In a special Father’s Day edition of Red Table Talk, Will Smith and wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith had a candid conversation about fatherhood.
Will Smith, who has three children, opened up about how his dad influenced his parenting.
If you’re familiar with the Facebook web series Red Table Talk, you know that Jada Pinkett-Smith has had many honest and emotional conversations on a myriad of topics, but the latest installment may have been the most raw episode yet. For the first time, Jada invited her husband, Will, for a one-on-one conversation in honor of Father’s Day.
“From the time I was 6 years old I wanted to be a father,” Smith began the conversation on his evolution as a dad. “I loved how my family was but there were massive, critical deficiencies in my father’s parenting that I wanted to correct.”
He described his father, who he referred to as Daddy-O, as a strict disciplinarian, who he implies was, at times, abusive toward his mother. Smith admitted that it caused a rift between them when he was younger. But, he did appreciate some of his dad’s wisdom and was able to glean what he wanted to replicate and what he didn’t.
“I learned that everywhere is school. That anything you do, you have to do it well. Getting good grades isn’t above cleaning the kitchen,” the Bad Boy actor said.
Then at 24 years old, he got his initial taste of fatherhood, with his first son, Willard Carroll “Trey” Smith III, whom he had with his now ex-wife Sheree Zampino. Smith was brought to tears talking about the experience.
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When Trey was born, Will told Jada that his first thought was, “I can’t do it, I’m not the guy.”
Smith and Zampino split two years later and he described the divorce as the “ultimate failure” of his adult life.
And though the Smiths didn’t delve into their own marriage in this episode, they did address the criticism they received from parenting Trey, along with their two other children together, Jaden and Willow—particularly the fact that they let their kids work.
“Our family has been under the public microscope for a long time. I think people didn’t understand why we both valued that idea…of the kids going to work,” Jada said. “People thought that we were forcing our kids to work,” Will added on.