the level that Jesus had to bear it. But the only way to be here joyfully is to be grateful for the cross you've

been given to bear. You have to know that suffering leads to salvation, and the only thing that would make you not reach the Promised Land is giving up and Peter knew and trusted God fully that all he had to do was bear his cross with gratitude. He was saying thank you God in the middle of that. Peter's faith throughout the whole movie was something that really stuck

out to me. Peter has absolutely changed my life, you know. So? Um? Yeah, And I heard a great quote, the only way to be here is you have to learn how to have an open heart in hell. Yeah, here's a question from a theater go or from Los Angeles. What we got. My name is Stacy Ramsey. I'm twenty three years old and I went through so many emotions throughout this whole movie, to be honest, Um, some were sad, so we're happy.

Some felt really familiar because no matter what it is that you go through, there's so many things, whether it's people, work, family, that try to break parts of you, and it's so important just to push through and not let them break you. I have a question for Will. I just would really like to know what form of personal suffering did you tap into to execute this role. Wow, that's a crazy question. I don't have, thank God, anything in my life comparable

to what Peter experienced. There's a universal suffering that I think we can all connect on, but I don't know what I would actually do in the face of that kind of demid on a malevel to be really faced with the darkness. I've had moments within myself where I've had to face things, but like to look into the eyes of that kind of malevolence, it's either you're enlightened or you go crazy. Yes, there's Yeah, there's a term

Plato used that puts those together, divine madness. That there's a certain divine madness that I was trying to depict from Peter, because when you stop and you pray in that moment, that is a taste of divine madness. That's what I learned from Peter. Like the idea of the darkness being the road to the light. Yeah. Facts. So one of the most critical moment ments in the movie for me was the speech that Ben Foster's character gives

story telling the story of his nigger house girl. And what was so beautiful about Ben's portrayal is he loved her. And what I love is that you can see his heart was taught to hate. Yeah, my father, he's a core Nuskar. My mother passed when I was young, So the job of raising me, filling her how screw She took care of me. She feed me, she washed me, she taught me things. She's my friend. What evening, I asked my father if she could join us for supper, and he looked at me in a funny way and said,

then what I said, so we could eat together? To what she asked? Then what? I didn't know. I was just a boy, but he did. He said, first they eat their food, and they'll take her jobs, and then they'll steal our land. Well, you give them so much as a crumb, they're going to take over the whole damn country. Wow, that's crazy. And then he goes on to tell the story and how he watched her die for three days. His father taught him hate and through trauma.

It's like, I just couldn't imagine seeing someone you love so much in the field dying for three days and you can't do anything like that on a child's mind. Blunt, absolutely, Yeah. Ben Foster is phenomenal in Emancipation. I hear he sent the Red Table a message, and I haven't seen it yet. Ben is the total opposite of his character. The first day of set was staggering two hundred plus background actors

portraying the enslaved. I was walking past men in chains and in situations of such tremendous violence, and then I felt him. I didn't see him, I felt him. It was Will on set, but it doesn't Will Smith as we know him. It was a man, and that man was vibrating. It's animal stuff. It's hard to explain, but I could feel the presence of this man who is digging deep. And I passed him and I felt, well, I'm going to give him his space. We didn't speak

for six months of shooting. What I saw with Will is an actor whom I've respected for for so very long. I think does some of the most important work, not just of his career, but of current day cinema. This is a performance that speaks to the human spirit, against all odds, to fight for love, the fight of faith, the fight to endure and endure for love. I'm blown

away by what Will Smith did in this film. What I hope people take away from this film is the worst thing that we could do is not raise our hand, is not to have an open dialogue. We must reflect on our past and ordered to meet our current day, and our current day is rife with frightening similarities of what happened during this true story. When it took place, I happened to believe babies are not born with hate in their heart, that hate has learned, that hate can

be unlearned, and compassion can fill that void. Heal that virus, and we can remind each other of our similarities or commonalities with empathy. We don't have to get each other holy, but we must recognize that we're all flesh and blood. We're not here for long. Let's leave with kindness. Wow. Wow, that's crazy. That was beautiful. That's great that he felt you, he felt your presence. So my side of that, that's my first time here in his side. Right. So we

were having delays. I think we didn't even get a shot the first day. There was lightning and there was heat, and we had literally lost an entire day. So I'm doing my you know, thinking and the extras. Hey, thank you all very much, everybody, blah blah blah. In my mind, I was giving my best will Smith and Ben just walked past me and didn't say nothing. I was like, oh, he must he must not have seen me. And then

for six months. He didn't speak to me, he didn't make eye contact with me, he didn't say a word, he didn't acknowledge me for six months. But what he did that first day, I was like, yep, got it. We're not playing this is real, this is serious. We're not fooling around with these ideas. And I really credit then for clicking me into the next gear of depth and focus. So the final day, me and Antoine or at the monitor looking at the shot, and then comes over.

