Will Smith has made it very clear that he is laying it all on the table in his forthcoming memoir, “Will,” which is slated to arrive on November 9.
Excerpts from the memoir have been released and it is very clear the Hollywood A-lister is making good on his word.
In the book, Will opens up about falling in love with his Six Degrees of Separation co-star Stockard Channing during his first marriage to Sheree Zampino.
Sheree and I were in the first few months of our marriage with a brand-new baby and for Sheree, I can imagine that this experience was unsettling to say the least.
She’d married a guy named Will Smith and now she was living with a guy named Paul Poitier.
And to make matters worse, during shooting I fell in love with Stockard Channing.
After the film wrapped, Sheree and Trey and I moved back to L.A.
Our marriage was off to a rocky start. I found myself desperately yearning to see and speak to Stockard.
In case you were wondering Stockard kept it totally professional and nothing happened between she and Will.
However, in 2015, Stockard Channing did tell Page Six she was flattered to learn Will Smith had fallen in love with her on his first big job.
That’s a wonderful thing…I adored him from the first time I laid eyes on him because I thought he was genuinely sweet. I felt very protective of him, because it was his first big job. It’s amazing for me to hear that he felt that way, I’m delighted.
Will Smith also opened up about the moment he thought about killing his father to avenge his mother.
His dad, Willard Smith Sr., was an alcoholic, who was very abusive towards his mother, Caroline Bright.
In his memoir he shared:
My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play, and recital.
He was an alcoholic, but he was sober at every premiere of every one of my movies. He listened to every record. He visited every studio.
When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed. I saw her spit blood.
That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.
Within everything that I have done since then-the awards and accolades, the spotlights and attention, the characters and the laughs-there has been a subtle string of apologies to my mother for my inaction that day.
For failing her in the moment. For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.
In the memoir, Will recalls a dark moment while caring for his father who was battling cancer and was wheelchair-bound.
One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me.
As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him.
The path between the two rooms goes past the top of the stairs. As a child I’d always told myself that I would one day avenge my mother.
I paused at the top of the stairs.
I could shove him down, and easily get away with it.
I’m Will Smith. No one would ever believe I killed my father on purpose.
I’m one of the best actors in the world.
My 911 call would be Academy Award level. As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom.
Thank God we’re judged by our actions, not by our trauma-driven, inner outbursts.
Willard Sr. passed away in 2016.
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Source: E! Online
