After posing for a simple black and white spread, the Oscar-winning actor discussed everything from the relationship with his children to the legacy he hopes to leave.
Check out a few highlights Will’s interview below!
On working with his son Jaden the second time:
“He was seven years old in The Pursuit of Happiness, he is 14 now. There’s something really powerful about a 13 year-old going out to learn how to hunt with his father. I consider myself a warrior, and I’m a Samurai teaching my son how to fight, how to love, just really helping him develop in a young man. It was our version of a bromitzvah!”
On his parenting skills:
“There are definite similarities. I grew up in a family business so my father, my mother and all my brothers and sisters worked in the family business, so that’s really the only way I know how to parent. In real situations, you are going out in the real world and you are earning real money. The things you say and do in the world will affect the family for real. My style of parenting is very similar to that of my parents, minus the concept of ownership. I think that, specifically in African American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there’s a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I released with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person. Things like cleaning up their room. You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don’t tell our kids to clean their rooms. Actually, we tell our kids ‘you don’t have a room, that’s our room and we are letting you borrow it.’ So the same way you would say to an adult if you let them use car, you say, ‘Yo man, clean my car! Don’t drive around all filthy like that!’ And it’s perfectly reasonable for you to want an adult to clean your car, so we feel it’s perfectly reasonable to ask our kids to clean the rooms that we are letting them use.”
On the emancipation rumors with Jaden:
“Yeah, that was a joke! I made a joke. He is definitely not going anywhere; he is so scared of being out on his own. Willow is probably going to be emancipated before Jaden! I think I was in Tokyo where I made a joke that if he has a day where his movie is bigger than one of mine then there’s no reason for him to live in my house. His 15th birthday is coming up so he can probably be emancipated.”
On his legacy:
“I think that if I were to go now my legacy wouldn’t be what I wanted it to be. I think right now I’m really starting to create it. I love the idea that anything is possible. I like the idea that when I show up, magic happens, that all of a sudden people feel like something which seemed impossible just got a little more possible. I want my legacy to be inspiration that I inspired people to become everything that they dreamed and even the things that they never dreamed. That’s what I am doing with Jaden now, helping him develop and learn and grow. I want that to be my legacy. I want to look back at the string of lives that I changed.”
Source: GossipCenter
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