Will Smith recalls exact moment when he realised he wanted to be ‘on camera’

Hollywood actor Will Smith still remembers the precise moment he decided he wanted to pursue a career in acting. The 55-year-old musician Will Smith has delved into hip-hop history in his new podcast Class of ’88, covering everything from his own days performing as part of a hip-hop duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff before moving into acting. The Oscar winner talked candidly about realising early in his music career that he had a gift for ‘front of the camera’ in the podcast’s first episode, which came out on Friday. Smith explained that he got the acting bug on the sets of the music video for Parents Just Don’t Understand, the second single of their 1988 sophomore studio album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.

Smith ‘desperately wanted to be respected as a rapper’, therefore he was first anxious about the cheerful song’s release as a single. However, the experience of making the campy visual, in which he plays a melancholic adolescent and theatrically raps the lyrics, proved to be a formative one.

“To help promote the song, Jive Records decided to make a video,” the King Richard star said on the podcast. Producer Ann Carli brought in a director, Scott Kalvert, who had a cool visual style, and that ultimately became the Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince signature style — bright and colourful with the stylised set covered with graffiti. I rapped straight into the camera while an actress playing my mom chased me around with a rolling pin. I think it was during the making of that video I realised that I loved being on camera.”