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Rihanna is keeping it coming with the magazine covers. Check out her 3 W Korea covers as she helps the mag celebrate its 10th Anniversary. And 46-year-old Will Smith divulges more than ever courtside while chatting it up with ESQUIRE magazine about failure, his kids, and he whole in his life.
She's got not 1 international cover, but three. Rihanna is W Korea's March 2015 10th Anniversary cover girl. And the pics, shot by Dennis Leupold, are giving us young 90's tease:
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She served up a bit of Asian flare with satin and silk fabrics and dresses that channel Korean style robes.
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We're sure the whole spread will be gorgeous. By the way, it isn't just the mag's 10 year anniversary. Rihanna also recently celebrated 10 years since getting signed. Yep, it's been that long.
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Meanwhile, Will Smith is covering the March 2015 issue of ESQUIRE magazine. And the Focus star is opening up more than usual. The interview went down candid style, courtside at the Sixers-Grizzlies game this past December. And he talked about everything from movie failures to acting failures to the lessons he teaches his kids about internet hate to Ferguson.
On teaching his kids how to deal with social media hate
With this generation of kids growing up, the technological battering is almost the norm. They generally avoid the stuff. They're really well-adjusted around this business and understanding the nature of having to take a battering. It's a brutal world out there for young people, for everybody. Willow had one moment. The Young Turks are Willow's idol. They have a TV show online. They're like a really powerful group of young writers, hosts, and political commentators. Willow loves the Young Turks, and that was the only moment I saw her cry. Other than that, she's really well-adjusted with it. And Jaden understands that that's a part of this business. If he wants to do it, there's a certain amount of battery that you have to be willing to live through. We have a quote that I put up in the house from Pema Chödrön: "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." We call it leaning into the sharp parts. Something hurts, lean in. You just lean into that point until it loses its power over you. There's a certain amount of suffering that you have to be willing to sustain if you want to have a good life. And the trick is to be able to sustain it with your heart open and still be loving. That is the real trick.
You never lose the mentality. It's such a strange thing. Jaden, my sixteen-year-old, he has one pair of shoes.
Total. He has refused to be a slave to money. I so respect that. The younger generation is less of an ownership generation, anyway. And it's such an interesting thing to watch, because I came from a middle-class background, but, you know, our lights and gas would be cut off from not paying the bill. I grew up in a house where you would need the kerosene heaters in the winter in case the bills didn't get paid. And he's from the complete other end of the spectrum. And it's so interesting to me that from growing up in that space, he could see the need for things in a way that he's rejecting. He's like, "I'm not gonna let myself need things in that way"—but I would like him to get another pair of shoes.
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On how he's enjoying his wealth
There is a great line in Lawrence of Arabia. Anthony Quinn. "The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor because I am a river to my people." I just love that line. So I'm getting a T-shirt made: I AM A RIVER TO MY PEOPLE. I just love that line. I want to take care of people. I want to help people. The maximum joy that I have is when I can create something that makes someone else's life lighter, brighter, or better. And I'm past cars and jewelry, you know? I don't even wear a watch.
On dealing with multiple flop movies
Wild Wild West was less painful than After Earth because my son was involved in After Earth and I led him into it. That was excruciating. What I learned from that failure is how you win. I got reinvigorated after the failure of After Earth. I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way. I was a guy who, when I was fifteen my girlfriend cheated on me, and I decided that if I was number one, no woman would ever cheat on me. All I have to do is make sure that no one's ever better than me and I'll have the love that my heart yearns for. And I never released that and moved into a mature way of looking at the world and my artistry and love until the failure of After Earth, when I had to accept that it's not a good source of creation.
After Earth comes out, I get the box-office numbers on Monday and I was devastated for about twenty-four minutes, and then my phone rang and I found out my father had cancer. That put it in perspective—viciously. And I went right downstairs and got on the treadmill. And I was on the treadmill for about ninety minutes. And that Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole. You can't win enough, you can't have enough money, you can't succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.
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On why he stays in tip top shape
I like to look good, but I like my body to function well more than anything. For me, it's as spiritual and intellectual as it is physical. And emotional. I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, if my body is physically functioning at the highest possible levels. I enjoy pushing myself. There is nothing like having to change your physical form to put you in contact with every weak part of yourself, to train yourself in discipline. You get confronted with all of the things you'll be confronted with in your marriage, confronted with in your parenting, confronted with in your job.
On his body fat percentage
I'm 10 right now. I'm 10. You know, I was probably 8 for Focus....I got up to 225 for Ali. I was 183 for I Am Legend. It was 6 percent for I Am Legend, but that's way down. So 183 to 225 is a huge shift.
On growing up with police brutality
It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us." I also know that when I was seventeen years old, I had a $20,000 car, which made it certain that I got pulled over all the time.
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On why he will never method act again
With Six Degrees of Separation, I got a taste early of the dangers of going too far for a character. My character was in love with Stockard Channing's character. And I actually fell in love with Stockard Channing....So the movie was over and I went home, and I was dying to see Stockard. I was like, "Oh no! What have I done?" That was my last experience with Method acting, where you're reprogramming your mind. You're actually playing around with your psychology. You teach yourself to like things and to dislike things. It is a really dangerous place when you get good at it. But once I had that experience, I was like, No more Method acting. I was spending—for Six Degrees, I wanted to perform well so badly that I was spending six and seven and eight days in character before shooting, and you have to be careful with that.
On fame
Being famous is such a gift for me because small things make people's lives brighter. You just shake somebody's hand. You just smile and write your name and people will talk about it for the rest of their lives.
On black people's responsibility in systematic racism
I understand the difficulty and the pain, and there's no easy way out right now. The change that has to happen is about to be so brutal and so painful. It's not unlike the sixties. I think there's actually a deeper issue at play that America is going to have to face. What we're really talking about in this issue is people walking around the street with guns that can make a decision whether or not they're going to kill someone, right? And that's even more difficult, because there's really no way back from that. This is a gun culture. And it's painful for me, because I cannot figure out how to be helpful. I've always been telling my sons, We have to separate fault from responsibility—whose fault it is that black men are in this situation, whose fault it is doesn't matter. It's our responsibility to make it go right. It's our responsibility. It's a lot of people's fault, systemic racism, and it's a lot of people's fault that the black community is in the situation that we're in, but it's our responsibility to clean up the mess.
On his lowest career point
I took pretty much a year and a half off. In 2010, basically everything that I had ever dreamed of had come true and the hole was still there, you know? In 2010, it was "Whip My Hair" [Willow Smith's hit single] and The Karate Kid, and Jada and I had just hosted the Nobel concert, and Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and the only interview he did was with Jada and me. It was the best and the worst year of my life. It was everything that I had dreamed, and my family was battered by the conquest.
Check out the full interview HERE. Focus hits theaters February 27th.
Photos : Esquire/Rihanna's IG
