Will Smith visits his Philadelphia highschool as he strikes on from Oscars drama

Will Smith’s post-Oscars religious journey has taken him again to his outdated highschool.

The King Richard actor — famously “West Philadelphia, born and raised” — visited Overbrook Excessive College within the metropolis on Thursday. He popped in, with a videographer in tow, to talk to college students in a digital media class on the public faculty. The scholars screamed when he walked in, video confirmed. It was a second.

Along with his remarks, the 54-year-old Oscar winner posed for a bunch photograph with college students and in addition cheesed for some selfies. He additionally checked out an outdated yearbook, with the photograph of 1 “Willard Smith” in it, and interacted. Exterior the varsity, he additionally greeted shocked college students, taking selfies with them, shaking arms and giving hugs.

The varsity district shared video and pictures on social media, writing, “Thanks for every little thing Will!” The publish led to many optimistic feedback from folks saying they have been previous classmates with Smith — or college students at that college who had met him on his earlier journeys again. (Some earlier college students talked concerning the time Smith took among the high college students to Africa to fulfill Nelson Mandela.) That is additionally the web we’re speaking about, so there was additionally a energetic debate within the feedback about Smith’s actions on the Academy Awards in March.

Oscars evening, after all, was when Smith stormed the stage and hit presenter Chris Rock after the comic made a G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith stated he was defending his spouse, who has alopecia; Rock was apparently unaware there was a medical purpose behind the Pink Desk Speak co-host’s bald head. Smith went on to win the Finest Actor Oscar after the slap, however resigned from the Academy after. He is been banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years.

Within the wake of the scandal, Smith launched into a “religious journey” to India for yoga and meditation. He is stayed off the purple carpet and has stored his social media gentle with movies of spiders, bogs and such.

Smith’s first movie for the reason that scandal — the Antoine Fuqua-directed Emancipation — comes out Dec. 2. It is about an enslaved man named escaping from a Louisiana plantation — and, in gentle of the scandal, Smith has been setting up his personal press tour to advertise the mission. To this point as a substitute of a lot of media interviews and splashy appearances, giving folks Large Willie-style laughs, he is attending a sequence of personal screenings of the movie. Final month, he attended a screening in Washington, D.C., on the Congressional Black Caucus Basis’s 51st annual Legislative Convention, hosted by the NAACP. In current days, he joined Tyler Perry to point out the movie at Morehouse School in Atlanta and simply earlier than he did the identical at one other traditionally Black school, Dillard College. He additionally had a personal screening for the L.A. Lakers and one other for an A-list group of his well-known mates, together with Rihanna and Dave Chappelle.