There is a very important disclaimer that appears at the beginning of David Letterman’s new interview with Will Smith on season four of his Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction: “This episode was filmed prior to the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.”.

Netflix and Letterman are telling viewers that there will be no explicit questions or answers about Smith infamously slapping comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, at the Oscars earlier this year.

Early in the interview, Letterman described the experience of having Smith on his old Late Show as watching a “locomotive” enter the studio, “but you’re telling people that’s not exactly who you are.”.

“And then there’s who you really are.” Echoing the first line of the self-titled memoir he put out last year, Smith said, “I’ve always thought of myself as a coward.”.

By the end of the interview, Smith is telling the host, “Life is so exciting to me right now because I can reach people differently than I’ve ever been able to reach people, largely because of my pain