(From left) Will Smith with Noomi Rapace, Joel Edgerton and David Ayer at an event in Mumbai on Monday. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty) (From left) Will Smith with Noomi Rapace, Joel Edgerton and David Ayer at an event in Mumbai on Monday. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)

Flipping the social perspective, the David Ayer-directed movie Bright features popular Hollywood actor Will Smith as a racist black police officer who has reservations against working with a rookie cop, who is an Orc (played by Joel Edgerton). “I loved the idea and the social shift of an African American police officer who is a racist. It was such an interesting flip to explore the world from that perspective. Just the psychological perspective of superiority — it was fun to play that,” said Smith.

Along with the Bright team, Will Smith is touring São Paulo, Los Angeles, London, Mumbai and Tokyo in just nine days to promote his latest movie, a futuristic action-thriller. He stopped by in Mumbai on Monday. Talking about Bright, which is more like a racial allegory that touches upon a string of social issues such as diversity, Smith said, “Anytime you’re creating something, you can’t help but the world makes its way into the art. So here we didn’t talk about it specifically in those terms, but we talked about the overarching, social ideas of mistreatment and just how poorly we treat one another.” Bright, which is set in an alternate world where humans co-exist with Orcs, elves and fairies, will be available on Netflix from December 22.

Though peppered with fantastical elements, Bright is a look at the multiple social prejudices of the present world. “What I realised is that it’s not just racism, it’s all of the ‘isms’ — racism, sexism, classism and nationalism — that are an individual’s or a group’s ego struggle for comparative superiority. Everybody wants to feel like they are better than somebody. Even a fight against racism is laced with an individual’s need to feel superior,” said the rapper-turned-Hollywood star and added that he had not looked at it this way earlier. Smith first tasted success in showbiz in the early ’90s with the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and this was followed by his major big screens outings such as Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and Bad Boys (1995).

The experience of making Bright also for the first time made him realise “the negative” reaction to the word “diversity”. “We say diversity as if we mean equality, but that’s really not what diversity means. Diversity means ‘I’m gonna use this term for me to get higher than you.’ So when a white male hears the word diversity, it means hire anybody but a white male. Playing this character was the first time I was able to see that difficult, covert struggle for superiority. The problem got more complex and difficult to solve in my mind. It was looking at racism from this perspective that I comprehended the aspects of fear, ignorance and the individual and collective struggle that perpetuates and precipitates violence,” said the actor, who features in popular franchise Men in Black and successful movies such as Independence Day, Hitch and The Pursuit of Happyness.

What’s his reaction to the deep-rooted exploitation in the film industry that the Harvey Weinstein episode has exposed? “To me the whole situation has been bizarre. I have a 17-year-old daughter (Willow) who grew up with men that she trusts and doesn’t even comprehend the idea of predatory behaviour. For me, I’ve been talking about it for a while as all these things have been coming up. I’m like ‘I don’t know these guys’, as I’m hearing some of the things that people will do. Like, I just don’t know who will do that. I don’t know if I’m naive but to schedule a meeting with someone and the person shows up and you’re in a bathrobe. I have a lot of male friends but I just don’t know those guys,” said the actor.

This is Smith’s third trip to Mumbai. One of the things he regrets not being able to add to his schedule was a visit to Akshay Kumar’s home this time. “One thing I love about India is the food at Akshay’s, that’s literally the best food I’ve ever had,” Smith said. His India connection runs deeper than that. “I’m about 90 per cent through the Bhagavad Gita right now. To be reading it and to be here in this country, I feel like my inner Arjuna is being channelised. I’m going to Rishikesh soon. I’m definitely going to spend a lot more time in this country,” the 49-year-old added.

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