Will Smith‘s book tour continues to roll on, and with it, more personal details about the rapper’s meteoric rise from sitcom star to Hollywood’s A-list. This time around, Smith sat down with Idris Elba in London for “WILL: An Evening of Stories with Friend” where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star opened up about having money troubles at the start of his career that he could only solve by borrowing money from a drug dealer.
According to Smith, he owed a substantial amount to the IRS in the early ’90s before becoming a prime star on NBC. However, he was determined to move to Los Angeles even if it required using unconventional means to fix his financial issues. Via Yahoo!:
“So Uncle Sam wanted his money,” he continued, adding: “I didn’t forget — I just didn’t pay.”
“I had 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,” he said.
“So I borrowed $10,000 from a friend of mine who was a purveyor of neighborhood pharmaceuticals,” he continued as the audience laughed.
Not missing a beat, Elba asked, “Was his name Stringer Bell?” a reference to Elba’s drug kingpin on HBO’s The Wire. Considering Smith’s financial transaction occurred almost 30 years ago, he’s probably not looking at any trouble with the government for the unorthodox loan. More importantly, for once, he didn’t divulge way too much information about his sex life, which is nothing short of a miracle.
(Via Yahoo!)