 since I can remember, I've been obsessed with the Fresh Friends of Bel Air. Well, with Will Smith. Well, with the Will Smith I thought I knew. Keep watching to find out what surprised me about Will Smith. It's Kyla Denigno and you're watching Kyla's Reading Day. So today we're talking about the book Will. This book was written by Will Smith with Mark Manson and Mark Manson actually wrote the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving, which I actually reviewed and I'll make sure I link that here. So Mark Manson is a great great writer and he teamed up with Will Smith to help him write his biography. So the genre of this book is nonfiction. The theme of this book is biography. I loved it. Let me tell you, I thought I knew Will Smith and there's even a time in the book where he says coming into someone's home on their TV makes them feel like they know you. I don't know nothing about Will Smith. I did not know anything. Oh, and let me just say off jump. Will Smith was 100% wrong for the way that Jada met his grandmother or Gigi. 100% wrong. Put it out there. Read the book to understand the reference. 100% wrong. Okay. So one of the most surprising things about the book is how much I did not know about Will Smith. Like that sounds really crazy, right? I mean, it's not like I'm related to him or I know him from anywhere. I know him from when I was a child and I grew up watching The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Me and my homegirl from the sixth grade would watch The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. We would be on the phone the entire episode. We would only talk during commercial breaks. Did you see what Ashley had on? Oh my God, Will Smith is so cute. Oh, did you see what he was wearing? Oh my God. Ashley, I love her outfit. And then the commercial break would end and we were just watching the show, holding the phone, the landline phone, okay? Tight up the phone, 30 minutes. Don't care who else we was talking to nobody. If The Fresh Prince is on, we're watching it. But I was so surprised by how many things I learned about Will Smith. So off jump, let's say this. The biggest plot twist to the book, to be honest, is how many things you know he didn't include. I'm reading it. He let Jada read it before it came out. I know he probably let his parents read it before it came out. It's some stories in there. I know he couldn't have even included it. And I'm just like, as raw and real as the book is, it still is just his portrayal. And I'm just like, this man has had a life, right? So I love the relationship he had with his father that really made me think about my father a lot. Right off jump, the story about building the brick wall. And I'm like, can this be my favorite quote? And it's within the first five pages? Because that really laid the foundation. And I love the fact that Will even started with that example, because it just lets you know that like his work ethic was always there. That takes me to why it is so important that we only know some of the things that Will wanted us to know that he put into the book, right? That is so important because, because, because, because Will Smith is a person. He is a person with a whole life. What we see on TV, what we see these portrayals and movies and films and all that, that is what he is sharing with us. What we listen to when we're listening to getting jiggy with it, when we're dancing to Aladdin, he's working, right? That's him working. We are seeing what he wants to portray. And as an actor who has never been formally trained, I mean, he's got to be the greatest of all time because he has literally built a career to become a movie superstar off of his work ethic and discipline, which is mind blowing. Like reading the book and I'm like, Jazzy Jeff was bigger than Will Smith. That's how we got onto the Fresh Prince. And he read by there was a Wild Wild West song and a song for this and a song for what? And I love the fact that his success was not a fluke. It was well planned, well orchestrated. Like I know some people can read the book and be like, oh, okay, you collect the top 10 grossing movies and you make sense of them. You see the pattern. People don't do that. You know what I mean? Like had he not read his book himself, I'd have been like, okay, this is a fairy tale. But this is his life. Like I can't, I cannot even fathom. I absolutely loved the book. So like even the things I learned about Jada Pinkett Smith were so surprising to me because I know her from a different world. And then of course, I've seen movies that she was in. I mean, she'll always be peaches. Like always, always, always. But it's like, Jada Pinkett Smith is a person too. She's not just here to entertain me and for me to watch her on TV, she's got a whole life behind all of this. She's got a whole life and family with Smith. Like it's more than what you see. He tells us the good, the bad, the ugly. And I was so grateful to read it and to learn from the story because it was just honest. And I really appreciated it. I really, really appreciated it. So that takes us directly into what I reread this book. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I even put up a tweet where I said, I haven't even finished the book will and I want to reread it already. Because it wasn't even a rags to riches story because he came from a two parent household. He just worked hard. He made a plan. He made it happen. And it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful to read and absolutely beautiful to learn from. So I hope when Will Smith finished the book, he sat down and looked at it and was like, I am not a coward anymore. I have put myself out here. I've been transparent. I have been vulnerable. Cowards don't do that, right? So if you should ever see this, if anyone ever tells him, you are definitely not a coward. It takes guts to do what you did. It takes guts to tell us your story because that could never happen to anyone else. He got lucky. But even that to step into the opportunity to give yourself a couple of hours and then be like, all right, I'm about to do this for Quincy Jones. Like, it takes guts. So thank you for hanging out with me. Get in the comments. Let me know. Have you read this biography? Do you like biographies? And I will see you next time on Kyla's reading day. Bye.