Questlove Speaks About Including Will Smith in ‘Sly Lives!’ Montage About ‘The Burden of Black Genius’

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson famously won an Oscar for his documentary “Summer of Soul” in 2022… just moments after “The Slap.” Now Questlove has threaded Will Smith into a larger discussion in his new film “Sly Lives!” about “the burden of Black Genius” (which is also the new film’s subtitle).

This documentary, as its title implies, tracks the life, times, and art of Sly Stone, the legendary bandleader of Sly & the Family Stone. Questlove interviewed him for “Summer of Soul,” though his health issues were such that he knew going into making “Sly Lives!” that Stone would not be interviewed this time around. He uses the arc of Stone’s career to make larger points about the representational burdens Black artists very often have to bear: That they’re representing the entire Black community, and in their artistic output and personal conduct have to adhere to a much higher standard than white artists. The point is made several times in the documentary that success can be more dangerous for Black artists than failure.

Questlove and his producer Joseph Patel stopped by the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox, to discuss these themes in depth.

“I think there’s a large amount of guilt that happens,” Questlove said about what can happen when a Black artist makes the big time. “‘Why is this happening to me? Why me? Surely there’s someone even more talented out there than me.’ Think of any mega Black artist you know: There can get to a point where something takes them off the path, and you think ‘Why did they do that?’ and that’s the burden.”

In a montage at the end of the film, Questlove shows other Black artists who’ve endured an extraordinary level of pressure and scrutiny throughout their careers — the kind of pressure and scrutiny that indeed has caused several of them to be “taken off the path,” as he put it. “Self-sabotage” is another term used throughout the documentary.

Will Smith, holding his Oscar on stage at the Dolby Theatre in the aftermath of “The Slap,” is among them.

“It was an important discussion,” Questlove said of how or whether to include Smith. “How do we handle this? What frame do we show? That was probably a rare moment of multiple sabotagings happening in one moment, that was lightning in a bottle. But we had to give examples [of what we were trying to express], and I think it was tastefully done. That was definitely a moment in history where you see this idea of ‘You get what you came for, but what happens when you get what you thought you wanted? What happens to your life then?’”

Watch the entire video above.

“Sly Lives!” will be released on Hulu on February 13.

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