Will Smith said that from 2010 to 2012, his family was achieving their dreams within the entertainment industry. He even went on to say that 2010 was not only his "greatest year as an artist" but also as a parent. Still, despite their success and fame, Will said “nobody in my family was happy.” The actor appeared on Kevin Hart’s talk show, Hart to Hart, on August 3.
“Pretty much 2010 to 2012 I had achieved everything I had ever dreamed," he said. But that was also when it became evident that money or fame wouldn't lead to happiness.
“It was my first realization that success and money don’t mean happiness," Will said. "Up until that point, I really believed that you could succeed your way to a house and a family and that you could win your way to happiness."
Based on his perception of success and happiness, his family should've been happy at the point.
At that time, his son Jaden, now 25, had just starred in The Karate Kid and his daughter, Willow, now 22, had just released her debut single, "Whip My Hair."
"Willow was the first one to begin the mutiny and it was my first realization that success and money don’t mean happiness," the star admitted.
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Willow was just 9 years old when her debut song came out, and in 2018, she admitted that she had been cutting herself at the time and dealing with mental health challenges.
“I would have to say I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point," she said. “It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’”
She added that after she released her hit song, she didn't want to finish her album.
"After all of that kind of settled down, I was listening to a lot of dark music and it was just so crazy and I was just plunged into this black hole and I was, like, cutting myself and doing crazy things," she admitted. Her mom, hearing of this for the first time, was shocked.
The singer said her brothers hadn't known she was cutting herself either because it was not really something that she spoke about.
“I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life but you have to pull yourself out of it," she said.
“I definitely had to forgive you and daddy for that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing,” Willow said to her mom, Jada, in 2018. “It was mostly daddy, because he was so harsh at certain times. It was a couple of years, honestly — trying to regain trust for not feeling like I was being listened to or like no one cared how I felt.”
Will also spoke about how he dreamed of being a better parent than his dad had been, since his dad was abusive.
“I told myself I would never have that kind of energy with my family and I had a dream, an idea of a family I was building," Will said.
It became clear to him that “material circumstances do not equal happiness and, in a lot of cases, they can be the reason you’re not happy.”
“You can have so much stuff that it makes you miserable," he added. "“That was my first pull-back and I was like, ‘OK, what am I missing?’ I was driving the people around me in a way that I was leaving scorched earth around me.”
Will Smith, too, was famous from a fairly young age. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran from 1990–1996. Will, now 54, was 22 when it started. He had already been making music before that.
