After Jaden Smith made headlines last month for wearing a dress for a Louis Vuitton photo shoot, his dad Will Smith was not so enthusiastic about the idea.
"'No, the kids are not going to do it, because their parents will have sense enough to not let them do it,'" the ‘Suicide Squad’ actor shared. "But he's confident in who he is and who he wants to be."
Will also described his 17-year-old son to be “completely comfortable,” which builds up his admiration for him.
"Jaden has his own clothing line, and then he started wearing a skirt,” he said. “Then I was like 'Okay, you cannot wear a skirt.' He said to me 'Dad it's fine. It's going to be so hot all the kids will be wearing it.'"
In an interview with BBC Radio 1Xtra, Will shared about how much he prefers his children to go through criticism and learn about dealing with such experience while remaining confident. According to the actor, if these individuals are able to do such, they will be strong and capable of dealing with the world when they become adults.
"I want them to experience as much trauma as they can without them getting broken," the 47-year-old actor explained. "The world is hard, so I want them to be able to hear people's opinions and take what people say and what people think and grant people their own views without that breaking their self-confidence."
Also, Will also spoke about raising his kids with wife Jada Pinkett-Smith, admitting that the children have been given only a few boundaries and that, as parents, they “may have gone too far.”
"There's a really powerful internal quality as an artist that as parents we encourage," Will explained. "You gotta get out on the edge. You have to try things. You have to be comfortable doing things people don't agree with, and you have to be comfortable doing things that you could fail."
As for Jaden trying out new things, Will revealed that they felt terrified at first, but eventually realized that their son is greatly committed to his artistic decisions and is not easily swayed by what other people think.
The two-time Oscar nominee, whose eldest child is 23-year-old Trey Smith, also touched on the subject of his other kids. He explained why their daughter, Willow, is not given the same freedom as his brothers, particularly because she is 15 years old, thereby having a curfew at home.
"As a father, and the time I spend with the boys, when they go out, they're with six or seven dudes, right? So they have a small army when they go out," Smith said. "So their freedom is slightly different from Willow's. Willow's a 15-year-old girl, so we try to have the same rules, but it's a different world, you know?”
Aside from his young ones, Will previously opened up about his grandmother and how her strong Christian faith gave him the right preparation for his film, ‘Concussion,’ in which he took on the role of Dr. Omalu- a forensic pathologist and devoted Christian, who learned that concussions can bring about long-term psychological disorders. The actor described his grandmother as "the most spiritually certain person that I had ever met in my life.”
While ‘Concussion’ has already been released in theatres last Christmas, Will’s ‘Suicide Squad’ is set to hit cinemas on Aug. 5, 2016.
