Will Smith recalled his daughter, Willow, shaving her hair during her “Whip My Hair” tour in a now viral moment from the documentary Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood.
In the clip from the film where he talks about how his family has impacted his journey, Smith described the moment as being very impactful for him.
"I'll never forget, we were in Dublin, Ireland. Willow comes off stage, she was on tour with Justin Bieber," Smith recalled. "Hit record, 20,000 kids whipping their hair in Dublin, and she comes off stage, and is like, 'I'm done, Daddy,' and I was like, 'Yeah, baby, that was a great show!' And she was like, 'No, no, I mean I'm done! I'm ready to go home!'"
Smith explained to his daughter that there were still more shows to do because of a promise made to Jay-Z, since she was signed to Roc Nation at the time.
"I was like, 'Well, no, you can't go home, sweetie, you promised Mr. Jay-Z that you were gonna do these 30 days of this tour," Smith explained. "She said, 'No, Daddy, you promised Mr. Jay-Z.' And I was like, 'Sweetie, I get it, but we promised as a family, and you have to finish.'"
After that, Smith revealed the moment that his daughter’s disappointment became something he’d remember forever.
"She looked at me — I'll never forget the look in her eyes, and she was like, 'It doesn't matter to you that I'm finished, Daddy?'" Smith said. "And I was like, 'Well, yes sweetie, it matters, but you can't be finished.' And she was like, 'Oh, okay.'"
Later that night, Smith’s life changed due to what happened at the hotel they were staying at.
“We go back to the hotel, and Jada had just left, so I'm there, it's my first night of daddy duty," he explained. "And [Willow] came out the next morning and she had shaved her head bald. In the middle of her Whip My Hair tour, she had shaved her head bald. And it was like a magical moment. I was like, 'Got it.'"
Willow has spoken about the situation herself on multiple occasions. In an interview with Dazed last year, Willow said that she felt a “dark night of the soul” and that inspired her to cut it.
"I think I was just really overwhelmed, and I had so many moments where I didn’t feel understood," she said. "At the time, I didn’t know how to express what I was going through, because people were like, 'Oh, you’re a brat,' or 'You’re being ungrateful.' I never wanted anyone to think I was ungrateful. I never wanted anyone to think that I didn’t love my life. And so that’s why I kept it all inside. But as we know, when you keep things inside, they come out at some point.”
In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, Willow opened up about some of the feelings that she felt after the show that inspired her to cut her hair. “I felt like I had no control,” Willow expressed. “That was the part that wasn’t cool for me. I felt so powerless. But because I was so young, I didn’t have enough experience for people to trust my opinions. So I just said, ‘I can’t do this.'”
A year before that, Smith explained how he felt about her hair-shaving moment in his Will by Will Smith memoir.
“Willow came skipping into the kitchen for breakfast. ‘Good morning, Daddy,’ she said joyfully as she bounced to the refrigerator,” Smith wrote. “My jaw nearly dislocated, dislodged, and shattered on the kitchen floor: My world-dominating, hair-whipping, future global superstar was totally bald.”
“During the night, Willow had shaved her entire head,” he added. “My mind raced – how was she going to whip her hair if she didn’t have any? Who the hell wants to pay to watch some kid whip their head back and forth?”