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*Will Smith previously opened up about how Quincy Jones saved his life with the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” role.
As we previously reported, a year after Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff dropped their breakout hit “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” Will was in serious debt to the IRS.
In a “60 Minutes” interview, Smith revealed: “For the first three years of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the IRS was taking 70 percent of every check and after the third year I got back to zero. It’s terrible to have that kind of success and have to quietly be broke.”
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In the five-minute clip above, Smith recalls how he was nearly bankrupted by his $2.8 million debt to the government. To help solve this dilemma, he hung out at Stage 29 at Paramount Studios where “The Arsenio Hall Show” taped. That’s where he was introduced to Quincy Jones, who arranged a meeting with Brandon Tartikoff, the man behind “The A-Team,” and who revamped NBC in the 1980s and created Must-See-TV.
According to Smith, Tartikoff had almost no say in the matter.
Scroll up to watch the clip above to hear Will explain it.
“Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was one of the highest rated sitcoms of its era, and Will Smith is now an international superstar reportedly worth about $250 million.
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