Will Smith Reveals He Thought About Killing His ‘Violent’ Father to ‘Avenge My Mother’
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Will Smith has continued to open up about the complicated relationship he had with his father, revealing that he once contemplated killing him to “avenge” his mother.
In this week’s issue, People Magazine published an exclusive excerpt from the actor’s upcoming memoir Will, in which Smith details an abusive incident involving his father.
“My father was violent, but he was also at every game, play and recital,” Smith wrote of his late father Will Sr. “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. The same intense perfectionism that terrorized his family put food on the table every night of my life.”
Smith had previously shared a traumatic and violent childhood memory while speaking to Wesley Lowery for a GQ profile, opening up about the day he watched his father punch his mother in the side of the head.
“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,” Smith wrote in his memoir. “That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.”
The book goes on to explain how that traumatic moment, has impacted all aspects of Smith’s life, writing, “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,” he wrote. “For failing to stand up to my father. For being a coward.”
The actor shared that the incident affected his relationship with his father for decades, even as Smith cared for him as he battled cancer until his passing in 2016.
“One night, as I delicately wheeled him from his bedroom toward the bathroom, a darkness arose within me,” he wrote. “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. That when I was big enough, when I was strong enough, when I was no longer a coward, I would slay him.”
The actor went on to describe the moment he contemplated killing his father, sharing, “I paused at the top of the stairs. I could shove him down, and easily get away with it.”
“As the decades of pain, anger, and resentment coursed then receded, I shook my head and proceeded to wheel Daddio to the bathroom,” he wrote.
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