For a Father’s Day episode of Red Table Talk, Will Smith sat down with Kevin Hart for an intimate one-one about fatherhood. During their chat, Hart opened up about the most difficult, eye-opening moments he has experienced as a father. One of the hardest things he has ever had to do was tell his daughter about him being unfaithful to his wife, Eniko Hart.
“You’re never prepared for that side of it,” Hart said about their talk. “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 added that Heaven, now 16, was “tough” on him during that conversation and that it was hard trying to help her understand the mistake he had made.
“It’s very hard to bother me, but when your child shows disappointment, shows emotion, shows ‘I don’t understand why,’ and you’ve gotta have those conversations, well, now the head drops for the first time,” the Night School star continued. “And now you’ve realized that there’s a different emotional chord that can be pulled on you that nobody else has the privilege of ever touching. And my daughter touched on that chord, man, you know, when me and my wife went through what we went through, and the whole cheating display, I talked with Heaven. G******, G****** that was one like no other. Getting my daughter back. Getting my daughter to understand that I was sorry, that I made a mistake. … That was real.”
The Philadelphia native also opened up about Heaven has confronted him about the way he portrays her mother and his ex-wife, Torrei Hart, to the 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 saying 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.’”
Smith related to Hart, saying it took him years to understand how he speaks about his ex-wife, Sheree, affects her differently.
“(Sheree) would always say I had to be careful how I talked about our marriage and our divorce, and I didn’t realize, Smith said. “It really took me years to comprehend. She was like, ‘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.”
Watch Hart and Smith’s conversation below.