Will Smith is opening up about his experience playing an escaped slave in Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation and how it expanded his understanding of the “generational trauma” brought on by the transatlantic slave trade.
Smith sat down with his children Willow, 22, Jaden, 24, and Trey Smith, 30, on the latest episode of Red Table Talk, where he spoke candidly about his transformation to star in the new film, which tells the true story of Peter, an escaped slave who embarks on a tortuous journey to the north.
“As the years have gone on I’ve gotten more and more locked into these characters for longer periods of time,” he told his children.
“And it’s just the weight of this story, the weight of these experiences — the quality of these actors. It was emotionally, it was physically, it was spiritually taxing.”
Smith recalled how “seriously” all of the actors took the film, citing an intense moment where one actor “ad-libbed” by spitting on the Academy Award winner, People
reported.“One of the first days on set, there is a scene with one of the actors and he leans down in my face and says, ‘You a cold one, ain’t you?’ and then he ad-libbed…,” Smith recalled.
He then turned toward Willow to simulate spitting on his daughter the same way his co-star spit on him.
“I was like, ‘Makeup!’ No, but it was like … I was like, ‘Whoa, every actor on this set was taking it really, really seriously,'” he shared.
Elsewhere during the deep dive, Smith worked to break down the trauma slavery caused Black families, and how that trauma can carry over across generations.
“Me, as an actor, my image was you guys and imagining being pulled away,” Smith told his children. “Just
imagine somebody comes in here right now and beats me and snatches me away, and you guys don’t know if you’ll ever see me again. That is the legacy of slavery in America. It creates generational trauma, even on a cellular level.”Will’s RTT takeover with the Smith kids is up on Facebook Watch.