Will Smith’s post-Oscars non secular journey has taken him again to his outdated highschool.
The King Richard actor — famously “West Philadelphia, born and raised” — visited Overbrook Excessive College within the metropolis on Thursday. He popped in, with a videographer in tow, to talk to college students in a digital media class on the public faculty. The scholars screamed when he walked in, video confirmed. It was a second.
Along with his remarks, the 54-year-old Oscar winner posed for a bunch picture with college students and likewise cheesed for some selfies. He additionally checked out an outdated yearbook, with the picture of 1 “Willard Smith” in it, and interacted. Outdoors the varsity, he additionally greeted shocked college students, taking selfies with them, shaking palms and giving hugs.
The varsity district shared video and photographs on social media, writing, “Thanks for every thing Will!” The put up led to many optimistic feedback from folks saying they had been previous classmates with Smith — or college students at that faculty who had met him on his earlier journeys again. (Some earlier college students talked in regards to the time Smith took a number of the prime college students to Africa to satisfy Nelson Mandela.) That is additionally the web we’re speaking about, so there was additionally a full of life debate within the feedback about Smith’s actions on the Academy Awards in March.
Oscars evening, in fact, was when Smith stormed the stage and hit presenter Chris Rock after the comic made a G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith mentioned he was defending his spouse, who has alopecia; Rock was apparently unaware there was a medical motive behind the Purple Desk Speak co-host’s bald head. Smith went on to win the Finest Actor Oscar after the slap, however resigned from the Academy after. He is been banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years.
Within the wake of the scandal, Smith launched into a “non secular journey” to India for yoga and meditation. He is stayed off the purple carpet and has stored his social media gentle with movies of spiders, bogs and such.
Smith’s first movie because the scandal — the Antoine Fuqua-directed Emancipation — comes out Dec. 2. It is about an enslaved man named escaping from a Louisiana plantation — and, in gentle of the scandal, Smith has been setting up his personal press tour to advertise the mission. To date as an alternative of plenty of media interviews and splashy appearances, giving folks Large Willie-style laughs, he is attending a collection of personal screenings of the movie. Final month, he attended a screening in Washington, D.C., on the Congressional Black Caucus Basis’s 51st annual Legislative Convention, hosted by the NAACP. In current days, he joined Tyler Perry to point out the movie at Morehouse Faculty in Atlanta and simply earlier than he did the identical at one other traditionally Black faculty, Dillard College. He additionally had a non-public screening for the L.A. Lakers and one other for an A-list group of his well-known associates, together with Rihanna and Dave Chappelle.
