Prior to smacking Chris Rock on live television at the Oscars, Will Smith had a vision that he would lose everything during a trip on a psychotropic drug.
On Friday (May 20), My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With Dave Letterman debuted its fourth season on Netflix. One of the six episodes of the season features Will Smith, recorded pre-Chris Rock slap, recounting a horrible experience on a mind-altering drug.
“One of the experiences was the individual most hellish phycological experience in my life,” Will said during the sit-down. “I drank, and it usually takes about 45 minutes to kick in. And I’m sitting there and you always feel like, ‘Maybe it won’t kick in this time.’ So I’m drinking and sitting there and then all of a sudden it’s like I start seeing all of my money flying away, and my house is flying away and my career is going away. And I’m, like, trying to grab at my money and my career and my whole life are getting destroyed.”
While Will was trying to get his bearings during the trip, he said he heard a scary voice tell him, “This is what the fuck it is. This is what the fuck life is.”
Later on in his vision, he heard his daughter Willow screaming out for help. “Then slowly, I stopped caring about my money, I just wanted to get to Willow,” he said. “I stopped caring about my house, I stopped caring about my career.”
Will said coming out of that experience changed him. “When I came out of it, I realized that anything that happens in my life, I can handle it,” he told Letterman. “I can handle any person I lose, I can handle anything that goes wrong in my life, I can handle anything in my marriage. I can handle anything that this life has to offer me.”
Coincidentally, Will Smith has had to handle a lot in recent weeks, as a result of the fallout of him slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscar Awards in March for making a joke about Will’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith. While Will’s career has not taken the catastrophic hit it did in his vision, he has faced some career repercussions due to the assault. The Film Academy has banned Will from attending any Oscar events for a decade. Two films set to star the actor have reportedly been put on hold since the slap.
Check out the video of Will Smith explaining his trip to Dave Letterman below.
