Will Smith Has Been Reborn as a Motivational Instagram Speaker
Image taken from Will Smith's Instagram

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Will Smith Has Been Reborn as a Motivational Instagram Speaker

A deep dive into his journey from Fresh Prince to Rumi-quoting, life advice giver.
Ryan Bassil
London, GB

Similar to a lot of things in the world – the changing of the seasons, the framework of grief, Broadway theatre – the life of Hollywood actor and musician Will Smith exists in several different stages. And so to truly understand him, to burrow beneath the epidermis of his skin and into the soul, it is important to recognise each of these individual phases and unpack them like a treasure chest.

The truth is that Smith is Having a Moment on Instagram right now and has become the grand owner of 10 million followers – a milestone he celebrated with a hyperactive Youtuber-style thank you post. This is his new phase of life, the dad with an Instagram account. However before biting hard into the soft (and frankly annoyingly non-chronological) flesh of the ‘gram timeline to find out what it all means, first let us lay eyes on the fabric of his life thus far. In brief, here are the stages of Will Smith, up to and including his current status as top Instagram dad:

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Phase 1: The DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince Years (1985-91)

You’ll know these guys for their singles “Summertime” (the eternal BBQ jam), “Parents Just Don’t Understand” (winner of the first ever Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1989) and maybe – if you’re infatuated with vaguely palatable but mostly terrible rap – the song “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble”. What might be unknown, however, is the fact Smith balled so hard he spent nearly all the money he owned and got hit with a $2.8 million tax debt, eventually leading him to almost declare bankruptcy.

Phase 2: How TF do I get out of being bankrupt? I know! Let’s start a TV show (1991-96)

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air DVD cover

Essentially, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was born from a metaphorical womb owned by the IRS. They needed Smith to pay up; he signed a contract with NBC who built a new sitcom around his life. Though it may perhaps be easier to recall Smith’s constant ribbing of his cousin Carlton or the show’s theme tune, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air impressively acted as a guide to issues around race and one example of the (rarely depicted) upper middle-class black American experience, with episodes centering on topics such as racial profiling and police brutality. It was some important shit.

Phase 3: The movie star slash rapper (1996-2003)

Men in Black still

Like sex or takeaway food, all good things come to an end and The Fresh Prince ended in 1996 after six seasons. Enter: Will 2K (literally, there is a song called “Will 2k” that samples The Clash from his album Willenium). This is the Willard Smith of Men In Black, of the parties in “Miami” where the heat is on, of potential Golden Globe wins for his 2001 portrayal of the boxer Muhammad Ali in the 2001 film Ali, of “Nod Your Head” – a terribly good but also bad theme song to the Men in Black sequel, featuring a frankly batshit music video that is probably half the reason a lot of record labels went bankrupt not long after.

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Phase 4: Basically the same as phase 3 but without music and more movies, most of which involve him crying (2006-2017)

The Pursuit of Happyness

I Am Legend

Seven Pounds

– Plus a bunch of shocking movies like Hitch, Hancock and Suicide Squad

Somewhere between all this he’s been pictured in the studio with Kanye West, and had a brief mid-life crisis with the release of last year’s comeback single “It’s Lit” – a song that is perhaps the T-junction leading into the present, living and breathing icon of Will Smith as the motivational Instagram User and YouTube Vlogger.

Phase 5: The amateur Instagram user

Like the rising of the sun in the east, it begins. The era of Will Smith on Instagram is ushered in by Ellen. She who prompted him to post the gloriously duck-faced picture above, which was then followed up by no less than seven more posts in a single day – a daring but essential power move.

From then onward we see the dad of three get to grips with technology in the same way any dad might grapple with the gleaming touchscreen of a phone with a social media account installed on it. There are selfies, a couple more duck-faces, a #throwbackthursday. Pretty standard stuff. But then, like a slow and steady stream of water coming from a mountain atop heaven, videos start to arrive.

Perhaps the first worthwhile one of these videos is Smith fucking around with a Rubik’s Cube (above), looking like the light of a thousand suns have shone down on his face with the blessings of all the Greek gods combined. It’s not exactly a gripping watch. It is a man doing a Rubik’s Cube, then putting that video on Instagram. But it’s also a glowed up Will Smith doing a Rubik’s Cube which makes the whole thing come across as naive and sweet, before ending with the kind of flexing that Fresh Prince fans know him for. Take this as step one in his reinvention as Big Daddy Will.

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Here the posts start to come thick and fast. Will has the time of his life in Australia, hanging out with snakes and other #dangerous animals and screaming his cheeks off, somehow still managing to keep hold of his phone while speeding across the water on a boat. This is step two: this goes beyond dad on Instagram, this is an entertainer almost in the mould of but not quite there yet DJ Khaled. But really – if we’re being completely honest here – all of these posts are to get Will Smith to his final stage evolved stage: Will Smith the Instagram Life Coach.

Phase 6: the Instagram Life Coach

Take a look at the above post wherein Will Smith filters a life coach quote through the Philadelphian translation machine that is his mind into the phrase “don’t be hanging with no jank-ass jokers that don’t help you shine” – something I think we can all agree should be placed atop all those fridge magnets you see hanging around in garden centres and service station counter tops. “The prerequisite for hanging around with any person,” Smith says, “is that they feed and inspire you”. There’s also this other post about not sleeping in which, y’know, explains what it says on the tin through the medium of Will Smith being healthy as shit next to a bodacious ocean.

However the best nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned from the person now known as Dr Will are from his Instagram Live videos. To do this you need to follow him on Instagram but for now watch the above video. In it, Dr Will talks about love and marriage and going on a journey with someone while also enjoying your own journey. Watching it is kinda like watching an episode of Oprah or soaking in several paragraphs of an Eckhart Tolle book in the space of two and a half minutes.

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So, after all these phases, what does it mean?

Well it’s pretty obvious but let’s just spell it all out. Will Smith has gone from being a rapper to being in debt to being a movie star to being a parent to being an Instagram user and – along the way – combined all these experiences to become some kind of born again spiritual guide for the Instagram generation. He can give up music now, he can stop film. Get him a book deal, get him a television show, let him start his own company that prints postcards. This man is a fountain of knowledge, of wisdom learned through experience, of everything his son Jaden Smith posts on Twitter but with more depth and experience.

Then again, there’s also this:

Whether it’s funny or it’s motivational, this is an upgraded version of the Will Smith we’ve always known, now delivered straight to your phone on a daily basis like a well-wishing from a friend. Soak it all in. Embalm yourself in his energy and emerge as a new person.

You can find Ryan on Twitter.