4x02 Will Smith

Hard to believe this is the same person we saw at the Oscars

will smith is a storyteller. hollywood is full of these people. these are celebrities who mix personal life with narrative, in a way you can't tell which parts of what they say are true or not. they sell. this is one of the things i love about david letterman's interviews: he manages to extract some truths from the person, subtly and elegantly, without surrendering to charms but without being arrogant.

when people give this episode a bad review because they don't like will smith, they're failing to see how precious it is. you can see, in that fifty minutes, many true parts of will smith (including the toxic masculinity) which he usually hides but david and his team manage to extract. will smith is not a bad or good person. these are narratives. what david's interviews do is show the person behind the narratives. complex and contradictory people. it's a study. i love it.

This is being rating-bombed because of the Oscars incident, but this is a very good interview.

I grew up watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, hearing how it got shepherded to air is insane.