The crucial advice Aunt Viv from ‘The Fresh Prince’ gave to Will Smith
It’s fair to say that Will Smith has had a few heavy-hitting movies over his career, whether it be from wild commercial success at the box office or if he has been lavished with critical praise for a particular performance. His roles as a leading man in the likes of Bad Boys and Men in Black or his tender portrayal as a family man in The Pursuit of Happiness have lent Smith’s career an air of completeness.
However, despite working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, Smith noted that Daphne Maxwell Reid – who played Aunt Viv in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air – is the one person who gave him the invaluable advice, “Don’t let success go to your head and failure go to your heart,” he told Esquire. Smith then admitted: “That was a valuable lesson for me a few years ago with After Earth. That was the most painful failure in my career.”
After Earth is M. Night Shyamalan’s 2013 post-apocalyptic action film in which Smith starred alongside his son Jaden Smith. The film had originally been conceived by Smith and told of a father and son who crash land on planet Earth during a time when space is populated by the human race.
The film was panned by critics, although it made a healthy commercial return on its budget. Still, the movie is evidently one that Smith is embarrassed about, calling it “the most painful failure” in his career, even considering it worse than the 1999 film Wild Wild West because he led his son into the production too.
“Wild Wild West was less painful than After Earth because my son was involved in After Earth and I led him into it. That was excruciating,” Smith said. If that weren’t enough, Smith received more tragic news after the numbers came in for After Earth.
He continued: “After Earth comes out, I get the box-office numbers on Monday and I was devastated for about twenty-four minutes, and then my phone rang and I found out my father had cancer. That put it in perspective—viciously.”
Still, the painful failure allowed Smith to reflect on his career and future choices, and, as is often with our greatest downfalls, it provided him with the opportunity to rise once again. “What I learned from that failure is how you win. I got reinvigorated after the failure of After Earth,” he noted. “I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way.”
