Will Smith recalls exact moment when he realised he wanted to be "on camera"

Will Smith. Pic/AFP

American actor Will Smith still remembers the precise moment he decided he wanted to pursue a career in acting.

The 55-year-old musician Will Smith has delved into hip-hop history in his new podcast 'Class of '88', covering everything from his own days performing as part of a hip-hop duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff before going into acting.

The Oscar winner talks candidly about realising early in his music career that he had a gift for front of the camera in the podcast's first episode, which was published on Friday, according to People.

Smith explained that he got the acting bug on the set of the music video for "Parents Just Don't Understand," the second single off their 1988 sophomore studio album 'He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper'.

Smith "desperately wanted to be respected as a rapper," therefore he was first anxious about the cheerful song's release as a single. However, the experience of making the campy visual, in which he plays a melancholic adolescent and theatrically raps the lyrics, proved to be a formative one.

"To help promote the song, Jive [Records] decided to make a video," the 'King Richard' star said on the podcast. "[Producer] Ann Carli brought in a director, Scott Kalvert, who had a cool visual style, and that ultimately became the Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince signature style -- bright and colourful with the stylized set covered with graffiti. I rapped straight into the camera while an actress playing my mom chased me around with a rolling pin."

He continued, "I think it was during the making of that video that I realized that I loved being on camera."

'Class of '88' debuted on Friday and features conversations between Smith and his peers in the late '80s hip-hop world. He and his longtime collaborator DJ Jazzy Jeff, 58, (whose real name is Jeffrey Allen Townes) open up about their time as a hip-hop duo when the music industry was still discovering that rap could be profitable. In one anecdote, they recalled a time in 1987 when they were supposed to be recording and Smith tried to saw off the producer's cast from a broken leg that had healed, reported People.

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