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The Fresh Prince's Triple Crown;Separation Anxiety? Not for Rap and TV Star Will Smith, as He Moves On to Film

Paula Span

Washington Post Staff Writer

1282 words

2 January 1994

The Washington Post

FINAL

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English

(Copyright 1994)

So, wasn't it intimidating to be a sitcom star and half of a rap duo and to walk onto the set of a classy movie based on a serious play, tackling your first major film role opposite such exquisitely stage-trained actors as Stockard Channing and Sir Ian McKellen?

Will Smith leans back and, gesturing with a half-eaten apple, offers "a familiar Will Smith analogy. I call this the airplane theory: If you're scared to fly, worry about it on the ground while you're standing next to a phone and you can get on a train or a bus. Once the plane takes off, relax. There's nothing you can do; it's in God's hands."

This explains why Smith - who makes records as half of D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and is in his fourth season as the star of NBC's "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" - was relatively calm when filming began on "Six Degrees of Separation," which opened in Washington last month.

He'd done plenty of worrying about getting the part, because he'd never undertaken a dramatic role. Smith was a rubbery-bodied TV comic who played a genial kid very like himself; how could he convincingly portray a street hustler who learned to dress and speak so impeccably, to discourse on J.D. Salinger so persuasively, that Park Avenue swells would believe his lies about being Sidney Poitier's Harvard-educated son? Smith had suffered considerable anxiety, too, while working with an acting coach, a dialect coach (he had to learn to say "bottle" instead of "boddle") and a physical trainer in the months before production started. He knew there'd been people at MGM "who were vocal about not wanting me to do this role and thought it was the worst decision ever made."

But once the cameras rolled? "No sense in being miserable thinking, `Oh my God, it's Donald Sutherland. He's been doing this forever! He's been making movies since before I was born!' I was completely impressed by the way he and Stockard worked, but not intimidated. The plane's taken off."

How sensible. But then Smith, who could still blend into any high school crowd, given the backward baseball cap and billowy jeans he's worn to be interviewed at his publicist's office, has reason to sound pragmatic. At 25, he's already a show biz veteran. "I'm somewhat precocious, having been in the music business - professionally - since I was 17," he points out.

There was no particular game plan back when he and his buddy Jeff Townes, teenagers from West Philadelphia, started rapping at parties. Boys just want to have fun. But before Smith could decide which college to attend, a single they'd cut started selling and their first album proved an award-winner. "By the time I was 20 I'd experienced things people well into their thirties haven't gotten to yet," he says. "I had my own house, I'd made and lost my first million, I'd won a Grammy, traveled the world."

About that million. It was dissipated on "the dumbest stuff ever in the world, cars and houses and flying around," Smith says ruefully. "It was like the world was at your fingertips and you just wanted to grab it." He ran up a six-figure tab with the IRS that has taken him three years to pay off.

But even as he was blowing his fortune, he was beginning to figure out the entertainment industry's crossover possibilities, and to acquire a cadre of formidable mentor-advisers (Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Denzel Washington, Poitier himself).

"The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" made him enough money to pay off his debt and enough screaming fans to make movie roles a possibility. And "Six Degrees of Separation," adapted by playwright John Guare from his provocative play, was always, in Smith's mind, a springboard. "I'd never done anything beyond comedy," he says. "I wanted to open up the doors to that other world. The range between `The Fresh Prince of Bel Air' and `Six Degrees of Separation' is 206 degrees of separation."

Smith acquits himself reasonably well in "Six Degrees," early critical returns indicate. If no one's talking Oscar nominations, no one's castigating him for being hopelessly out of his depth among his elders, either. Smith is not only pleased but, to tell the truth, a bit relieved. Television comedy "is, well, it's easy. It's fun; it's something you can enjoy." This film, inspired by a much-reported New York incident that raised questions of identity and liberal guilt and who was exploiting whom, was "intellectually stimulating and artistically pleasing, but fun was not the word," Smith says. "Grueling was the word. It was a seasoned actor's role and I wasn't a seasoned actor."

