-I want to talk to you about so many things.
I want to talk about "King Richard."
I want to talk to you about this memoir.
-Yes. -"Will."
It is named "Will," because obviously, your name is Will,
but also, it shows every high, every low, and the sheer will
that it took you to become who you are.
-Yes, sir. -I love the name.
And I love the book. -Thank you, man.
-This is -- Did you know you were going to --
you were writing this when you started writing this?
-You know, it was -- you never know what it's gonna be.
This is my first time -- I've never, you know,
written any -- I've written music,
but I've never written a book before.
So it was the first time. So it's terrifying.
And, you know, I worked with Mark Manson,
and he did a really great job of guiding me through this process.
-It's fantastic. It's so good.
-I bled on that thing right there, man.
-You really did, bud. I mean, you told every story.
-In Philly, we called that
"putting your business in the street."
[ Laughter ]
-You did, right? That's --
You definitely did. I mean --
I mean, you talk about everything.
You talk about relationships and the career in Hollywood.
And then, you talk a lot about your dad.
-Yeah, yeah. -Which I didn't know,
which is -- is it --
Does it feel odd to talk about it now?
-You know, that was a big part
of getting the freedom to talk about it.
My father passed in 2016. -Wow.
-You know, and somehow, after he passed, I got free.
You know, there were things I just never would have
talked about from my childhood, you know, while he was alive.
My father was, you know,
the greatest man I've ever known, you know?
But he also had some issues.
It was really a double-edged sword.
And, you know, just those experiences
didn't fit into the -- the narrative of Will Smith.
You know? So it was, you know,
after he passed, and, you know, I guess I felt like
I had suffered enough in my life that I could give advice.
You know? It feels like you can't --
you know, you can't give advice until you've earned it.
-Yeah. -You know?
-I just felt like I was in a place in my life
where I had reflected enough and I had healed enough things,
I had experienced enough things that I felt that it would
have some value of what I was saying.
-You couldn't have written this 10 years ago.
-No, no, not at all. Not at all.
Just the amount of, you know, reflection on my life --
And even in the process of reading, you know?
I mean, in the process of writing,
it's really great to actually have to go back through
and look at your life, and theres so many things
that we all have that we refuse to look at,
we refuse to talk about.
Our family acts like it never happened.
You know. -Trust me, I'm Irish.
Yeah, yeah. -Yeah, yeah.
-Thanksgiving, like, "Hey, we're cool, right?"
-"Hey, Jimmy, what's that under the rug?"
-"Nothing! Nothing." [ Laughter ]
"Just leave that there. Put your drink on it."
[ Laughter ]
-Exactly right. Yeah.
But, yeah, once you -- I guess once you do it --
-But it is so liberating. It is so liberating to be able
to just, you know, put down the -- the character
and to be able to go out into the world
and just live authentically as you are, you know?
-I think it makes you, too, it makes you enjoy what you did
even more to know what struggles you've been through.
Everyone has a story. -Yeah, absolutely.
-Everybody does. And so, you go, "Oh, man.
You must have had a blast if you were doing that."
And you go, "Yeah, I did. I had fun."
Obviously, you talk about the first time
you heard your song on the radio.
-Yes, exactly. -It's those moments,
you're like -- I mean, I've never --
we've never experienced -- Well, The Roots have.
But I have not experienced my song on the radio.
-Yeah. -What does that feel like?
-You know, the thing, you hear your song on the radio
for the first time -- Because you have heard it
yourself, you know, a thousand times.
-Yeah. -And then, the idea --
I remember I was in my father's shop.
And it was a record called
"Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble."
It was our first record.
And I remember seeing a guy go passed in his car,
listening to the record.
I heard it on the radio because it was
on my station inside, and it was like it's in the world.
-Yeah. -You know?
It's in the world now. And it's, like --
It is such a -- a beautiful feeling.
But, you know, I talked about in the book.
What happened is, I had told my mother --
My mother graduated from Carnegie Mellon,
and she was dead serious about education.
And in her mind,
if you didn't have an education, you were dead.
-Yeah. You did it wrong.
-You can't survive in this world without an education.
You know, so when I told my mother
that I wasn't going to college, it was like the worst thing
that I ever -- 'Cause I was going to do
"hippity hop," you know? [ Laughter ]
I was gonna do hippity hop. My mother, she worked
for the school board of Philadelphia,
and we couldn't say "ain't" in our house, you know?
I remember one time, I was running out,
and I screamed to my friends,
"Yo, where y'all gon' be at?!" And my mother said, "Unh-unh.
Hopefully they gonna be behind that preposition."
You know? [ Laughter and applause ]
-That's exactly right. -You know, when I told her
I wasn't going to college because I wanted to rap,
you know, it was real -- -She doesn't know
you're gonna be will Smith. -Yeah, yeah.
She had no idea. So my father let me have a year.
So, I had a year that I could go try to do rap music, and then,
after that, I was gonna have to go to college.
And within that year, we won the first Grammy ever given
to a rap artist, you know? [ Cheers and applause ]
-That's how you do it, man. -I know.
-I love it! -Yeah.
-Honestly, it's awesome. -"Take that, Mom!"
-No, no, no! That's not the point.
-Oh, I thought that's what you were saying.
-That's not the point. But I want to --
I saw a clip of you talking with Oprah, and she said,
"This is the best memoir, or the greatest memoir,
she's ever read." -Yes.
She said in her life, too. -Yeah.
[ Laughter and applause ] -Thank you.
Don't be humble. -No, no, no.
You know, I'm just saying, if you're gonna quote
Miss Oprah, quote her correctly. [ Laughter and applause ]
-That's a big deal, man.
That's a big deal, Will, to have Oprah Winfrey say that.
-Yeah. No, when Oprah -- Oprah is, like, the book lady
of the world, so when Oprah likes your book, people listen.
-And she doesn't make it up, either.
She wouldn't say that. -She would never say that.
You know? She had me crying.
You know? She made me cry.
-She's good like that. She's a pro.
-And I saw my book, and she had it marked up.
She literally had -- -I saw the post-it notes.
-All the post-it notes inside the book.
And it was -- you know...
-It's a little different than my book.
-Yeah. -I took all mine out.
-I took all the post-it notes out.
-Because you didn't like how it would look on camera,
to see all the post-it notes. -Exactly.
-You thought it was unprofessional for Miss Oprah
to have all those post-it notes on camera.
-That's why I took it out of my book.
-What was your favorite part of the book, Jimmy?
[ Laughter ]
[ Drum roll ]
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
-Downloading it on Audible.
[ Laughter ]
It's the best! It's so good.
Oh, my God. When we come back,
I want to talk about your new movie, "King Richard."
More with Will Smith, everybody.