Actor Will Smith recently shared the role faith has played in his life while discussing the new film “King Richard,” which chronicles the faith-filled upbringing of Venus and Serena Wiliams.
Smith plays the father and first coach of the iconic tennis stars in the upcoming biographical drama. In an interview with his friend, author, producer and preacher DeVon Franklin, Smith was asked if he is a “man of faith” like his character, Richard Dove Williams Jr.
“You can’t get where I get if you don’t love the Lord, you don’t get to sit how I sit, move how I move if you don’t love the Lord. You’d be seeing a whole lot of other repercussions,” Smith responded.
The “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star said he connects with the faith of the Williams family because of his grandmother, who was an attendee of Resurrection Baptist Church in Philadelphia.
“You and I have talked about my relationship my grandmother,” Smith continued. “So that concept of faith and that power of faith, I might be going a little too deep here, but there’s a distinction. There’s faith in God and then there’s knowledge of God.”
“So there’s revelation. Some people have had revelation. So when you have to have faith, faith is before you’ve had revelation,” he added, highlighting Oracene Price, the matriarch of the Williams family. “You have to have faith. That’s what Mrs. Oracene [had]. She’s so solid that she is completely, thoroughly and totally certain. She doesn’t walk in doubt.”
“She said, ‘In order to doubt, that means you don’t trust God.’ She said, ‘There was never a moment of doubt. When we set out as a family, we knew we were going to do what was ordained,’” the father of three told Franklin.
The actor maintained, “It was this family around this belief, and they trusted God. And they believed that their devotion would be rewarded and they never wavered.”
In a past interview with The Christian Post, Smith spoke of how his Christian faith was instilled in him by his grandmother.
“My grandmother was really my connection to God,” Smith told CP.
“She was my spiritual teacher, she was that grandmother at the church, the one having the kids doing the Easter presentations and putting on the Christmas plays and her kids and grandkids had to be first. She was the most spiritually certain person that I had ever met in my entire life. Even to the point that when she was dying, she was happy, like she was really excited about going to heaven,” Smith testified.