OSLO--Will Smith--one of the biggest stars on the planet--said he’s still struggling to find his place in the world.“You know, once you reach your 40th birthday, the world starts looking a little different,” he said.
He was hoping the Nobel Peace Prize concert--which he co-hosted with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, Friday in Oslo--will help in his journey of self-discovery.
“It’s really frustrating sometimes,” he said, “but I just feel like this is the right place to meet people, and, as my grandmother used to say, ‘Make the world better just because you were there.’ ”
The pair snagged the concert-hosting gig through a friend, Harvard University Prof. S. Allen Counter, well before President Barack Obama won the peace prize, a confluence of events that Mrs. Smith called “icing on the cake.”
The Smiths attended Thursday’s peace prize ceremonies and interviewed President Obama.
The interview aired during the concert.
The concert, held at the Oslo Spektrum, featured performances by Wyclef Jean, Donna Summer, Toby Keith, Lang Lang and Natasha Bedingfied.
It will be televised in the USA early next year.
The couple’s primary goal was to issue a warm welcome to the world.
“I’m going to have to restrain some of my standard dumbness,” Mr. Smith joked.
“We want to make it seem as though we are hosting very prestigious guests in our living room,” Mrs. Smith stated before the affair.
“We want to be able to just bring some warmth and a little laughter and fun into the program, and, at the end of the show, we’re all coming out and we’re going to sing….”
“You can’t give away the end of the show!,” her husband interrupted.
Mrs. Smith conceded that point, laughing heartily, while her husband tried to deflect.
“At the end of it, my character dies!,” he joked.
The couple’s easy rapport is reminiscent of another high-profile couple, whom the Smiths admire: the Obamas.
“They’re with Will and me on the level of how we live,” Mrs. Smith remarked. “I mean, [we’re] nowhere near what the Obamas are doing, but just with the pressures that we have and how much concentration and work it takes to keep your family intact.
“They are an extraordinary family.”
Mr. Smith said the example that the president and first lady set as a couple is something to behold.
“If you can create such a beautiful, hopeful impression,” he said, “then, I think that the value is in the realm of the unnamable.
“You can’t even quantify what that does when you can make somebody feel the way that they’re able to make you feel.”
