Wake up, Neo, Will Smith is posting about The Matrix again
As his ongoing public rehabilitation tour rolls on, Will Smith has posted about the time he turned down The Matrix again.
Photo by Kevin Winter (Getty Images)
We know why you’re here, reader. We know what you’ve been doing. We know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why, night after night, you sit at your computer. We know because we were once looking for the same thing. We were looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as we did. Why is Will Smith posting about The Matrix again? The answer is out there, and it’s looking for us.
Earlier today, Will Smith posted a video of orange text on an old CRT screen. Typed out with mechanical keyboard clicks, Smith again regaled his millions of followers with the time in 1997 when “the Wachoswkis offered Will Smith the role of Neo in The Matrix.”
“Smith turned it down,” the video continues. “He chose Wild Wild West, believing it was a better fit for him at the time. But the question remains: What would The Matrix have been like with Will Smith as Neo?”
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So why is he posting about The Matrix again?
Per Deadline, it’s not because he’s attached to star in Drew Goddard’s Matrix reboot. Instead, this is a promo for a music-related project that Smith will be uploading to the Matrix soon. As we know, Smith has been returning to his roots in hopes of people forgetting about the time he slapped Chris Rock for mocking Matrix stalwart and wife Jada Pinkett Smith. Last month, he told a San Diego crowd to stop making memes featuring him and Diddy. He doesn’t “have shit to do with Puffy,” and he doesn’t “even like baby oil.”
What would The Matrix be like Will Smith? It’s a question that Smith probably thinks about more than any random Matrix fan. After all, Keanu Reeves is the one, so there’s not much reason to think about a lesser Matrix without him. Still, Smith went viral with the story in 2019, telling fans about meeting the Wachowskis, not understanding their movie, and choosing to make Wild Wild West instead of The Matrix. It helps humanize Smith and proves that he too is fallible—even if he can’t entirely own the career flub and self-consciously reminds us that he thought Barry Sonnenfeld’s would-be blockbuster “was a better fit for him at the time.” In his initial video, he told fans we should thank him for turning the movie down because he would have “ruined it.”
Either way, Smith will show us a world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Why? Because it’s the new millennium—yo, excuse me, Willennium.