Willow Smith abruptly dropped out of the highly publicized reboot of “Annie.” While the young singer-actress herself has kept mum about the decision, her daddy, Will Smith is offering up a reason. Over the weekend Will went back to Philly to appear at Temple University for “Real Talk with Sister Souljah and Will Smith.” There exchange, used to helped Souljah’s new book, ”A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story,” was centered on a frank discussion about family and relationships.
Will essentially said that Willow needed time to be a kid. Permission granted.
Here is Will Smith’s statement (by way of NecoleBitchie.com)
In the past 18 months, I have spent a lot of time focusing on the emotional aspect of my life and my family. In 2010, in one year, our family had the ‘Karate Kid.’ we had ‘Whip my Hair,’ we had Hawthorne, and at the end of the year, we did the Nobel Concert when Barack Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize. Don’t be clapping yet, that wears you out. The thing that had become very clear to me is the danger of a material world and focusing so hard on coming up with money or a house or a job. You focus so hard on those things, and sometimes you can lose focus on why you are doing it in the first place. The only reason to do any of that is to have love.
Willow was supposed to be doing ‘Annie,’ we got Jay-Z to do the movie, got the studio to come in and Willow had such a difficult time on tour with ‘Whip my Hair’ and she said, ‘You know Daddy, I don’t think so’ and I said, ‘Baby, hold up! I said no,no,no, listen, you’ll be in New York with all of your friends and Beyoncé will be there. You will be singing and dancing,’ and she looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, I have a better idea, how about I just be 12.’
I’m really learning through Willow the necessity that we have to snap ourselves back and refocus on the emotional needs of the people that we love. Someone’s emotional needs can be very very different from your dreams and what you think they should be doing and where they are supposed to be.
Great, because God bless the children, but for the life of me I was tired of hearing those sad songs about life from a tween.
(The views contained herein are solely the views of their respective authors, and do not express the views of TV One. TV One does not take responsibility for their content.)
