Anyhow, I recently participated in a large roundtable interview with Will Smith and the transcript is below.

During the interview, Will was really open about everything. He talked about what led him to making “Seven Pounds”, what else he’s working on, the difficulty of doing his love scenes with Rosario Dawson, how hard it is balancing his life with his stardom. I have to say, for a movie star of his caliber, Will is the best at doing press and he always gives great answers. If you’re a fan of Will’s, you’ll love the interview.

As always, you can either read the transcript or listen to the audio by clicking here. Finally, if you’d like to read the interview with Rosario Dawson click here, and here’s a few movie clips from “Seven Pounds”.

Question: Will?

Will Smith: Yes.

You know you’ve been referred to a lot in the past year as the biggest movie star on planet Earth…

Will: Wow!

…so how does the view look from there?

Will: It’s ah…I read…I wish I could remember.  You know my wife always remembers where she read stuff and it sounds cool when you can say the author and stuff, but I read somebody said he was a mountain climber and he set his mind, I want to climb Everest.  I’m going to do it.  I’m going to do it.  I’m going to do it.  And he climbed and he got to the top and realized he couldn’t breathe, all right?  And the only thought that he had was how the hell can I get down off of here as fast as I can?  And it’s like this weird thing that kicks in your mind like be careful what you wish for, you know?  You go and you fight and go and fight to get there and there’s this discomfort that sets in.  And it’s really the last probably year and a half have been kind of scary and a little bit frustrating for me.  I had an epiphany after working on “Seven Pounds”.  I realized that part of that feeling was that I was looking at my life and I was looking at my self and my future too much around these movies.  And after “Seven Pounds” l just had this huge epiphany of how much more I want to be, how much more I want to do, and the idea of living in service to humanity vs. living in service to the commerce of my movies.  And that explosion just totally washed away that sort of scary uncomfortable feeling.  It’s like however people look at me as a movie star or not….I want to be remembered as a man who cared about people and dedicated his life to making the world better, so with that I went from thinking of myself in this high place to damn I’ve got so much to do.  I need to get to work. And that’s so much better a place for me emotionally.

Are you just Willow and Jayden’s daddy though?

Will: I know, right.  I’m just so dude at the dinner table, you know?

Does this mean you want to make message movies though from now on?

Will: Well not message movies…it’s like with “Seven Pounds” I was attracted to “Seven Pounds” not because there was a fantastic one-liner that I could sell around the world very easily, you know?  I was attracted to “Seven Pounds” because there were ideas. There were emotions.  There were parts of this character that I was hiding myself from. So it was…I took “Seven Pounds” almost as a self-examination--as a self-exploration and Jada said something to me a few months ago.  She said, “you know it’s funny how much I was rejecting this character.”  And she was saying “it’s funny how you’re doing that.  She’s like you know that you are Ben, right?”  I was like what?  She was like, “the reason you’re so nice and the reason you fight so hard to be up tone is because you’re at war with that guy inside of you.”  You know?  I was like damn deep lady!  That’s what I realized it’s like the projects I was choosing and all like everything had to be okay in the end or it emotionally hurt me, right?  So now my sensibilities are becoming slightly less delicate and I may be able to venture out a little bit more into the world of emotional and artistic ambiguity in a way that it strikes me as more authentic but it’s terrifying for me just as a child growing up.  It’s like I needed to know and my grandmother made sure I knew and God is going to make everything okay. So however scary you get, however bad life is just know that there’s somebody in a high place that’s on your side.  So like to play a character who doesn’t necessarily believe that—to feel like he has to fix it.  God made a mistake and it’s his responsibility to fix it and how to carry that emotional weight is a terrifying space for me emotionally and artistically.

What did it for you?

Will: Yeah, you know.. “Seven Pounds”…I’ve been exploring the idea of trauma and the relationship between trauma and continuing life, right?  So with “I Am Legend” and then into “Hancock” and now with “Seven Pounds” I’m starting the character on trauma, right?  And then I was asking the question, “well, what’s the difference between-you know-someone who falls into depression and someone like Nelson Mandela or Muhammad Ali or Gandhi or Mother Theresa?”  They just keep going in the face of-you know-the ultimate weight of humanity and life.  And the thing that I discovered on “Seven Pounds” is it’s purpose.  When you have a purpose, when you wake up and you’ve dedicated your life to something beyond yourself, all is bearable, right?  And it just so exploded in my mind with this movie and with this character and if there’s been a movie in my career that I would say changed my life it’s “Seven Pounds”.

Not “Independence Day”?

Will: Not “Independence Day”, you know? When I punched that alien and said, “Welcome to Earth” that was a huge moment, you know?

Now Rosario said that you were kind of shy about the love scenes and that you may have put them off a little bit.  Was that the case?

Will: See with the love…like for me, my grandmother was really firm and…my mother and grandmother…about how men are supposed to treat women.  My grandmother…you know I started driving and you know when you start driving you’re excited.  I run down and go hop in the car and start it and I’m ready and my grandmother would just stand outside.  And she would just stand…oh sorry grandma.  I’d get out and run around and open the door, you know so she could get in and close the door. So it’s like, for me, my worst nightmare is for an actress to come on my set and feel like I’m taking this as an opportunity to get a little quickie feel, you know, some legal cheating going on. I just need, specifically, women to be comfortable around me.  I just don’t want to feel like I’m that dude and doing a love scene and her clothes are off and all of that, it just puts me in my defensive space but it also hurts the acting if I’m in that space.  You’ve got to find a comfortable space to feel free and your hand can brush up against her and all of that and it’s not “oh, excuse me”, you know?

How was Jada about all that? Was she cool?

Will: Oh, Jada said “listen, I know you are uncomfortable but you better not embarrass me”.   She was like, “When you do that love scene you better show them what you’re working with.”

