Will and Jaden Smith cover New York magazine and open up about their new movie release, After Earth, which opens today, May 31. The synopsis: A father is a best-in-class soldier who crash-lands with his son on a hostile planet Earth a thousand years into the future. The father, wounded, must watch from the sidelines as the son navigates treacherous terrain and fights terrible creatures in order to escape.
What is your dynamic when the whole family is on the set?
Jaden: Willow basically does her thing. [They both laugh.] Dad kind of just is there. He has to feel his own vibe. And my mom is probably like, “Uh-uh. Tell Jaden he needs to do this.”
Will: Yeah, Jada [Pinkett Smith] has really powerful insights and opinions about everything.
Jaden, how was working with your father this time around different from before?
Jaden: Pursuit of Happyness, he was teaching me along the way. This is how the camera works. You do several takes. Like, literally everything you need to know about movies. And then, in Karate Kid, he was kind of holding my hand and watching me distill those rules. And then on After Earth, he was like, ‘All right, you’re an actor, I’m an actor, let’s make a movie together.’ So it was like a collaboration, you know what I’m saying?
