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Will Smith has been a father for 31 years – but he will always remember the “terrifying” moment he first became a parent. The 56-year-old shares his eldest son, Trey, 31, with his first wife Sheree Zampino, and is also a dad to Jaden, 26, and Willow, 23, who he shares with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
On Thursday, Will appeared at An Evening with Will Smith at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and spoke about his 1997 song, Just the Two of Us, which he wrote during “probably one of the most terrifying times of my life.”
“It’s when my son… Trey was born,” Will, who was 24 at the time, told the audience.
Becoming tearful, he added: “It’s crazy, but you’re like, I cannot tell you what it was like bringing that child home on that first night and realizing that he was my responsibility.”
“He’s cool now, thank God – he’s going to be 32 this year.”
Will went on to explain that becoming a parent “was one of the first things, the first real things in my life that really shook me to my core.”
Emotionally recalling the night he brought Trey home from the hospital, Will said: “I remember that first night. I can’t even talk about it.
“Because I had talked so crazy about my father and all the stuff my father didn’t do. And then I was like, ‘Oh no, it is my turn now.’
“And I just fell down on my knees, and I made one of the most hardcore promises ever made to a human being. That I was going to do everything I could do to be a good daddy to you.”
Wiping away tears, Will revealed that was the night he penned Just the Two of Us.
Sharing more details about Trey’s birth, Will said: “His mother’s water broke, Sheree’s water broke, and I had just opened my TV. I was trying to set my TV up and there was a thousand-page manual for my television.
“It was a thousand pages. It was that thick and it was multiple languages, and I needed a thousand pages of information to get this TV set up.”
He added: “I remember I brought him home and put him in the bassinet… Cedas-Sinai sent me home with a baby and not even a pamphlet.”
Will and Trey became estranged after his divorce from Sheree, with Will previously admitting that his marriage to Jada and the birth of their children had an “impact” on his firstborn.
“When you get divorced and then start another family, that had effects on Trey that we’re still healing and overcoming,” he said in 2019 on his Will’s Bucket List Facebook Watch show.
“Really in the last two years has there been enough wisdom and emotional development to be able to lovingly address the issues. We’re diving into creating a divine, loving friendship.”
In 2018, Will revealed that Trey had felt “betrayed and abandoned” by him after he and Sheree split.
