姜小白对《WILL》的笔记(2)

“As much as we all suffered under Daddio’s militaristic views of love and family, nobody suffered more than my mother. If two people being in charge meant everybody dies, then that meant my mother could never be in charge.

The problem was that my mother wasn’t the type of woman to be commanded. She was educated, proud, and stubborn, and as much as we begged her to please be quiet, she refused.

Once, when Daddio slapped her, she egged him on.

“Oh, you’re such a man! You think that hitting a woman makes you a man, huh?”

He hit her again, knocking her to the ground.

She stood right back up, looked him in the eye, and calmly said, “Hit me all you want, but you can never hurt me.”

I have never forgotten that. The idea that he could hit her body but somehow she was in control of what “hurt” her? I wanted to be strong like that.”

“After the worst thirty minutes of my life, he hit me back.

“IthinkIfuckedup,” I blurted.

“It’s fine—people cuss each other out all the time,” Quincy said. “Just never put your hands on nobody. I talked to ’em, it’s good. What happened on set?”

“I changed some lines in the script because they was tryin’ to have me say some whack shit. They tryin’ to tell me what a dude from Philly would say. And I’m like, that line’s not real....”

“Oh, so it was a creative disagreement...” Quincy said.

“I guess that’s what they call it in LA,” I said.

“You have a script right there?” Quincy asked.

“Yeah, I got one right here.”

“OK. What’s it say on the cover?”

“Uhhmm,” I said, confused, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”

“Right. And who’s the Fresh Prince?” Quincy barked.”

“Me,” I said.

“EXACTLY! Don’t nobody know what the fuck you’re supposed to say better than you. If they could do what you do, they wouldn’t have hired you. You say what you wanna say, the way you wanna say it. And when somebody has a problem with it, tell ’em to call me.”

I was barely twenty-two years old, and Quincy Jones had just empowered me to say whatever I wanted to say on a network television show. He took my side over producers, writers, executives, advertisers, everybody.

He bet on me.

“Yes, sir,” I said.”