Will Smith had never acted when he auditioned for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Quincy Jones warned him against "paralysis through analysis" and gave him two weeks to prepare. One successful audition triggered a chain reaction that landed Smith the show.
Will has never acted before. So Will's kind of like, I might need a minute. And he was like, come over here, Prince. This is Quincy. He pulled him to the side. He called him the Prince. Prince, come over here, Prince. So he's pretty much telling Quincy, like, yo, can I get like a week? And Quincy's like, well, in a week, Justin over there, he's probably going to have to reschedule. So he's like, oh, I get 2 weeks. I get an acting coach. I'll be ready to go. And Quincy's like, well, Sarah probably going to have to go to a birthday party. He probably won't. Like, Will, it dawns on Will that he's like, if it doesn't happen tonight, it's not gonna happen. It's like, you gotta do this now. And I'll never forget this. Quincy tells him, you can't have paralysis through analysis. So it was like, the more you think about this, the less likely it is to happen. So you just gotta go out there and do it. He went out there and auditioned. And I think the speed in which Fresh Prince happened was because of that night. He knocked him dead, and Quincy just start pulling people. He was like, "Do you got a lawyer? That's your lawyer." You gotta like, whatever you needed to get this show, like the show memo, everything was built off of that audition that night. That's crazy. In Quincy's house.