That may explain the matter of The Kiss. Gossip columnists have already latched on to this incident, involving a scene in which Smith's character, who's gay, briefly busses the preppy who's picked him up and is teaching him the ways of the Upper East Side. Smith refused to kiss costar Anthony Michael Hall, a decision in which Smith's pal Washington reportedly concurred, forcing director Fred Schepisi to use a stand-in. "I was worried about how it could affect the rap career, the television show," Smith says. He also fretted about the impact on the son he and his wife, Sheree, had a year ago. "To have a piece of tape where your father is kissing a man can be rough in school. There were a lot of things going through my mind."

That's led to grumbling about Smith being willing to play a thief and a liar, but not a man who'd kiss another man. "It just gags me that Will Smith is so good" in the part, complained Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, cursing both Smith and Washington.

But Smith replies, "I don't have any problem playing a gay character or any character. I'm an actor." The problem, he insists, was the kiss. "It's a real kiss. The concept of kissing someone for real, I was a little uncomfortable." Now, Smith says, he's more uncomfortable about his balkiness, which he regrets and says he would not repeat. "If you're gonna do it, do it. Or leave it alone. But don't ever half-do something."

Smith's latest reinvention may be well-timed. He's committed to one more season as "The Fresh Prince," after which he may move on (or maybe not). In rap, "every year there's a new trend," and though Smith thinks "there'll always be room for the classic style," his latest album with Jazzy Jeff has so far proven a bigger hit overseas than it has here.

But the calls about movie possibilities are cranking up, just as Smith had hoped. As he heads for Philadelphia with his wife and baby to spend Christmas with his parents, he's not sure what the next career move will be. But he jokes that "Batman III" is about to go into production. "I'd like to take a shot at Robin," he says.

PHOTO,,Cori Wells Braun For Twp Caption: Making the new film "Six Degres of Separation" was "intellectually stimulating and artistically pleasing," Will Smith says, "but fun was not the word."

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WILL SMITH; Rapper, Actor, Producer; Is There Room For `Fresh Prince'?

Harriet Winslow

Washington Post Staff Writer

1239 words

22 August 1993

The Washington Post

FINAL

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English

(Copyright 1993)

Will Smith has been so busy this year, does he still have time to be "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"?

With his musical single "Boom!" just released, an album to follow and two feature films out this year, is there room in his schedule for the hit NBC series?

Sure, said the 24-year-old dynamo in the midst of a schedule that would take him to six cities in short order. The show returns for a fourth season Sept. 20, and Smith - who has added television production worries to his already lengthy agenda - is excited about the changes he's working into the successful sitcom.

"I'm committed for two more {seasons}," he said. "Television is the easiest job for any entertainer: The actors are the highest-paid people and do the least amount of work. The reason that the show is so successful is largely because of the people behind the scenes, the ones you never see. It's not like we {actors} really have to work."

They just try to have a good time, he said.

It was a remarkably candid comment from a young man whose series has top-20 ratings. "Fresh Prince" tied for 16th during the 1992-93 season, up from 19th the season before, in addition to winning the NAACP's "Best Comedy Series" award in 1992. That same year Smith also won a Golden Globe nomination for best performance by an actor in a television series.

Smith discussed his frenetic schedule from Atlanta, where he was finishing his fifth album.

"I fly to L.A. tomorrow to meet with the network about the show, then I fly to Philadelphia on Saturday - my mother's retiring - then back to Atlanta, then midweek to New York, then Philadelphia to work with Jeff {Townes}."

Townes is the other half of D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, who together won a Grammy Award in 1988 for their rap performance from their second album, "He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper." They were nominated for another in 1989 for "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson" from their third album, "In This Corner."

A track from their fourth album, "Homebase," garnered another Grammy in 1991.

And the 6-foot-2 actor-singer took home his best award when he and wife Sheree Zampino had a son, Will Smith III, about nine months ago. The family lives in Los Angeles, where Sheree has help raising the tot. "My son has two grandmothers, two great-grandmothers and one great-great grandmother," he said.

The clean-cut "Fresh Prince" sitcom centers around Judge Philip Banks (James Avery) and his family, who live in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb of Bel-Air. This season, Daphne Maxwell Reid replaces Janet Hubert-Whitten as Will's Aunt Vivian. Karyn Parsons and Tatyana M. Ali play his cousins Hilary and Ashley; Alfonso Ribeiro is his cousin Carlton; and Joseph Marcell is Geoffrey the butler. Since Aunt Viv gave birth to a baby last spring, the cast will also have a toddler to play with.

