Yahoo Finance Will Smith Says He'll 'Consider' Running For Office 'At Some Point'
Will Smith 2024?
The 52-year-old actor revealed in a new podcast interview that he would “consider” running for office “at some point.”
“I think for now I’ll let that office get cleaned up a little bit,” Smith told Crooked Media’s “Pod Save America” in an interview released Monday. “And then I’ll consider that at some point down the line. I absolutely have an opinion, I’m optimistic, I’m hopeful, I believe in understanding between people and I believe in the possibility of harmony. I will certainly do my part, whether it remains artistic or, at some point, ventures into the political arena.”
Earlier in the interview, the actor-producer was asked about his personal experiences with racism and discrimination and how they have shaped his worldview. Smith revealed that he has been called a racial slur to his face “probably five or six times,” but never “by a smart person.”
“So, I grew up with the impression that racists and racism were stupid, and they were easy to get around. I just had to be smarter. Now, while they were very dangerous, I had never looked into the eyes of a racist and saw anything that I perceived as intellect,” he explained. Smith continued:
As I got older, I saw that was less and less true. As I went into Hollywood, I started seeing the ideas of systemic racism. But at the core of it, I noticed a difference between ignorance and evil. Now they’re twins, for sure, but ignorance can be educated and evil is a much more difficult problem. ... I’ve always been encouraged that the process of education and understanding could alleviate some of the more dangerous and difficult aspects of racism that have unfortunately been embedded in the very fibers of our country.
Smith has previously quipped that he’d run for president, telling CBS News in 2015 that “if people keep saying all the crazy kinds of stuff they’ve been saying on the news lately about walls and Muslims, they’re going to force me into the political arena.”
The actor has been making the rounds to promote his new Netflix docuseries, “Amend: The Fight for America,” which unpacks the 14th Amendment and the impact it has had on the nation.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
