Willow Smith Says She Was 'Really Overwhelmed' as a Child Star and Didn't Want to Appear 'Ungrateful'

Willow Smith silenced "nepo baby" criticisms earlier this year, but as a child star, the musician struggled with public perception around her career.

The 23-year-old spoke to Dazed as cover star of 'The Impossible Issue,' where she revisited her young stardom with her debut single "Whip My Hair." The musician shaved her head during a breakdown at 11 years old, which her father, actor Will Smith, wrote about in his 2021 memoir, Will. At the time, Willow wanted out of being the opener for Justin Bieber during the My World Tour.

In the aftermath of shaving her head, Willow told Dazed that she felt a "dark night of the soul" and loss of herself mentally.

"I think I was just really overwhelmed, and I had so many moments where I didn’t feel understood," she said. "At the time, I didn’t know how to express what I was going through, because people were like, 'Oh, you’re a brat,' or 'You’re being ungrateful.' I never wanted anyone to think I was ungrateful. I never wanted anyone to think that I didn’t love my life. And so that’s why I kept it all inside. But as we know, when you keep things inside, they come out at some point.”

Smith, who reflected on her experiences with self-harm on Red Table Talk in 2018, also expressed to Dazed her reasons for doing so as a child.

“I think the self-harm was a way for me to let those emotions come out in a way where I wasn’t opening myself up to judgment from other people,” Smith says today. "

"Obviously I look back on it now and I’m like, 'Oh my goodness, that was so dark,'" she said. "I went to therapy–I still go to therapy, because everyone should go to therapy – and I just realized why it was happening... your energy gets stuck and stagnant, and you start doing weird shit to try to compensate for the lifeforce that’s not flowing, that needs to be flowing through you."

Through mental wellness practices and regaining strong bonds with her parents, including her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, the Empathogen artist has since come to terms with her "rough" upbringing.

"I think when you’re growing up, it’s natural to have that friction with your parents, and I think everyone goes through that," Willow said. "But when it really changed for me was realising that my parents are human beings, just like me, and they’re afraid and confused, and sometimes they don’t know the answers." "I just love my parents to death. I would do anything for them."