During the first season, the Bankses rescued street-smart Will from the rougher elements of West Philadelphia. As the series continued, Will coped with the culture shock of living in posh digs with a butler and attending a tony high school from which he was graduated (just barely) at the end of last season.

This fall, Will and Carlton begin college together. "It's sort of UCLA-ish," said Smith. "ULA - University of Los Angeles - is what it will be called."

The fictional university will have "fighting peacocks" for mascots, a reference to the oft-beleaguered NBC network. And the terrible two will live in the Bankses' pool house until mid-season, when they'll move into a college dorm.

But the Banks home will remain the center of the action, which is important to Smith.

"It's a family show and the family is the most important thing to the show. So we'll be in the house every show," said Smith, who also serves as a series producer.

Before last season's high-school graduation finale, the writers had considered getting Will into Princeton - for his athletic ability - while Carlton's outstanding academic achievements nevertheless weren't good enough for the Ivy League. Smith objected that such a storyline would send a wrong message.

"Will's grades aren't good enough to get into Princeton," he pointed out. "Carlton is brilliant."

Smith's overall annoyance with the Will-to-Princeton idea and other frustrations led to staff changes, with "about 95 percent" of the writing staff being replaced. But look out for next season: "I think we have genius writers this year," Smith said.

But he has a lofty goal: "I would like to have an episode that's as popular as `Roseanne.' " And he believes that will depend largely on the writers' talents. "The show has done nowhere near what the cast is up to," he said. "I would love for just one week to be the number-one show."

He emphasized his desire to keep up with the show's Monday night audience, while avoiding stereotypes. "Fresh Prince" is among the few series that appeal to both black and white fans, according to an annual study titled "Report on Black Television Viewing" by the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide. (Two others are "Roseanne" and "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper.")

Smith summed up the new season in three words: "Fun - which the show has always been - maturity, and intelligence." He said he is committed to keeping "Fresh Prince" relatable and appealing. "The fans that are watching the show are going through the same things in their lives that we're going through."

As a producer, he's happier and sees eye-to-eye with executive producer Gary H. Miller. "The past few years it was pretty difficult to have my vision realized," said Smith. "This year Gary Miller is the executive producer and we absolutely, 100 percent, agree about everything ... down to what people should be wearing and what the show is really about and who the characters are."

Multi-Grammy winner Quincy Jones also is an executive producer.

Smith's other recent commitments include the film "Made in America" with Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson. Then he made another for the big screen, "Six Degrees of Separation," shot in New York this summer.

Smith said he enjoyed working with the comic cast of "Made in America," but the movie version of the stage play "Six Degrees" was a heavyweight role that allowed him to show off his serious acting abilities. Due out this December, the film also stars Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland and Sir Ian McKellen.

Smith said that his role as a gay con man was a challenge. "That was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in life in entertainment, and it ranks with the most difficult {challenges} of my life."

No stranger to hard work, Smith plans to do other large-screen projects simultaneously with "Fresh Prince," which he described as "close to my heart."

He's considering comedy, drama and action projects, again depending on the writers.

"A good script," he said, "is really the bottom line."

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Arts & Entertainment

What Will be will be

937 words

28 November 1991

Straits Times

English

© 1991 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

Success came fast for rapper Will Smith. So fast, that it is making some people around him furious.

HOW on earth will Will Smith find the breath to make his next recording?

Heaven knows, the lad is running, career-wise, faster than an Olympic sprinter. Everything has gathered pace since he began starring in his own show, the television comedy series, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air.

"Yeah, it's all happened kinda quickly," he says with grateful enthusiasm. " I wasn't trying to be famous. One minute I was a struggling rap artist and the next I was the star of a TV show. It happened pretty much overnight."

Smith's rapping ability and live-wire personality deeply impressed The Fresh

Prince writer Ben Medina, who was looking for someone to star as a poor kid who grew up on the city streets and then went to stay with wealthy relatives in Bel Air, the most exclusive and expensive section of Beverly Hills.

