Will Smith Spoke With Intimacy Coach About Wanting a Harem of Girlfriends Including Halle Berry and Misty Copeland

Ahead of the release of his new Mark Manson-assisted book, Will Smith has given one of the most revealing interviews of his career.

The GQ discussion sees the King Richard and Emancipation star going deep on a number of pivotal moments from his own life, including a valuable lesson he learned from intimacy coach Michaela Boehm. During their first meeting together, Smith confessed to Boehm that—if given the chance to have anything he wanted—he’d want a group of girlfriends that included fellow famous creatives.

Boehm told Smith to name the women he would want in this theoretical harem, resulting in the actor listing Misty Copeland and Halle Berry. As Smith and Boehm continued collaboratively looking into other women he could choose for this group, the stated plan was to even go so far as reaching out to them about this idea.

“I don’t know where I saw it or some shit as a teenager, but the idea of traveling with 20 women that I loved and took care of and all of that, it seemed like a really great idea,” he said.

But Smith quickly realized that wasn’t at all the point of the exercise. After they played out the scenario together, Smith said he came to understand that the setup would actually be “horrific” and would cause misery for all involved. But it helped Smith ditch some deeply embedded shame tendencies in connection with his strict Christian childhood.

“What she was doing was essentially cleaning out my mind, letting it know it was okay to be me and be who I was,” he said. “It was okay to think Halle is fine. It doesn’t make me a bad person that I’m married and I think Halle is beautiful. Whereas in my mind, in my Christian upbringing, even my thoughts were sins. That was really the process that Michaela worked me through to let me realize that my thoughts were not sins and even acting on an impure thought didn’t make me a piece of shit.”