How Willow Smith avoided a ‘dark path’ of ‘sadness’ and ‘fear’ as a child star
Willow Smith says she stepped away from career opportunities as a child to avoid a “dark path” of “sadness” and “world-shattering fear.”
The singer, now 21, spoke on SiriusXM’s “Bevelations” on Friday about how she “needed to be a kid” before fully diving into her career.
“I saw at a very young age … the dark path I could have gone down,” Smith explained. “I kind of caught myself before my coping mechanisms started too early.”
By age 12, Smith felt she had “touched a sadness” that she didn’t know existed.
“That was terrifying. Because I was like, ‘I’ve never felt this before. … This is obviously not healthy and I need to stop this before it becomes a darker place,’” she recalled.
“Realistically in my young mind … I just knew it felt wrong. I just knew it. I just knew everything felt wrong.”
Now, whenever the singer experiences fear, her worries have an “upward and forward motion.”
Willow noted, “It’s not a deep, heartbreaking, like, world-shattering fear. … I really just think my higher self was like, ‘No. This is going to go bad for you.’ And I just had to listen.”
The “Red Table Talk” co-host often speaks about her mental health struggles while interviewing guests with mom Jada Pinkett Smith and grandma Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
Although Jada, 51, initially dismissed Willow”s anxiety, the songwriter “had to forgive” her mom for that.
“It took me a long time to understand Willow … just her anxiety,” Jada, who shares Willow with husband Will Smith, said on an April episode of the Facebook Watch show. “I had a very difficult time relating because two things: her lifestyle and how she was brought up was very different than mine.”
The Tony nominee, who didn’t know “how to comfort” Willow at first, “recently” realized she also experiences anxiety symptoms in the form of nail biting and cuticle chewing.