Willow Smith felt “a lot of pressure” to “do right by” her parents.
Willow Smith
The 20-year-old singer and actress is the daughter of acting stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and after raising to fame herself with her hit single ‘Whip My Hair’ when she was just 10, Willow has now admitted she felt pressure to be as loved by the public as her parents.
She said: “I always just wanted to do right by my parents. And do right by the beauty that they have put in the world and continue to uplift that beauty and to uphold that beauty. I felt a lot of pressure.”
Now that she’s an adult, Willow has forged her own path and no longer feels as though she needs to be compared to her parents.
She added during an appearance on Apple Music 1 with Zane Lowe: “Because I’m not a minor anymore, I’m finding the freedom to - I can put that beauty in the world.
“I can uphold that energy. And so, I’m just figuring that out in all of these different ways, and it’s going to be a journey and there’s more to come.”
Willow previously spoke about the pressures of growing up in the spotlight in 2018, when she said she was pushed to self-harm at the height of her fame as a child.
She said at the time: “I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point. It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just like stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of in this grey area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'
“After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album. And I was like, I'm not gonna do that. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself.”
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