Will Smith: 'Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed'

Will Smith does not want to enter politics — or not entirely — but he has discussed with President Obama playing Obama in a movie, he told Stephen Colbert on Tuesday's Late Show. "What do you think of race relations now, after eight years of the Obama presidency?" Colbert asked. "I always look at these things in terms of a marriage," Smith said, specifically mentioning his hard work to build a successful relationship with wife Jada Pinkett Smith. "So when I think about race relations in this country now, there's a thing that happens before things are cleaned up. There is a darkness before the dawn that is always difficult."

Racial tension is "clearly not worse than it was in the '60s, you know, and it's certainly not as bad as it was in the 1860s," Smith noted. "We are talking about race in this country more clearly and openly than we have almost ever in the history of this country. It's on the table." When Colbert likened racial relations to a doctor draining an infected wound, Smith agreed. "Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed," he said. "I really think this darkness, as bad as it is and as difficult as it is, the problems are on the table. I view that in the same way as Jada and I had to work though things in our marriage: When the truth comes out, when it gets on the table, when you have to confront what's real, it sucks." But now that the problem is "on the table," Smith said, "I think there's an opportunity, more than ever, for a level of understanding that we've never had before." Watch below. Peter Weber

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