Smith, even with no acting experience, was just what Medina wanted, and he picked up acting amazingly quickly and now says: "Acting's easy. My Fresh Prince character is pretty much like me, so it wasn't hard to play him. I love to fool around and act silly."

In fact, Smith, 22, horses around so much that he puts the other actors off.

He admits: "Sometimes we have to stop filming because we're laughing so much. We have a lot of fun."

Having a top TV show would be enough success for many starry-eyed youngsters , but Smith is showing no signs of wanting to slow down.

He has been making a new album with DJ Jazzy Jeff and signed a deal with a major film company to make two movies.

In other ways too, Smith bears a remarkable similarity to Hollywood supersta r Eddie Murphy. So does he aim to be the next Murphy?

"No - I just want to be the first Will Smith!" he declares.

But how did a boy from Philadelphia - his mother a school board worker, his father a refrigeration engineer - make the giddy jump into the big-time?

Smith was rapping at 11, playing church functions and school dances at 13, and soon hitting it off musically with Jeff Townes in 1981.

A hit single, Parent, resulted, followed by a rapid surge to popularity, producing two platinum albums, He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper and And In This Corner.

Not that Smith is universally adored. Even on the set of The Fresh Prince Of

Bel Air, he has fierce critics. His boasts that "I'm going to be bigger than Eddie Murphy" have outraged the cast, and one member says: "Our big fear is that he'll overdose on the trappings of Hollywood and self-destruct.

"Will's afraid of being forced back where he came from but acting like a prima donna is a fast one-way ticket back there.

"In recording the show, if he makes a mistake, it's someone else's fault. It's like dealing with a bratty kid, not an adult.

"It's sad to see him change into a big-headed prima donna because he's basically a really fun guy. He's taking the trappings of his role too seriously."

Another gripe is that Smith demanded - and got - jobs for several of his hometown buddies. One is his bodyguard, one is his manager and one is his personal assistant. Another pal is his "laughter", a guy planted in the audience to laugh at his funny lines.

Smith defensively counters: "If you can't help your friends out, you should be ashamed of yourself. If people can't appreciate where I'm coming from, that's their problem, not mine.

"All I ask for is respect and what the star of the show or series should get

- a say in what's going on."

He asked for his dressing room to be expanded into a suite. It was. Then he asked for a Mercedes and got that. On top of those perks, he insisted that producers play loud rap music during the taping of the show, even though the studio audience hates it.

Smith explained that the rap was vital: "I have to have it. If it's ever quiet, I lose my energy."

Some of the production crew have found him so far "over the top" that they have threatened to give him a punch-up.

Even off the studio sets there has been sniping at the show despite the obvious high-charged talent of Smith.

The rap community, which thinks Smith too happy and upbeat to be considered a serious artist, says: "When network television gets involved, it always ends up softening the situation."

Smith replies: "We're trying to making people laugh - that's the bottom-line . I'm not trying to enlighten them about rap. The only enlightenment will be about relationships and race relations, even within the black community."

The Fresh Prince admits to liking hamburgers and wearing a customised large diamond in his left ear at all times. He also admits that he likes to watch himself.

"I'm the funniest person on this Earth to myself. I'm going full steam ahead

- 100 per cent. Nothing's going to stop me."

But whatever films or TV tries to tempt him with, Smith says: "I'm a rapper and will always be a rapper." - Duo-IPS

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Music / TV

Fresh Prince grows up

1006 words

16 May 1993

Straits Times

English

© 1993 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

YOU notice Will Smiths huge hands and feet as he struts into the studios where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, his hit NBC sitcom, is shot.

He greets his retinue of assistants. "My squad", he says with a smile bright

enough to cast shadows. Hugs, high and low handslaps, and homeboy patter fill the air. "I'm wit'chu man, I'm wit'chu," he says.

He's with something. Only 24 years old, Smith is already in the middle of a second successful career - the hit rapper has become a big-time TV star.

He is up for a Golden Globe for best TV comedy actor, against such biggies a s Ted Danson of Cheers. He has landed the challenging dramatic lead in the Hollywood version of Broadway's Six Degrees Of Separation. He will also appear with Danson and Whoopi Goldberg in the upcoming film, Made in America.

He has turned out to be one of NBC's brightest stars, almost single-handedly

keeping the network competitive. And, on the personal side, he and his wife, Sheree, have a healthy new baby boy, Willard Smith III.

