This Jaden and Willow Smith Interview Is Exactly As Weird As You Think

The offspring of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith sat down with T Magazine and gave exactly the interview you imagine they would give. Willow, age 14 and Jaden, age 16, both have new albums coming out, so they spoke with Su Wu to really drive home the fascinating strangeness and the general “are they for serious” feeling that you associate with the Smith children.

The setting:

On a warm November morning, T sat down with Willow and Jaden on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean for their first-ever joint interview to discuss prana energy, the experience of time and the meaning of art.

Naturally.

They start things off with light, breezy topics:

Q.What have you been reading?

A. WILLOW: Quantum physics. Osho.

JADEN: “The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life” and ancient texts; things that can’t be pre-dated.

I have to say, I can see it both ways with the Smith children. On one hand, dear lord that is farcical and pompous. On the other, they seem like really weird, super creative teenagers who have been given absolute free reign to explore themselves and their interests.

Discussing their music:

What are you searching for in those pieced-together moments?

JADEN: Honestly, we’re just trying to make music that we think is cool. We don’t think a lot of the music out there is that cool. So we make our own music. We don’t have any song that we like to listen to on the P.C.H. by any other artist, you know?

WILLOW: That’s what I do with novels. There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.

JADEN: Willow’s been writing her own novels since she was 6.

To recap: Willow Smith, age 14, writes her own novels and then reads her own novels. Those are the only novels she reads.

They’re both very, very young which is why I take much of what they say with a very large grain of salt. There are times when they’ll touch on something in a subject or an idea in a really interesting, intelligent way. This is Jaden on school and education:

JADEN: Here’s the deal: School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real. Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single morning, we will continue to go to.

In a way, that’s a rather profound idea—that we shouldn’t think of school and therefore, learning as a temporarily period of our lives. But the, he’ll go on to say something like this:

JADEN: You never learn anything in school. Think about how many car accidents happen every day. Driver’s ed? What’s up? I still haven’t been to driver’s ed because if everybody I know has been in an accident, I can’t see how driver’s ed is really helping them out.

Here is Willow Smith on chocolate:

But do your collaborative relationships inspire you in different directions?

JADEN: Totally.

WILLOW: Me and Jaden just figured out that our voices sound like chocolate together. As good as chocolate tastes, it sounds that good.

When it comes to the future, prepare Willow and Jaden Smith: The most durable humans on the planet.

So what’s next?

JADEN: I have a goal to be just the most craziest person of all time. And when I say craziest, I mean, like, I want to do like Olympic-level things. I want to be the most durable person on the planet.

WILLOW: I think by the time we’re 30 or 20, we’re going to be climbing as many mountains as we can possibly climb.