When Will Smith received the script for Concussion, the film’s producer, Ridley Scott, told him it was a gift.
After reading the script, Smith thought, “‘This ain’t no damn gift!” He told Variety: “I’m a football dad. Some of my happiest memories are of watching my son catch and throw a football. I didn’t want to be the guy who did a movie saying football could be dangerous.”
“He so deeply believes in American ideals. Even now. And I am deeply and profoundly American. There’s no country on earth that would allow me to exist and live the way I exist and live; America is the only country that would produce and support a Will Smith. So when he hit me with that, we really connected.”
Smith spent hours with Omalu and even attended autopsies. For Smith, the experience was life-changing. “He is such a beautiful man. He is really brilliant, but he is innocent. He literally could not understand why the NFL didn’t want to know. As an actor, it was such a beautiful thing to get my head around being that smart and that innocent at the same time.”
