Will Smith has always been a master of reinvention, rapper, sitcom king, and summer blockbuster god. However, for Smith himself, the most significant career turning point wasn’t a role or a record. That moment was the now-infamous slap he delivered to comedian Chris Rock on stage at the 2022 Oscars.
In a new frank interview with BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Remi Burgz, the 56-year-old actor revealed how the incident turned out to be an unlikely career turning point. The public reaction was swift and merciless. Smith was barred from Oscars events for 10 years, and international headlines rang with shock. But privately, something much deeper was going on.
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“The last couple of years for me have really been a lot of profound reflection,” Smith said. “After the Oscars I took a moment and pulled back, did the internal work.”
He said the internal work cracked open parts of himself that he had buried for years. The slap presented after Rock made a wisecrack about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head marked more than a career-altering moment.
“If you imagine like there was a manhole cover on top of a man who dug a hole down there and the manhole cover just came off,” he said. “It was scary for a minute what was on there.”
For a man who built an empire on likability from “The Fresh Prince” to “Men in Black,” being met by a tide of public disapprobation was shocking and sobering.
“For the first time in my life, (I was) dealing with a level of disapproval that I never really experienced before,” he said. “The addiction to other people’s approval that I had to break was brutal.
But where a lot of folks would crumble, Smith got curious. Something miraculous happened: creativity came back, rushing as if unleashed from a geyser.
“All these new thoughts, new energies, new creativity came through … and it started showing up as music,” he said.
That comeback culminated in Based On A True Story, Smith’s first record in 20 years. This one is more than a musical comeback: It’s the result of emotional excavation, a view into a man who has peeled back the layers and discovered something unvarnished underneath.
He is still banned from the Oscars stage until 2032, but he appears to have found another kind of spotlight that doesn’t need a red carpet or applause, just him and a mic, a beat, and a de-glazed version of himself.
Sometimes, a public fall is needed to set off a private rise. For Will Smith, the slap heard worldwide may just have unlocked the door to his most forthright work yet.
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