Years ago, when she was just 10 years old, she was done with fame. On the back of her hit, Whip My Hair, she was able to land a slot on the tour of her choice, and she was going to support the pop star. The entire family flew out for her opening night. She slayed the next night. She came off stage at the end of the European gig and said she was done. I’m ready to leave.
She wasn’t done because she had signed on for a lot of dates in Australia. He wrote in his memoir that the end of discussion was over and thatWillow came skipping into the kitchen for breakfast. She bounced to the fridge as she said good morning. My jaw was shattered on the kitchen floor as a result of my bald head. She had shaved her head. I wondered if she would whip her hair if she didn’t have any. Who wants to watch a kid whip their head around?
I felt like I had no control over it. That was not something that I liked. I didn’t feel like I could do anything. I didn’t have enough experience to be trusted with my opinions. I said, “I can’t do this” Two or three years after that, when I wasn’t in the studio. I just went to school and did my thing. Music is a joy in her life. I realized I enjoy performing and recording. I wanted to be in charge of my own boat.
She found her own path after taking the preternatural poise and electric aura that powered Whip My Hair to a whole new level. She is in a London studio fresh from a live set at the Reading festival, which came just after a summer tour opening for Machine Gun Kelly in the US.
In front of the camera, she looks older than she is. She has a face that looks like a cut diamond with her cheekbones catching the light from all angles. She arrived on set in oversized loungewear and Vans, but is unperturbed to be handed a Prada trench coat and looks immediately at home in Gucci tailoring. She posed with her cigarettes in a corner between shots. She seems to be younger when the crew is just me and her. She ignores the on-set food, preferring a ham and cheese toastie from Pret a Manger, which she eats standing up. Then she changes back into her tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt, sitting next to me with her hoodie covering her arm, like a blanket. I asked her when she got her first tattoo and she said it was about two years ago. She is still 21 years old, so this confuses us. I got the first one when I was 21. That’s right. It feels a long time ago. When you are on the global stage, life can come at you fast.
For those of us who have strong memories of the first series of The Fresh Prince of Bel- Air, the resemblance is quite striking. The almond-shaped eyes have the same combination of charm and glamour. The gestures are almost identical. She has a habit of jutting her chin at the end of her sentences and there is a bounce to her walk that is very similar to the charm of the Fresh Prince himself.
I took a while for Will and Jada Pinkett Smith to acknowledge their mistakes, but both have forgiven their parents for dismissing her anxiety as a “maverick”. In his memoir, Will states that his parenting philosophy was based on pushing and prodding and cajoling people into the vision he had, but the incident changed his perspective. On an episode of Red Table Talk, the Facebook Watch chatshow Jada hosts with her own mother, she admitted she had a hard time relating to her daughter’s anxiety because she couldn’t see beyond the privileges.
Gen Z is emotional openness, and that’s what Willow Smith is, from her tattoos and ear piercings to the name of her new album, which is an angsty all-caps shout of her. She thinks it’s important to say positive things as well as negative things. I can’t stay there all the time. It is the place we all want to be, and sometimes you have to be very careful. You need to listen to your emotions and learn from them. It’s possible for negative emotions to be therapeutic. We don’t always have the answers and that’s okay. She says her mental health is a lot better than it was a few years ago. She says she would go crazy if she didn’t meditate.
Her generation is fond of talking about mental health. She doesn’t want to reveal how she relates to her own experience when she talks about Emotions in the abstract. For all her talk about living life as an open book, she still doesn’t know much about her personal life. In one episode of Red Table Talk, willow talked about her polyamorous lifestyle. People who have multiple romantic relationships at the same time are referred to as polyamory. She doesn’t want to answer if she still defines polyamorous. There are a lot of labels. The labels keep going on and on. I enjoy being a person. I only like the word human. That’s what it says for me. My questions are more personal than hers. She doesn’t think it’s anyone else’s responsibility to understand you.
In March this year, Will Smith derailed the Oscars and his own career when he slapped Chris Rock in front of a global television audience. Will, Jada and their three children had been gradually moving away from the traditional Hollywood style of closely guarded privacy to a reality show style openness with the media. In an early episode of Red Table Talk, Jada talked to her mother and daughter about losing their virginity, and her addiction to sex toys, and how it affected them. Will wrote about his father hitting his mother. The couple have not always had a monogamous marriage according to him. The Best Shape of My Life series featured a tear-stained acknowledgement of his failure as a parent to recognise and respect his daughter’s mental health.