She didn’t come to the set that day?

Will: No, no she didn’t come to the set.  I asked her to come to the set and she was like “Are you stupid?

Will, when you were kid did anybody ever do some random act of kindness for you or even as an adult?  Did anyone ever done anything like that for you like out of the blue and unexpected that made you stop and say wow?

Will: I always go to my grandmother.  She was that lady.  My grandmother was the woman who-you know- you come home from school and there’s just 4 homeless people in the living room.  You’re like, “oh Gee-Gee”.  Oh we’re just going to give them a bath. Go do your homework.  You know?  I was like wow.  There was always…my grandmother was the random…and the more random the better it made her feel.  So I sort of grew up with the comprehension of what that is.  It’s almost like it was her responsibility.  She felt like it was her responsibility because of what she had been blessed with.  It wasn’t a choice she was making to do nice things for people.  It was a responsibility.  It was things she had to do.

Mr. Smith, there’s all these reports about how easy and grounded you are to work with.  How do you manage to stay so humble amidst of all your success?

Will: I think because I’m scared.  It’s like I’m so grateful to be in a position that I’m in.  To have been blessed with the things I’ve been blessed with and it’s like I was with Redman the other day in Chicago.  You know, he came up and we were sitting down and he said, “Man, listen.”  He said “now I’ve got this relationship that I’m trying to make work, man.  I’m telling you.  If you and Jada don’t work, I’m done”. And it was like wow. And he meant it, you know?  He was like the only reason that he’s even going to try is because of what he saw with Jada and I and he’s believing that there might be a possibility so he’s going to give it a shot.  And for me that so terrifies me that there’s people’s lives that I can affect like that just with little stuff like not even having to do anything big.  So it’s like I don’t want to break that.  I don’t want to damage other people’s lives in that way, so I think it really keeps me humble and grounded because I don’t totally feel like I’ve got it.  Shoot, I got this.  It’s like-you know- I might mess something up and it sort of keeps me in a place where I’m really focused and paying attention and I just don’t want to step wrongly.

On the Fascinating People interview with Barbara Walters you talked about the only racism you could think about in modern times that you felt was the racism in Hollywood in regards to casting you opposite a black woman.  Now that you’re also producing films, what steps are you taking to assure that some of your black counterparts are working along side you and other black actors?

Will: I think it’s something that…and it’s interesting.  I’ve never liked the word racism because there’s so many other connotations that go with it, but it’s like the idea is if you put 10 black artists in a room and we sit down and we come up with something, it’s going to be about black people, right?  Because that’s what we know, that’s what we’re going to come up with.  So it’s not necessarily racism with studios and things like that.  It’s just the majority of the creative people are of a certain background so that’s what gets produced.  It’s more our responsibility to be able to display and be able to show how it could be different.  To show how Set It Off could work for a mass audience. To show how Bad Boys could work or the Secret Life of Bees.  We’ve got to be able to display how that could work.  We can’t expect other people to write and produce and create our stories.  So at Overbrook we did “Secret Life of Bees” this year and we did with Sam Jackson we did “Lakeview Terrace” and so, you know, we have a black President now so we have no more excuses.

Are you going to the Inauguration to meet him?

Will: Yes, yes.  Absolutely.

Do you have like front-row seats or anything?

Will: It’s hard to get a front-row seat to that one, you know?  I don’t know.  Whatever our Commander-In-Chief asks of me I will humbly serve. 

…maybe not a cabinet thing but I mean, is some sort of like emissary or you know good will ambassador or something…?

Good Will.  I like that.  You know, I am…Barrack being elected did something like I was crying uncontrollably. 

That’s funny. (pointing at a reporter who was either asleep or not paying attention)

Will: That’s so rude.  I cannot believe…I’m out of here.  I’m out of here. (laughter)  You’re lucky I don’t have a camera! No, he fell asleep.  He fell asleep.  (laughter).  So no, what I’m saying is when Barrack was elected it’s like it so validated something that I believed for a long time.  It’s like a black man in America—I’ve never been allowed to say out loud you know, you all I don’t think America’s a racist nation.  I think there’s racist people who live here but I just don’t see America as a racist nation, right?  And it’s like Barrack being elected it so validated something inside of me that now I’m allowed to say out loud like for so many years I’ve been wanting to say, you know just let’s create our own movies.  It’s like yes, it was written for a white character. Yes, they wanted to put a white character, but you take the responsibility and show how it can be something else.  And it’s like you’re like Uncle Tom if you said that. You know the white man got you brain-washed and it’s like now I just feel so free.  It’s like I’ve been unleashed to say things and do things the way that I felt for such a long time and it’s like America to me is the most fantastic nation that has ever existed in the history of this planet. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.  There’s nothing ever been written better than that ever.  And now we just have to live up to it.  It’s like a cycle of African-American citizenship has been completed with this.  So I’m just hyped.  I just want to….I’m hyped you know?  My company—we just made a deal in the UAE so I think that for…

To distribute your movies or make movies there?

Will: Well, for me it’ll be laying a conduit, you know, between the Muslin world and the West.  I mean, it’s a perfect opportunity.  I truly believe a large part of why Barack is in office is to do—and they’re not getting credit—is to do with MTV.  What MTV did is lay conduit between the inner city, the suburbs and between American kids and the world.  You can’t tell a 15-year old white kid a lie about black people.  They know it’s not true. Whereas their parents and grandparents, you could feed any kind misinformation that you wanted to because they didn’t have the connectivity and the artistry.  What MTV was able to create in connecting kids just of all races, creeds and colors, was able to release and relieve the fear that comes when you don’t know.  So for me in my mind the deal that we’re making in the UAE is going to lay that type of artistic conduit between the West and the Muslin world. 

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