Will Smith says that wearing neck chains for his 'Emancipation' role was 'deeply dehumanizing'

• Will Smith spoke about the hardships of playing an enslaved man in his film "Emancipation."
• Smith said that wearing neck chains for his role was "deeply dehumanizing" and took away his agency.

Will Smith opened up about the intense experience of playing an enslaved man in his new film "Emancipation."

Smith discussed the film, directed by Antoine Fuqua and released on Apple TV+ on Friday, while taking over the latest episode of "Red Table Talk" on Facebook Watch. He was joined by his kids Trey Smith, Jaden Smith, and Willow Smith to talk about his role as Peter, which was based on a real-life man who escaped slavery.

Smith said that as the years have passed in his career, "I've gotten more and more locked into these characters for longer periods of time. It's just the weight of this story, the weight of these experiences, the quality of the actors. It was emotionally, it was physically, it was spiritually taxing."

The "King Richard" star recalled being taken aback by a costar improvising spitting on him while filming a scene and "getting called the N-word 100 times a day by very good actors."

"It's rough," he said. "It twists your mind up. You have to be really careful."

In a behind-the-scenes video taken on the set, Smith said that wearing neck chains made him understand his character more clearly.

"It turns off your agency," he said. "You don't want to step, you don't want to move, you don't want to look anybody in the face. It's deeply dehumanizing."

After watching the clip, Smith said he needed to take a moment to compose himself.

He then recalled a terrifying moment on set, when the crew had trouble removing the chains and he panicked.

"It's locked on and my heart jumps," he recalled. "And I'm like, 'Oh no, oh no, oh no.'"

Smith continued: "For 15 minutes I'm stuck there in the chains and my heart is pounding and I'm like, 'Will, do not freak.' I'm sitting there and I got it. It's like, 'I'm Will Smith with people running around looking for keys and my heart is still pounding and I'm still scared. Imagine what it was like for Peter to have that stuff on, barefoot, and nobody cares.'"

"Really dehumanizing and I haven't been able to articulate why, but I felt embarrassed," Smith said. "I was embarrassed while I was standing there and I was waiting. It was emasculating and dehumanizing, all of that."

The Oscar-winning actor said that this was the only time in his career where he truly "lost track" of how far he disappeared into the character.

"I got twisted up in there a little bit," he said.

"Once you experience those things, they go into the same banks as your actual memories," Smith said. "You don't have a separate place for acting. Your brain and your body recognize it the same way it recognizes actual memories."

Watch the full "Red Table Talk" episode below.