Will Smith took it back on last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert while promoting Suicide Squad. During a commercial break, Jon Baptiste and Stay Human played a rendition of “Summertime.” Smith jumped out of to perform he and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s 1991 hit.
Smith and Colbert also discussed the election during the show, revealing to the host that he had some presidential aspirations of his own.
“I was thinking about it but, you know, I watched Obama for the last eight years [and] that’s a hard job,” he said. “I definitely have had the itching. I have lots of views and ideas and sometimes I hear people say things on television and I just want to run against them. Just straight at ’em and knock ’em over. But I think it’s not where my greatest gifts are.”
The Suicide Squad star said his wife Jada Pinkett Smith shut down any talk of him getting into politics, but he might play President Obama if the Commander-in-Chief’s story ever hits theaters.
“We’ve talked about it a couple times,” Smith said of discussions he’s had with the President. “He said the one thing that’s for sure is I have the ears to play him.”
The conversation turned serious when Colbert brought up the state of race relations in the country.
“When I hear people say that it’s worse than it’s ever been, I disagree completely,” Smith said. “It’s clearly not worse than it was in the ’60s. And it’s certainly not as bad as it was in the 1860s. We are talking about race in this country more clearly and openly than we have almost ever in the history of this country. It’s on the table. Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”
The actor concluded by saying this was a darkness before the dawn, and that he is optimistic about the future.
Suicide Squad opens in theaters on August 5.