No less a star than Quincy Jones has a stake in Smiths future - Jones is executive producer of Fresh Prince. And as if all that were not enough, Smith lately is being groomed to be the next Bill Cosby. By Bill Cosby yet.

Six years ago, who would have predicted so much for young Willard Smith Jr o f Philadelphia? In 1987, right before Jive Records released his debut rap album, Rock The House, he was totally unknown outside of Philadelphia.

But then the LP took off and a sensation was born. With a DJ named Jeffrey Townes, who billed himself "Jazzy Jeff", Smith was The Fresh Prince, rapping about the lighter side of life - mums who want to buy your clothes, life in the dance clubs and girlfriends who drive you nuts. Their rap act took off, sold millions of albums, and they appeared all over the world. "We weren't as big as Hammer", Smith says modestly, "but we did very well."

In fact, he made millions. Recalls Smith: "I had a mansion in suburban Philadelphia. I bought everything."

He had seven cars with loud stereos. And plenty of loud friends. Fair-weathe r friends, it turns out. And they helped Smith spend all of his money. "By 1989, I was broke". And when the money ran out, so did the friends.

"That was a big lesson," Smith says, in a rare understatement.

Luckily, another career lay waiting in the wings. In 1989, impressed by Smith's music videos, Quincy Jones suggested him to NBC for a sitcom.

"Quincy handed me a tape of the videos from Yo! MTV Raps," recalls NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield. "It was clear to me right away that this guy was a natural. I would go up and down the halls saying we had to do something with him."

The rush was on. Smith recalls: "I was wondering at the beginning why no one

ever asked if I could act. Not Quincy, not NBC. Nobody. They even shot the pilot and never asked me: Can you act?' "

They should have. Raw Will Smith was raw indeed. Says Fresh Prince's Karyn Parsons: "I remember when we did the pilot, I was a nervous wreck as I entered my scene not breathing, scared to death.

"I turned to Will and started to say my lines and he mouthed them back as I said them."

Smith agrees: "I was trying so hard. I would memorise the entire script, the n I'd be lipping everybody's line while they were talking. When I watch those episodes its disgusting. My performances were horrible."

He looked for help from his fellow cast members, but they were too intimidated. After all, ex-BBC programming whiz Brandon Tartikoff had called Smith "the next Eddie Murphy."

Co-star James Avery, a classically trained actor who plays Wills stuffy uncle, Philip, remembers how angry Smith got at the casts reluctance to help. "After that first year," says Avery, Will said to us, "I'm really mad at you people. You let me get out there on stage and make a fool of myself."

Smith was, however, determined to improve. "At the beginning, it was easy, h e says. "The Fresh Prince was me and I was just doing what I wanted to do. It was working. Now, personally, I'm moving away from the character - Will on the show doesn't have a wife and kid. I have to act now."

And the pressure shows, says Avery: "He's gained a respect for the craft."

Smith also credits his wife, Sheree, for keeping him in line. When he met her, she put him down. He liked that, and pursued her. She would not date him for six months, and it took two years of his "vast well-spring of charm" to convince her to marry him.

Why would a hot TV stud, who could run around and date anybody, want to settle down?

"I've always been a one-girl guy," admits Smith. "I was never a playboy. I don't know why, but I just really prefer to be with one person." That such a successful young man remains eager to do the right thing explains much of Smiths appeal to Americans who sense his basic goodness. He is aware of his image, and of how it fits in the Big Picture.

He has a sense of responsibility - and he struggles to maintain his shows integrity. "I really hate dumb jokes, he says. "I'm always fighting it. I keep saying, 'Why can't we be more like Roseanne - thats the best show on TV'. I'd love our jokes to have meaning beyond the superficial humour. I'm really not down with the pull our pants down to get a laugh' style.

Now that's fresh. - American TV Guide

[DevilsJim89]

Thanks Tim! good stuff.

[Jazzy Julie]

Thanx, its so weird to read those old articles, Will is the complete opposite of how they wrote about him in that 3rd article. They shouldnt get mad at him for helping out his friends tho.

[Hero1]

well those friends he helped out are still with him! J.L. omar bam etc