Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith will play Kanye West in a new TV show.
The ‘Karate Kid’ star will appear as a younger version of the rapper in ‘Omniverse’, which will explore the “many doors of perception” and focus on the concept of ego, through the lens of an alternate reality version of the ‘Stronger’ hitmaker.
Kanye will also executive produce the Showtime anthology series alongside his manager Scooter Braun. Lee Sung Jin is also attached as an executive producer and a writer on the half-hour show. Lee is “honoured and thrilled” to be involved in the show.
He said: “I’m honoured and thrilled to be collaborating with everyone involved to present an alternate world through the eyes of a young man somewhere in the multiverse who happens to also be a Kanye West.
“‘Omniverse’ is not set in our world nor about our world’s Kanye West as we aim to add a new spin on alternate realities, consciousness, and push the limits of half-hour narrative.”
Both Jaden and his sister Willow the children of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith kickstarted their own careers in showbiz from an early age, but their mother recently insisted she believes it was crucial for her kids to learn how to “grind and work hard” and not take their “affluence” for granted.
She said: “As much as people got on me in regards to having them work early, I did not want them to grow up thinking that because they were in the midst of affluence that they did not have to grind or work hard on their own.
“[Working at an early age] got them a taste [of hard work], and they really had a lot of respect for their parents in regards to what we were doing.”
Smith aged 20, had distanced himself from acting and the film industry for years, deciding to focus on music instead, releasing Cool Tape Vol. 2 in November 2014 and starting a three-year work effort on his debut studio album Syre which was released in 2017 and later followed up with Syre: The Electric Album in 2018.
Smith returned to acting as of 2017, acting in the two-part Netflix original ‘The Get Down ‘and a voice acting role in the Netflix original anime ‘Neo Yokio’.