He never came to the monitor ever, he's there. He comes to the monitor, he watches the shot and Antoine said, I'm happy we got it, and then I look over it. Then this is last day. He says nice to me, like yeah, because it was like because you know we've been we have been through that whole movie together. That is crazy. Did you guys talk at all after that? When you he left, he flew out, he went home.

It was his last shot day because he went from he wanted to like, yeah, he wanted to make sure I can officially stop and on his character, Ben set the tone for everybody right, and he wasn't going to his trailer. He was staying in his tent on the set like although like his actor, like his character tent. He had all of his stuff in his character Tent. Well, you taught me this. Great great actors make everybody else's job easier. If you're great at anything, you make it easier.

So that was it. You guys didn't talk anymore. No, not till a few months after that. Yeah, that we we came back together for suppress or something like that. I was like, who are you? Who are you? You kind soldier? Oh man, that's crazy. So the brilliant director of Emancipation, Antoine Fuqua, wanted to say this, Hey, Will and Red Table Talk, here's a few thoughts about Emancipation.

I thought I would share with you. When people go to see this film, I'm hoping they'll be inspired and experienced the love story and see a film about freedom and faith and family as well as a story about strength and perseverance. The story of Peter is incredible, a man that was a slave but was free in his mind and his heart and his spirit. Antoine is no joke. This is what it's about. I respect that Antoine is a is a beast man. He created something I think

is a real master. Yeah, it really is. The DP. Bob Richardson put his thing down with this movie. The cinematography is insane and I've never seen any movie that just visually looks the way that this one does. One of the things that Antoine said that was great about that texture, the tone. He said he wanted to drain the color out of the Confederacy, right for that not to be glorified. There's a great shot with uh Peter firing a gun at one of the last moments in

the battle with the American flag gone by. And the story is that we fought for this country, right, We fought and earned our position in this country. We don't have to feel like outsiders here. This is this is our home, right you very said of that, And the thing is like, no, no, no, it's not America, no no, no, no no. We are America, like own it and not ownership in a way that is ours and not other people's, like it's all of ours. We are a part of

the fiber of this place. The ownership has to be in our minds in the same way the emancipation has to be in our minds. Like Peter was enslaved, but he was never a slave, but he was free. He was free when I was growing up, you know, because Daddy O was in the Air Force. Oh damn. Yeah. So Daddy O raised me like American. He raised me with the idea if somebody said go back to Africa, Nope, you go back to wherever your people came from. I'm here,

you go back, right. I have this conversation with people a lot of the times where they're like, this thing that you're talking about is so dark, or this thing that you know are shining light on is so terrible.

But it's like, we can never forget about the history of the reality because if you don't know that those types of things are possible and people can do that to people, then you know you're gonna you have to move throughout the world knowing history, you know, like those who don't know their history or yeah, doomed to repeat it. There's another one I really love. The one thing we learned from history is that we don't learn anything from history. Yeah,

you do it all over again. Yeah exactly, you do it all over again, and I'm hoping that it won't be the case. Yeah. It was really critical for me, for for you guys and really your generation to see this movie and to understand the foundations of this story and what it means in this country. You guys were born with black president. I remember when Barack Obama got elected, you and we were crying, and you guys couldn't be

like we knew he was gonna win. It was like you guys grew up in at a largely different era. So to me, it's really important when you know where you've been. It helps you get a better sense of where you're going or even why certain things are the way that they are. Right before, we have a message from your biggest fan, a message from my biggest fan. Who is it? Hey, baby, this is your mama, and I just want to tell you what a wonderful movie

in Emancipation is. I just couldn't believe a little wonderful job that you performed because Peter just came right through and I looked and looked, and I knew was, oh, that is my child. But Peter just exuded through you, and I just you just left yourself, just became Peter. When Peter was in the swamp, and it's there and it seems like forever in that water, and I wish I could have just gone in and just got me out. Well, I know how much hard work and dedication you put

into making this movie come to life. I can't wait for the world to see it and learned from it. I'm going to tell everyone that I knew that they definitely need to go. I love you so much, and I'm so proud of you and Trey Jaden and Willow. Mom loves you so much, proper. I'm so glad that we were able to have this conversation. I felt like I learned so much in that the entire youth that is going to learn so much. Emancipation is streaming now on appletus class be ready. It's a red table ache

over with my kids, Willow, Jaden, Trey. I'm the boss, I'm in charge, and we're talking about making a movie it pans it pants. We're talking about the most grueling and transformative No, no, no, it's it's Willow. It's not because you guys are playing behind me. You're playing with her. Ad Livin is how we got this house, alright. Me A Lincoln is the only reason are here kept having sex because I was a Livin. Come on, kids, we got you. Guys are being so immature making the movie emancipation.

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