Willow Smith says Will Smith has turned down roles to protect his family from ‘heavy’ energy

As Will Smith approaches his 58th birthday on Friday, his daughter, Willow Smith, is sticking up for him, insisting he wouldn’t let certain films and roles get the best of him mentally.

The model and singer was a guest on Kid Cudi’s “Big Bro” podcast recently. While the topic of her dad rarely came up during the hour-long conversation, Cudi opened up about being on set for what he called a “gnarly” movie, but wouldn’t bring the set’s energy back to his own dwelling. It’s something Willow noticed with her father, too.

“My dad has specifically said no to certain roles because he felt like the energy was too heavy to be bringing into the house,” Willow said late into the conversation between her and Cudi. “Like, ‘Nah, I’m not even gonna touch that because I don’t want to be coming home to my family in this.’”

The 25-year-old added, “That’s a deep one. You really have to embody it if you’re doing it right.”

Longtime fans of “The Fresh Prince” who’ve followed his career for years can readily read off the number of roles he’s both turned down and accepted, which has created a little skepticism. In 1993, Smith dove into what was, at the time, the deepest role of his career in “Six Degrees of Separation.” Portraying Paul Poitier, a con artist, Smith revealed in his 2021 memoir that his dedication to the role and the lengths he went to for people to take him seriously as an actor led to friction and issues with his then-wife, Sheree Zampino.

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In “Will,” Smith recalled bringing the character of Paul off-screen to his home with Zampino, who had just given birth to the couple’s son, Trey.

“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,” Will wrote in his memoir. “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.”

It wasn’t the first admission that portraying Paul had led him far too deep into his relationship with Channing. He revealed a similar thought in a 2015 interview with Esquire.

After three years, Smith split from Zampino and later married Jada Pinkett Smith on New Year’s Eve in 1997. Although Smith has sworn off method acting, he’s delivered a few serious roles over the last decade, from “Seven Pounds” to his Oscar-winning role of Richard Williams in “King Richard.”