Will Smith: on his hot movie career, his divorce, his new lady love and the end of 'The Fresh Prince.'

Ebony, August, 1996 by Lynn Norment

Though he enjoyed doing the show and working with his co-stars, Smith says he's not sure he'll do television again. "At this point I'm looking forward to working in the film world," he say. "I enjoy making movies. It allows you to be someone different every time you step up to the camera. You know, television is a medium designed for mediocrity whereas when you're making a film, you have more of an opportunity to achieve aesthetic perfection, or as close to that as you can get. You just have time to work on it."

Many of Smith's fans, as well as Hollywood executives, were pleasantly surprised at his acclaimed performance in the drama, Six Degrees of Separation. He says lie worked hard - with a dialect coach and an acting coach-to prepare himself and get into the gay con-artist character. Afterwards, it was hard, he says, to get back into the "Fresh Prince" character. "That was the first time I ever had to be someone else," he says. "All of your instincts and all of the things that you've worked on, all the faces you learn to make and all of your go-to tools are stripped. And you're fighting a battle, but you can't use any of the weapons that you've used your whole life, so you have to start from scratch. Its not even comedy and that's what I was used to doing. It was a whole new arena with nothing that I've ever worked with before, not even my own voice. I was taken completely out of my essence. I wasn't able to be me."

But it was a pivotal experience that propelled Smith's career into the movies and established him as a versatile actor who has considerably more depth than his "Fresh Prince" character. In addition to being taken out of his personality, he had to shed his clothes for a nude scene, for which he only wore what he calls a "ball pouch." He says he was concerned what the Black audience in particular would think of that scene, and the scene in which he was to kiss a man. He opted not to do the kissing scene.

In the past he had gone to show business veterans Bill Cosby and Quincy Jones for advice. This time he sought advice from Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington, who told him that it was not about the role, but how well he portrayed the role. "I learned a valuable lesson in that you do the audience a disservice if you don't completely commit to the character," says Smith. "If you are not going to commit, then don't take it.

He says that working with actors like Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones forced him to elevate the quality of his acting. On the other hand, he says that working with Martin Lawrence on Bad Boys, which has grossed more than $138 million, was a fulfilling experience that cemented a friendship for life. "Martin is a comedic genius," says Smith. "In fact, he's a comedic geyser." The two are filming Bad Boys II in Miami this summer.

Because of his love of movie-making, Smith says he also is not too anxious to make another album, partly because rap music has changed dramatically since 1986, the year he made his debut. "When I was doing it, rap was kind of uplifting, and now it seems to be completely ignorant and socially degenerate and misogynistic," he says. "It's very different from the rap world that I grew up in .... Now rap music is just bizarre. its gone beyond reality, and its some kind of bizarre, sick reality that just, I just don't know, its no good at all. . . .I think I'm kind of retired from music."