Actor-comedian Kevin Hart sat down with friend Will Smith for a special Father’s Day Red Table Talk episode, on which the fellow Philadelphians talked about being dads.
Hart — whose new film, Fatherhood, is currently number one on Netflix — was candid about several topics, even revealing that he had to have a candid talk with his older children after news surfaced that he had cheated on his wife, their stepmother, Eniko Parrish-Hart.
“My daughter was tough on me; until this day, my daughter is tough on me,” he said. “Getting my daughter to understand that I was sorry, that I made a mistake — that was real. Through my public debacles, I’ve got on some armor. It’s very hard to bother me. But when your child shows disappointment, shows emotion, shows ‘I don’t understand why,’ and you’ve got to have those conversations — (your) head drops for the first time. You realize there’s an emotional cord that nobody else has the privileges of ever touching.”
“You’re never prepared for that side of it,” Hart said, recalling how what he did affected his loved ones — and himself. “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.”
He also told Smith that 16-year-old Heaven told him to stop disparaging her mother, his ex-wife, Torrei Hart, in public.
“My daughter had a talk with me about her mother that rocked me. She checked me,” Hart said. “She said, ‘I want you to stop … because when you say these things, Dad, this and this and this.’ ‘But, honey, I don’t mean — I’m just talking.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, Dad.'”
For his part in the men’s roundtable discussion, Will Smith shared that he and his ex-wife, Sheree Zampino, had also discussed how he talks about her publicly. According to the superstar, Zampino said, “Whatever you say, the world is going to punish me for that, so you are giving people permission to say and do things to me on the street.”
While Kevin and Torrei Hart have both publicly traded barbs about each other, he said they are currently “in a great space of understanding.”
“I will credit Torrei to this date for allowing me to be a work in progress,” Hart said. “My friendship with Torrei today is the best it’s ever been within our co-parenting relationship.”
Hart has four children: Heaven, Hendrix, 13; Kenzo, who is two, and Kaori, eight months. Smith has three: Trey, Jaden and Willow, who are 28, 22 and 20.
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