Kevin Hart says talking with his daughter about public scandals ‘was like no other’

Kevin Hart and Will Smith took over Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk for Father's Day.

Jada, Gammy and Willow should be pleased with the brutally honest conversation that Red Table Talk has become synonymous with since debuting in May 2018.

It all started with Hart showing up at least an hour late for the recording, which Smith said gave him permission to ask more personal questions "about his past couple of years." "We were gonna avoid some of those things, but now I got authentic Red Table questions," the former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air said.

Once they finally sat down, Smith and Hart jumped off with Hart's new Netflix drama Fatherhood. But this wasn't just a promotional stop, as Hart promised he came here to answer serious questions. Both men discussed their experiences with fatherhood, both as children and fathers, and Hart eventually addressed the elephants in the room.

"It's so hard to bother me," the 41-year-old actor, stand-up comedian and producer said. "But when your child shows disappointment, shows emotion, shows 'I don't understand why,' and you gotta have those conversations? Well, now, head drops for the first time. And now, you've realized that there's a different emotional cord that can be pulled on you that nobody else has the privilege of ever touching."

Hart explained that his eldest of four children, 16-year-old Heaven, did exactly that when it was revealed he had cheated on his then-pregnant wife Eniko in 2017:

"When me and my wife went through what we went through, and the whole cheating display, my talk with Heaven ... 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. To understand, like, I'm still Dad. You know? ... My daughter was tough on me. Until this day! Until this day, my daughter is tough on me. My daughter don't play no games with her father, man!"

Smith then related that he and Jada "have been really open" with their kids—they share 22-year-old Jaden and 20-year-old Willow, and Smith has 28-year-old Trey from a previous marriage—about everything. "We've had a couple [scandals] that to get to the kids before we had a chance, and that's excruciating," he added.

This led Hart into bringing up the December 2018 controversy where his 2009-11 anti-gay tweets resurfaced and led to him stepping down from hosting the 91st Academy Awards:

"I've never been able to get to the kids first. You know, when the whole thing started to happen with the LGBTQ+ community, and the misconception of me and what I was and what I am and what I feel, my daughter was so upset because she couldn't process how people could think this about her father. And it was so tough because this was when I started to realize how my fame has an impact on my household."

Hart also spoke out against "cancel culture" for The Sunday Times earlier this month.

The full Red Table Talk episode is available here.