Will Smith has been a best-selling recording artist, television star, two-time Academy Award nominee, and such a champion at the box office that “Big Willie Weekend” blockbusters became their own genre. Now he’s taken quill to ink to tell his life’s story in what promises to be a hit.
Will is set to be released on November 9, the superstar revealed in an amusing Instagram video on Saturday that featured a Pixar-ish filter with uncanny valley vibes.
Smith said he’s been working on his book “for the last two years, and it is finally ready.” He then held up a copy and said “ahhhhh.”
If you’ve ever wondered what Will Smith’s dentist hears, wonder no more!
A second Instagram post included a video detailing the creation of the bold, colorful cover. The artist Brandan “BMike” Odums, a New Orleans-based muralist, is shown in time-lapse recreating the design as a large-format painting to the tune of “WILLY” by nobigdyl. and Andy Mineo. (The 2020 track features lyrical references to Smith and his 1997 album Big Willie Style.) Another video shows Smith telling a small gathering that he didn’t want a typical book cover before lightly ribbing conventional author photos.
Smith first announced he’d be working on a memoir with collaborator Mark Manson in July 2018. Manson is the best-selling author of the self-help works The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life and Everything Is Fucked: A Book About Hope.
“I’ve got years and years of stuff I want to say,” the star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Independence Day, and Focus (more people should watch Focus) said in a 2018 video, joking he’d work with whichever publisher made the highest bid. His publisher is Penguin Press.
Maybe Smith will get dishy in Will regarding what he and Jada Pinkett Smith once jokingly referred to as their “bad marriage for life!” Or perhaps he’ll stick to explaining his artistic process for hits such as Men In Black and “Summertime.”
Hat tip to the New York Daily News for their recollection that “Will” is also the title of the 1991 autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy, Richard Nixon’s henchman. The similarities will likely end there.
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