Will Smith and His Mom Dance to Whitney on Her 85th Birthday
Will Smith’s mother is celebrating a major milestone!
The King Richard actor, 53, and his mom, Caroline Bright, commemorated her 85th birthday by dancing to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
In the sweet clip shared to Smith’s Instagram page Monday, he and Bright held hands while singing the chorus of the Grammy-winning song, which appeared to be covered live. The mother-son duo swayed and snapped their fingers before Bright offered a smooth spin to complete the special moment.
“85 Today! Happy Bday, Mom-Mom. Let’s dance our way to 100,” Smith captioned the video.
In his memoir Will, which was released in November 2021, Smith recounted an embarrassing story from his teenage years involving his mother and his then-girlfriend, Melanie Parker, revealing that Bright caught them having sex in the kitchen when he was 16.
He and Parker were interrupted one day by his mother, who had come downstairs to make herself a cup of coffee, he recounted in his memoir. Smith wrote that his mom “flipped the light switch as she had done tens of thousands of times before. But this time, her eyes landed upon her eldest son and his girlfriend deep in throes of reckless lovemaking.”
Smith continued, “As a teenager, outside of physical injury, you cannot feel worse than having your mother catch you and your girlfriend doggy-style on her kitchen floor.”
Bright quickly retreated to her bedroom, and Parker — who had been living with Smith and his family after her mom went to prison — left to live with her aunt.
As part of Parker’s arrangement to live with Smith, he had to promise his parents the two would not have sex. They broke their rule three months into Parker living there, he revealed.
“I’m still not exactly sure why I did what I did that night,” he added. “To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking. Of all the experiences I am sharing in this book, this is the individual moment of personal behavior that makes the least sense to me.”
Smith laughed off the moment while celebrating Bright for Mother’s Day on Instagram last year. Along with a snap of the two hugging, he wrote, “Happy Mommy’s Day, Mommy! And Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers of the world,” adding, “Oh… and Mom, I’m sorry about that time when I was a senior in high school and you caught me in the kitchen with my girlfriend. But, really you should’ve been asleep.”