Will Smith for President — it could be a real thing someday

While accepting the Video Vanguard award at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West announced that he would be running for president of the United States in 2020. But it looks like he may have some fierce competition from none other than veteran actor Will Smith.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 47-year-old shared his own political aspirations, saying that since he’s reached the top of the charts in both music and acting (in 2012, he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood), he’s ready to conquer another “industry,” so to speak.

“As I look at the political landscape, I think that there might be a future out there for me,” Smith told The Hollywood Reporter. “They might need me out there.”

According to the actor and father of two, he’s been particularly bothered by the state of things in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, enough so that he’s losing sleep. Entering the political fray, he says, may be his chance to do something useful for the world.

“I’m a climber, so if I see a mountain, I have to climb it. I’m not a camper; I don’t like hanging in one place too long,” he said. “So I think, at this point, I’m elevating my ability to be useful in the world. I think that that’s what my grandmother always hoped, that I would make myself useful to people in this lifetime.”

Smith says he was inspired in part by his role in the upcoming film Concussion, which tells the true story of Dr. Bennet Omalu and his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in professional football players who’d suffered one too many concussions. After calling for a retraction of Omalu’s academic paper in 2006, the NFL finally acknowledged the existence of CTE in 2009.

“I would love for people to take away the importance of standing up, the importance of using your faith or whatever strength you have to call on to tell and demand the truth,” Smith said. “I think that there is such a potential higher quality of human interaction, if we could tell each other the truth, and then also if we could make receptive places for the truth.”

Will Smith 2020, anyone?

(Image via Columbia Pictures.)