Will Smith has been trying this “YouTube star” thing for about four months now, posting all the same kinds of videos—dumb pranks, food tastings, travel vlogs—that every would-be celebrity social media person seems to fill their channels with. A few weeks ago, though, Smith stumbled onto a possible revolutionary concept for his video content: Telling interesting stories, while also being one of the most beloved and charismatic people on the planet.
It’s a crazy idea, admittedly, but it seems to be working; Smith’s second “Storytime” video arrived on his channel this week, and it’s pretty great: a funny, straightforward story of how he simultaneously became both extremely famous, and extremely broke, and how a drunken Quincy Jones turned his life around. Specifically, Smith tells the tale of how he landed the starring role on The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, which came about in the aftermath of all the trouble he got into with the IRS after the relative failure of the third DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince album, And In This Corner… Unsurprisingly—given that he’s, ya know, Will Smith—the man is a talented storyteller, happily skewering his own young mistakes while also explaining the surreal effect of drifting into Jones’ legendary orbit. More of this, less “Australian Meat Pie Is Hot As ****” videos, please, your highness.
