If you watch the episode to see Smith address the Oscar slap, you will be let down since the interview with Letterman was set up much before the Oscars.
Will Smith has kept a very low profile following the Oscar slap incident. Since then, multiple film projects Smith was involved in have been stalled and he has been banned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences events for 10 years. He was not seen much in public for a month when he finally made an appearance in public, seemingly in good spirits, at a private airport in India.
Now, he has made his first on-screen appearance in David Letterman's Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. This is the first project that the star was involved in since before the slap that was not canceled or put off for later.
If you watch the episode expecting to see Smith address the Oscar slap, you will be let down. The interview with Letterman was set up much before the Oscars and the events of the day that changed Smith's fate overnight. In the episode, Smith "recalls his rap origins, the lasting impact of his parents, spiritual explorations and one very fateful night at Quincy Jones' house." He also discussed the "trauma" that he has experienced throughout his childhood during the hour-long interview. He also detailed his trauma in his 2021 memoir Will in which he opened with the line that he "always thought of myself as a coward" after he witnessed his father "beat up" his mother as a child and did not intervene.
They also discussed how this led to Smith putting on a cheery, positive image during his career. He also got into details about how he once experienced a vision of "my whole life getting destroyed" after taking Ayahuasca. He went on to say, "When I came out of it, I realized that anything that happens in my life, I can handle it," and added, "I can handle any person I lose. I can handle anything that goes wrong in my life. I can handle anything in my marriage." Letterman and Smith also discussed what it meant to protect his family from the world.
"Protection and safety is an illusion. You have to learn to live with the reality that at any moment, anything can be gone in one second," Smith stated. "So, with that reality, how can you be here? And how can you be joyful and be here?" He also said in the interview, "Life is so exciting to me right now because I can reach people differently than I've ever been able to reach people, largely because of my pain. I'm really ready to dive into my art in a way that I think will be hopefully fulfilling for me and helpful for the human family."
The interview showed Smith as an optimistic go-getter ready to expand his career like never before. But his split-second decision to walk onto the Oscar stage and slap Chris Rock changed the entire trajectory of his career.
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