The reason why Will Smith considered killing his father: “Decades of pain”
Will Smith was always known as the good guy, and he knew it. So much so that he released a song called ‘Mr Niceguy’ in 2005. In the song, he raps, “Will’s a nice guy, why he’s so nice?/ I’d let him date my daughter like he was a white guy/ Not like the rest, he’s a private flight guy.” However, the public persona masked a troubling childhood that has plagued his life.
Smith’s reputation changed after he slapped comedian Chris Rock for the world to see at the 2022 Oscars, but it’s not the only time he’s had violent thoughts. In his memoir, Will, released in 2021, Smith opened up about his complicated relationship with his father. On one hand, he was always there for him, but he also watched him abuse his mother.
“My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play, and recital,” he began. “He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every one of my movies. He listened to every record. He visited every studio. The same intense perfectionism that terrorised his family put food on the table every night of my life.”
One childhood incident, involving his dad punching his mum so hard that she fell to the ground, lives long in his memory. “When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed,” he recalled. “I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.”
Since then, Smith regretted doing nothing to stand up for his mother. “Within everything that I have done since then — the awards and accolades, the spotlights and attention, the characters and the laughs — there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day,” he explained. “For failing her in the moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.”
He added, “What you have come to understand is ‘Will Smith,’ the alien-annihilating MC, the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction – a carefully crafted and honed character – designed to protect myself. To hide myself from the world. To hide the coward.”
His parents split up in his teenage years and divorced in 2000. Despite having a healthy relationship with his father, he admitted that he once considered killing him years later when he had cancer. Smith was pushing him in a wheelchair near some stairs and thought about chucking him down to get revenge for what he did to his mother.
“One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me,” he wrote. “The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him.
“I paused at the top of the stairs. I could shove him down, and easily get away with it. As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom.”
His father died in 2016, which taught him an important lesson. “There is nothing that you can receive from the material world that will create inner peace or fulfilment,” he said. “In the end, it will not matter one single bit how well [people] loved you — you will only gain ‘the Smile’ based on how well you loved them.”