Hollywood has its fair share of rags to riches stories, some of which are true and many of which are fake. For Will Smith though, it was more of a case of rags to riches to rags to even more riches and all of it wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for his terrible money management skills.
Will initially rose to fame and fortune back in the late 1980s under his rapping moniker “The Fresh Prince.” With the release of his hit hip-hop single ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand,’ he suddenly found himself with a Grammy award and huge pile of money in his lap.
Unsurprisingly, Will did what any young person who suddenly came into a heap of moolah did: spend it all recklessly. As he recalls in a YouTube vlog, there were motorbikes, cars and excessive spending on Gucci clothes, and soon he spent every cent he had.
Throw in a flop period in his rapping career and some serious money issues with the IRS because he “forgot” to pay enough income tax, the Fresh Prince was soon nothing more than plain ol’ Will Smith again.
After moping around for a bit, Will went to a taping of The Arsenio Hall Show at the suggestion of his then-girlfriend and met Benny Medina, a TV producer whose life formed the basis of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Through Benny, Will ended up meeting Quincy Jones, who was super keen on Will auditioning for a TV show that would eventually become The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Despite his reluctance to audition for the show because he had never acted before, Will did it anyway because he had nothing to lose and he desperately needed whatever money they offered him.
After auditioning on the spot to all the suits, Will Smith was cast as “Will Smith” in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air almost immediately and the first episode of the show was shot a mere three months later. From that point, his Hollywood career was established and the rest is history.
In short, if it wasn’t for Will Smith’s terrible money management skills and a chance meeting with some TV producers at a taping of some show his then-girlfriend pushed him to go to, we probably wouldn’t have gotten The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as we know it and Hollywood may have been robbed of one of the biggest stars of all time.
So the moral of the story: spend all your money and luck into a chance meeting with a TV producer. Okay, maybe it’s not a great moral but it’s a moral nonetheless.