By putting three generations of women front and centre in Red Table Talk, the Smith family have established themselves as a different kind of family: emotionally literate, a little left of centre, and open to ways of relating that don’t fit in patriarchal traditions. Red Table Talk has taught her that everyone will have a different perception of life and that you shouldn’t try to change it. Agreeing to disagree can be lovely. There was a time when the family lived in the mountains outside of LA.
The Smith family dynamic can be seen in both public and private ways. The genders and generations are cross-hatched by Will and Jada’s names. As befits the Smith brand, it is an affectation in the same way as theKardashians, but a little quirkier. It is striking how the same motifs continue through the Smith family history. The theme of hair is a recurrent one. During last year’s album, Lately I Feel Everything, she shaved her head at a “monumental moment”. Jaden, a rapper, musician and model, chopped off his dreadlocks for a film role and took them to that year’s Met Gala, carrying them on the red carpet like a clutch bag. Chris Rock mentioned Jada’s hair in a joke that led to her husband hitting her.
I love my dad … Humans are beautiful and complex creatures who deserve to be creative and respected and loved
She does not want to comment on the incident. When I ask her if she loves her dad, she says, “I love my dad.” She loves every person she has met. Humans are complex and beautiful creatures who deserve to be creative and to be respected and loved.
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She tells me that my parents are my best friends as she polishes the silver pendant with their birthdays between her fingers. Both of them are great people. I love Will and Jada more than they love me because they have their own amazing minds and hearts. She is close with Jaden and with her half-brother, who was Will Smith’s first wife. She says her father is cracking the jokes at the dinner table. The kids are a little less rambunctious. The most hyper of all of us is my father. He has a lot of energy. My family is more thoughtful about things.
Her mother is a rock star. Jada Pinkett Smith formed a nu-metal band called Wicked Wisdom when she and her kids were young, and they supported Britney Spears on her tour. Pinkett Smith told MTV that she started the band because she wanted to see more women doing the same thing. At six or seven years old, she heard people screaming slurs at the sight of a black woman with a guitar. Was she aware of what was going on? She looks older than her years. Even a kid can understand it. You hear it and think, “So they hate my mom because she’s a woman, or they hate her because she’s black?” She remembers her mother handling it very well. She was so focused that it was crazy. She was a pioneer and I will always remember her.
All of us should be allowed freedom to express ourselves in all kinds of ways, and one of those ways is rock music
She has rubbed up against society’s prejudice. Jaden told the journalist that “you never learn anything in school” in an interview with the New York Times in which she talked about preferring quantum physics and sacred texts to young adult fiction. Is it right to put a pre-teen on record in answering questions such as “I’m curious about your experience of time?” It’s another example of the racism she saw as a child. She studied physics for a long time. People were thrown off by the fact that we were black. It was shocking for people that society doesn’t see Black children like that.
It is a political act to claim space in the rock world because it is about stepping into places where marginalised communities have not been accepted. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a musician who played rock with an electric guitar. The history of blues was put out of sight for political reasons. There are people who don’t want people of colour, women, and people of the LGBTQ+ community to rise. Rock music is one of the ways in which we should be able to express ourselves. There is more to music than just music. Music has caused some of the most intense shifts in thought processes. Mississippi Goddam was an anthem of the civil rights movement. The culture was illuminated by that song.
The youngest of the Smiths came into her own.
She is a rock star. She gives a more equivocal response than you would expect from a hot young artist with the world at her feet. It is a process and it is a journey. It is sometimes rough. Life is beautiful because of that. I ask about her home life when she isn’t recording or performing. I live with a few animals. I enjoy hiking with my dogs and being quiet. She doesn’t cook but she reads a lot. Right now, on her bedside table, is the number nineteen eighty-four. She thinks she might check out of celebrity one day. She wants to go to college one day. A guy who had a PhD in jazz guitar was cool. A PhD would be cool. I am a big fan of physics and astronomy. She is starting to become restless and want to get down from the table. She goes to find her tobacco after we say goodbye. She thinks she might disappear at some point in her life. It’s not yet.