Kevin Hart says having a daughter impacted him like no other.
The comedian sat down with Will Smith for a special Father’s Day Red Table Talk, where the two got real about fatherhood, co-parenting with their ex-wives and Kevin feeling like he let his daughter, Heaven, down after his cheating scandal in 2017.
Kevin is the father of four kids — 16-year-old daughter Heaven and 13-year-old son Hendrix, whom he shares with ex-wife Torrei Hart, as well as 3-year-old son Kenzo and 8-month-old daughter Kaori with wife Eniko Parrish.
“Having a little girl in my life, it’s tough. You don’t realize the impact that your mistakes can truly have. When the kids get involved, it’s a different feeling, a different emotion. Through my public debacles, I got on some armor, dude, it is very hard to shoot through this, poke through, it is very hard to bother me,” Kevin told Will. “But when your child shows disappointment, shows emotion, shows ‘I don’t understand why?’ and you have to have those conversations, well, now the head drops for the first time, and now you realize there is a different emotional chord that can be pulled that nobody else can touch.”
“My daughter touched on that chord. When me and my wife went through what we went through and the whole cheating display, my talk with Heaven, goddamn. goddamn. That was one like no other,” he continued. “Getting my daughter back. Getting my daughter to understand that I was sorry, that I made a mistake, that was real. To understand, I am still Dad… Every child has the internet…Everything has a meaning. My daughter was tough on me. Until this day. Until this day, my daughter is tough on me. My daughter don’t play no games with her father. She is 16.”
Will added that he and wife Jada Pinkett Smith have also faced their share of public problems. “Jada and I have been really open with our realities. We found with our kids, we just tell them everything and we just try to get out ahead of it so the kids know before the world knows,” he explained. “We’ve had a couple that get to the kids before we had a chance and that’s excruciating.”
Kevin chimed in, “I’ve never been able to get to the kids first.”
Kevin also addressed his 2018 controversy when he stepped down as Oscars host after old homophobic tweets resurfaced. Once again, his daughter was upset with him.
“When the whole thing started to happen with the LGBTQ+ community and the misconception of me and what I was and what I feel, my daughter was so upset because she couldn’t process how people could think this about her father,” Kevin detailed. “And it was so tough because this was when I started to realize how my fame has an impact on my household. There is a certain level of obliviousness.”
As for Will, he noted that Jada calls it the power circle. “What you don’t realize is as the center of the power, you sit in the eye of the storm where it’s calm but one step away from you is where the winds are whipping and where people attack and all of the fury from the storm rages,” he said. “But because it is calm where we are, we can be totally oblivious to the punishment that gets taken out on the people around us.”
Kevin said his daughter sat with him and opened up about how his actions and words affected her and their family. Will also added that he took those same sentiments when talking about his first wife, Sheree Zampino, their son, Tre, and their divorce.
The two also talked about how Willow really changed Will as a parent and made him care about his kids’ feelings, as well as how they feel about their daughters dating and going out into the real world. They also touched on what scares them as fathers and Will admitted to changing maybe three diapers in his entire life.
The episode began with a hilarious moment as Kevin was over an hour late, leaving Will and Jada guessing when Kevin would show up at their home.
