It was a joke, apparently.
Jaden Smith won’t be accepting housewarming gifts anytime soon.
Just one day after reports surfaced that the 14-year-old son of Hollywood big hitter Will Smith asked his parents to let him become legally emancipated, the actor-rapper appeared on “Ellen” with his dad to set the record straight: he is staying put.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jaden shared with Ellen. Motioning to his dad, who sat next to him beaming proudly, he added, “The thing that people don’t get is everything in his house is free.”
Jaden joked that he would likely live at the Smith house for twenty to thirty more years and that the only way his father wouldn’t allow that was if he starred in a film that became bigger than one of dad’s blockbuster hits.
“Then there’s no reason to live in my house,” the elder Smith laughed.
When asked by Ellen how the emancipation rumor began, Will surmised that it probably spread after a joke he had made about his son’s desire to own his own home. “My baby boy he’s never leaving me, never,” Smith said. “No emancipation for the Smith kids.”
Smith’s forceful stance on the topic contrasts somewhat with his and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith’s parenting style, which the actor admitted in a recent interview with The Sun was fairly relaxed. Smith said he didn’t believe in punishment and that, from the time his son was five or six, he would sit the tot down after he had misbehaved and ask him why he felt his actions were justified.
“I think it’s a much more difficult question to ask someone — ‘Why was that right?’ — than to try to show them why it was wrong,” Smith said in his interview with The Sun. “Nobody wants to be wrong, all parts of yourself fight like crazy to not be wrong. So I’ll say to Jaden, ‘Why was that the right thing to do for your life?’ and if he can explain why kicking his sister in the chest was the right thing to do, we can see to it that he understands that it wasn’t so smart.”
Smith’s open-mindedness seems to have seeped over into Jaden’s career, as well. In addition to releasing rap records with Justin Bieber and sister Willow and launching his MSFTS clothing line, the busy teen has paired up with his dad to star in the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan sci-fi flick After Earth, which releases in theaters on May 31.
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