The road to redemption can be rocky for the once all-conquering Hollywood star. One minute you’re cock of the walk, the next you’re showbusiness roadkill. Peeling yourself off the tarmac and finding a path back to bankability is no easy task. But if anyone has been putting in the hard yards, it’s the embattled rapper and actor Will Smith, who has spent the past six months on an international charm offensive.
Only now that charm has curdled, and all because of a video created for the purpose of showing the world he is adored. Ahead of the UK leg of Smith’s tour, which began in Scarborough, of all places, a film was posted on his YouTube channel with the caption: “My favourite part of tour is seeing you up close. Thank you for seeing me too.” But it later transpired that the footage – which showed concertgoers moved to tears and holding up homemade signs, including one that reads “[The song] ‘You Can Make It’ helped me survive cancer. Thx Will” – had seemingly been doctored using AI. Because nothing says “We love you” like a doting fan with 11 fingers and three hands.
This week, in a bid to make light of the gaffe, Smith posted a new video that appears to show him performing in concert to an audience of digitally rendered cats, with a caption reading, “Crowd was poppin’ tonite!!”. Oddly, at the time of writing, no one has thought to take the first video down.
You may recall Smith’s fall from grace in 2022 following an incident at the Oscars where he strode on stage and slapped Chris Rock across the face, following the latter’s off-colour joke about Smith’s partner Jada Pinkett-Smith’s alopecia. At that moment, the man once known as the Fresh Prince, famed for his comic chops and laidback vibe, became persona non grata. Smith may have won an Oscar that night for his role in King Richard, but he was banned from attending future ceremonies for a decade. Rubbing salt into the wound, King Richard tanked at the box office.
But, after three years of penitence, Smith chose this summer to shrug off the hair shirt and relaunch his career with a new album and a tour. To say the comeback hasn’t gone to plan would be an understatement. First came the album, Based on a True Story, his first in 20 years, which was coolly received by critics – The Independent’s Tara Joshi described it as full of “quasi-inspirational songs that don’t bang” – and sold just 268 copies in the UK in the first week. It also failed to dent the US Billboard 200 chart.
Then there was the single “Pretty Girls”, where Smith rapped about his love of women and came over less like a 56-year-old man with two marriages under his belt than a titteringly hormonal teen. An accompanying video, which had echoes of Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’s controversial perve-fest “Blurred Lines”, saw Smith ogling a parade of women who are required to simper back at him (although, in fairness, one gets to peel him off the bottom of her shoe).
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If the Smith relaunch was faltering on record, perhaps it would work better in person where he could flaunt that fabled charisma to full effect. This was doubtless the thinking behind the cringe-tastic “pop-up” performance of his hit single “Men in Black” at King’s Cross station in London. As career rebuilding exercises go, there is at least logic in Smith revisiting a track that came out when the world was at his feet. But publicity stunts are annoying at the best of times and Londoners tend not to look kindly on anyone, even former titans of Hollywood, wreaking havoc with commuter traffic at rush hour.
Poor Will. He just wants the world to love him again, as demonstrated by his – or more likely his team’s – manipulation of crowd footage to boost his public image. Not only does it smack of desperation, it shows a mortifying lack of confidence in what was once an indestructible brand. You can imagine publicists and crisis management teams across the industry putting together Smith-themed PowerPoints as a learning tool in how not to enact a career resurrection.
But does Smith deserve to suffer the ignominy of failure? Does the punishment fit the crime? Not really. The slapping incident was shocking, but celebrities have come back from far worse. Given the snafus that have characterised this tortured comeback, Smith’s is certainly not the usual redemption arc. But perhaps he can take inspiration from his semi-autobiographical character on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, who rapped about how “my life got flipped, turned upside down” after “I got in one little fight”, and ultimately landed on his feet. If he can do it once, he can do it again – if only he would stop trying so hard.
