Will Smith opens up about unhappiness his family experienced during early stages of their rising success: ‘They didn’t want to be in a platoon’

“I’m building this dream of a family I’ve had in my mind. ‘I’m going to do it better than my father did it’ (Smith had earlier stated that his father 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. Pretty much 2010 to 2012 I had achieved everything I had ever dreamed,” the Hollywood superstar recalled.

“Yet, nobody in my family was happy,” he noted. “No one wanted to be in a platoon. Willow was the first one to begin the mutiny and it was my first realisation that success and money don’t mean happiness,” the King Richard actor added.

“Up until that point, I really believed that you could succeed your way – to a house and a family – and you could win your way to happiness. It was only then that I came to understand that material circumstances do not equal happiness and, in a lot of cases, they can be the reason you’re not happy,” he mentioned.

“You can have so much stuff that it makes you miserable,” Smith asserted and 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.”

Though Jaden Smith began his career as an actor by appearing in critically and commercially successful movies like The Pursuit of Happyness and The Karate Kid, he took a break from acting following the massive failure of the M Night Shyamalan movie After Earth. He is currently pursuing his career as a rapper and singer. In 2022, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year as a featured artist on Justin Bieber’s album Justice.

Willow has also ventured into the world of movies, but her primary focus has been on the music industry. In 2022, she unveiled her fifth studio album named ‘Coping Mechanism’.

 

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Besides Jaden, 25, and Willow, 22, both of whom he shares with his wife and actor Jada Pinkett Smith, 51, Will Smith also has an older son named Trey, 30, from his first marriage with Sheree Zampino.

In 2022, Will Smith had received much criticism for slapping Chris Rock during the Academy Awards. Following the incident, he took to social media and said he was “deeply remorseful” for slapping Rock after the latter made fun of Jada at the event.