Wow. Time has flown. It seems like just yesterday, I was staying up late at night to watch a brash Midwesterner with a full head of hair, a guy known for being an avid jogger in Manhattan, make some celebrities uncomfortable while he made young adult TV viewers laugh with his smart-alecky humor. This was David Letterman on NBC. The former NBC & CBS late night entertainment talk show host now looks like an extra in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with white hair and a full white beard.
Letterman has a Netflix interview show called MY NEXT GUEST (NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION). His list of guests goes from Barack Obama to George Clooney to Cardi B. to......Will Smith. Because of Smith's angry physical and verbal actions on the Oscars this year, I was interested in watching that hour-long interview.
The interview obviously was shot when Smith's biopic movie, KING RICHARD, was coming out. That's the film that brought Will Smith the Oscar for Best Actor shortly after he slapped the taste out of Chris Rock's mouth on a live international telecast.
About that Oscars incident: I'd long been a Will Smith fan. I felt his performance as the complicated yet devoted Compton dad to tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams was outstanding and I was hoping he'd win the Oscar KING RICHARD. At first, I thought his action with Chris Rock was a comedy bit until he returned to his seat and began shouting foul-mouthed statements to Rock.
Until that night, I had no idea whatsoever that Will's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, suffered from alopecia. I thought her close-shaven hair was a style she preferred as I've known a few Black women who kept their hair that way for a time and they did not have alopecia. Was Chris Rock aware of Jada's alopecia?
Smith's slap angered me because the Oscars this year were produced by a Black man with other Black folks on his team. Then there was the presence of Best Actor Oscar nominee Denzel Washington, the most Oscaar-nominated Black actor in Oscar history, and the fabulous historic Best Supporting Actress win of Afro-Latina and openly queer Ariana De Bose for Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY. What Will did pulled some focus from them -- and it was not the best representation of a highly paid and famous Black American man for a global audience.
I thought Chris Rock was basically saying that Jada could get film roles like Demi Moore did -- because Demi shaved her hair off to play a military character in G.I. JANE.
Comedian Wanda Sykes was one of the Oscars hosts that night. What if she had made the comment Chris Rock did? Would Will Smith had charged onstage and slapped her?
Letterman's very mature yet also funny interview of Will Smith took place before a small audience in Hollywood's The Comedy Club. A graphic appears telling us that it was taped before the Oscars telecast. Letterman introduces the actor as "America's friend," mentions Smith's just published memoir and, as they sit, compliments him with "...you're a beautiful man."
It's established that Will Smith is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. Much of the first half-hour is spent on Smith's rap music career that led to his sitcom, THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR. It contains a very funny account of Smith's meeting and auditioning for Quincy Jones at his swanky, celebrity-filled Bel Air home. In those sections of the interview, Smith mentions his late father a lot. His dad was not perfect man but he had a huge impact on him. Smith says that his father taught him "integrity and discipline."
In the second half, Smith tells of the two years he took off from making movies before he did KING RICHARD. He went on an intense "spiritual journey." His description may remind fellow boomers of Cary Grant praising L.S.D. for helping him make some emotional breakthroughs.
Will took a foreign substance, a drink, 14 times under supervision. It caused hallucinations and insight. He goes into detail about that. He talks about his kids and his marriage. He never mentions Jada's name nor does he say the word "wife." He talks about the impression meeting Nelson Mandela had on him and what he learned from Mandela about forgiveness.
Today, my question to Will Smith would be "How would your father have felt about what you did to Chris Rock on live TV?" and "How would Nelson Mandela have felt to see you slap Chris Rock unexpectedly on live TV?"
And "Can you get a refund for all those spiritual journey sessions?"
His conflict with Chris Rock should've been handled offstage and behind tbe scenes. That would've been handling it with integrity and discipline.
Here's a trailer for Letterman's Netflix show.
The Will Smith interview is Episode 2 in Season 4 of Letterman's show.
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