Will Smith Admitted He Once Borrowed $10,000 To Pay Taxes From A Drug Dealer

Will Smith sat down with Idris Elba in London at the Savoy Theatre on Thursday to celebrate the release of his autobiography Will.  They covered a lot of ground, and Will shared how he had lost everything before landing his life-changing role on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and had to resort to drastic measures to pay his bills.

“I’m not sure what the government is like with taxes in the U.K., but in the U.S. they take it seriously,” he said. “So Uncle Sam wanted his money. I didn’t forget—I just didn’t pay.”  So he was forced “to sell everything, and I knew whatever my new life was going to be I could feel it was going to be in Los Angeles.” “So, I borrowed $10,000 from a friend of mine who was a purveyor of neighborhood pharmaceuticals,” he added, as the crowd laughed. “I borrowed $10,000 and I moved to Los Angeles and one time we were doing shows and I was trying to drum up some cash so we were in Detroit and we were doing a show. I had met a guy named Benny Medina. You remember Arsenio Hall? I started to go there because everybody was on Arsenio Hall.”