Will Smith tells David Letterman he predicted losing career during hallucination before Oscars slap
Will Smith predicted losing his career during an ayahuasca hallucination.
The 53-year-old actor admitted he was scared for his career in an interview filmed months before he struck Chris Rock at the Oscars over a joke the comedian made about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, and the fear came while he was under the influence of a psychoactive herbal drink.
Speaking to David Letterman on Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, he recalled: “I’m drinking, I’m sitting there, and then, all of the sudden, it’s like I start seeing all of my money flying away, and my house is flying away, and my career is gone away.
“I’m like, ‘Ugh!’ And I’m trying to grab for my money and my career. My whole life is getting destroyed. My fear.
“I’m in there and I’m wanting to vomit and all of that. I hear a voice saying, ‘This is what the f*** it is. This is what the f*** life is.’ I’m (panting), going, ‘Oh, s***!’ “
The vision then changed as he heard his daughter Willow, 21, yelling out: “Daddy, help me! Daddy! How come you won’t help me?”
Will added: “I’m like, ‘I don’t see you, baby.’ The shaman is like, ‘Relax, relax, relax.’ And she tells me, ‘Sit up’.
“Then slowly I stopped caring about my money, I just wanted to get to Willow… I stopped caring about my house. I stopped caring about my career.
“I get to the point where I settled down, and the voice is still at 100 percent, I still hear Willow screaming, my money is still flying away, but I’m (taking deep breaths) and I’m totally calm, even though there’s hell going on in my mind.”
Will described the incident as “the individual most hellish psychological experience of my whole life”.
He insisted: “You’re not hallucinating. It’s like both realities are 100 percent present. So you know you’re in this room.
“You’re sitting in the room. You don’t lose sight. It’s not, like, superimposed on this reality. It’s totally separate.”
Meanwhile, Will noted that the experience made him realise that he can handle “anything that happens” in his life.
He said: “I can handle any person I lose. I can handle anything that goes wrong in my life. I can handle anything in my marriage. I can handle anything that this life has to offer me.
“That’s part of the psychological training that happens in ayahuasca.
“First of all, 99 percent of the s*** you worry about never happens. Ninety-nine percent of your pain and your misery is all self-generated. It’s not real.”
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