Jaden Smith wants to be emancipated? You’ve gotta be kidding
News that Jaden Smith wanted to be emancipated from his parents for his 15th birthday so he could get his own place to live swept the Internet earlier this week. The only problem was, it wasn’t true.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jaden told Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday, appearing on her show with dad Will Smith to promote their new film, “After Earth,” which opens May 31.
“The thing that people don’t get is that everything at his house is free,” the 14-year-old said, gesturing at his dad. “So I can get anything and everything that I want at his house, so I think I’m going to be there for 20, 30 more years.”
Gossip Cop had actually knocked down the rumor the day after it popped, contacting a Smith rep who said Tuesday, “This isn’t real.”
Jaden piled on the realness on Ellen’s couch, however.
“He says that as soon as I have a movie that’s bigger than one of his movies, then I have to get my own house,” “The Karate Kid” star said.
So where did the rumor come from? And where did the Sun get the quote of the elder Smith saying, “He says, ‘Dad, I want to be emancipated.’ I know if we do this, he can be an emancipated minor, because he really wants to have his own place, like ooh.”
“I think I made a joke in Tokyo,” Will said Wednesday of the emancipation misunderstanding.
The quote came in the context of the “Men in Black” actor discussing how he and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith raise their kids, which eschews punishment and embraces deciding whether actions are right. (“The rule in our house is you can do anything that you want and we don’t pull the parent card until danger is involved,” he said.) He also discussed some of the wilder side effects of that strategy, such as daughter Willow shaving her head at age 12.
Joking again, Will told Ellen, “My baby boy, he’s never leaving me, ever.
“No, no emancipation for the Smith kids.”
And that last part? That was serious.
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