“It’s a humiliating bombshell that could destroy Will Smith’s fractured marriage,” the lead reads. “The Suicide Squad actor has been drawn into a secret hush money and cover-up scandal with his rumored gay lover!”
Those are the words of blogger Melissa Cronin at RadarOnline, whose latest attempt at outing Will Smith was published bright and early this morning. Happy Tuesday!
Related: Five Words Of Wisdom From The Man Who Gave Us Outing
“The explosive allegations about Smith’s scheme with actor and longtime friend Duane Martin were uncovered in scandalous court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com,” Cornin writes.
Humiliating bombshell? Cover-up scandal? Explosive allegations? Last we checked, we were living in a post-DOMA, post-DADT, gender-neutral-bathrooms-who-gives-a-shit-who-you-sleep-with era. It appears Cronin is living in the year 1996, when being gay was still considered “scandalous” and a “scheme” and subtle homophobia was the norm.
According to Ms. Cronin, RadarOnline recently got its hands on Martin’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy court documents which reveal the actor is over $15 million debt. The documents also claim that Smith once loaned Martin some cash to protect his assets. Information about the loan, or “secret deal” as Cronin calls it, is stored on Martin’s laptop, which the actor has been unwilling to surrender to the court because it contains unrelated private information, including personal emails, photos and videos, that he doesn’t want made public, particularly, he says, to tabloids, like, for instance, RadarOnline.
And that, Cronin says, is the smoking gun that proves Will Smith, as everyone has always suspected, is totally G-A-Y!
Related: Celebrity Outing Turns out to be CNN’s Don Lemon. Do you Care?
“Both men have always insisted that they are just friends,” Cronin writes, “but the outrageous possibility that they are gay lovers has persisted on social media and urban blogs for years.”
An “outrageous possibility” she’s continuing to peddle in her article.
Cronin also offers past evidence of the men’s “unusual relationship,” including a 2011 vacation to the Caribbean “without their wives,” and the time they were spotted hanging out at a bar “with an all-male crew until 4 a.m.”
Yep, that all sounds pretty “unusual” to us.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve poked plenty of fun at those Will Smith gay rumors in the past, but we never once tried to shame him for it by suggesting homosexuality is somehow “humiliating,” “scandalous,” or “explosive.” In the wake of the whole Nico-Hines-Daily-Beast-Olympic-Grindr-outing fiasco, one would hope bloggers and journalists, even those at RadarOnline, might try to exercise just a little more thought when writing about this stuff.
Honestly, the only thing “humiliating” about any of this is Melissa Cronin’s passé reporting.
Related: Everyone’s Pissed At This Straight Journalist Who Used Grindr To Out Gay Athletes In Rio
desertboy
Will Smith is a well-established homophobe. You know what they say about people who complain too much and too loudly.
Kieru
This is such an odd line in the sand for Queerty. As noted in the article, Queerty is hardly innocent of gross speculation as to the sexual orientation / sexual conquests of various public figures. But more than that… the idea that such a revelation would be seen as ‘scandalous’ or ‘explosive’ or ‘humiliating’ seems quite accurate.
Will Smith is married to a woman and has fathered several children. He has spoken vocally about his fidelity and love for his wife and children, and openly denied rumors alleging he has been having a homosexual affair with his friend.
Were it to come to light that these allegations were, in fact, true, it would certainly be a humiliating, explosive scandal. Not because engaging in a homosexual relationship is somehow bad – but because he has been denying that the relationship exists and, if rumors are true, been succumbing to blackmail to hide the relationship from the public.
Trying to frame this as a homophobic article seems like a stretch. Any affair would be a humiliating scandal. That Will Smith is (by all accounts) openly heterosexual would simply make the affair being with a man more ‘shocking’ and thus all the more of a scandal.
Tobi
Smith is a $cientologist, he ain’t ever coming out voluntarily.
Bob LaBlah
Seriously, I hope someone slaps that heifer into the middle of next week. Who in their right mind would come out when they are being paid NO LESS that twenty-five million PER picture? We all had our suspicions about Will and Jada both being in the life but suspicions notwithstanding the sun still rose in the morning as the world turned toward it. Call us back when an “announcement” as such stops those two things from happening. If you get my answering machine don’t leave a message, just keep calling and wait till I pick up.
kwjordy
I am no fan of Will Smith, but this article borders on libel. If you have no news today, don’t just make stuff up. As for me, I’m done with Queerty. Deleting my account because I don’t want to be associated with this brand of gossip. Good-bye.
DuMaurier
Cronin’s blog sounds like standard sleaze, but in fact it would be a “scandal” if Smith or any married star were revealed to be living this kind of “secret” life outside their marriage, whether it was a heterosexual or gay situation, especially if they “schemed” to keep it secret with hush money, etc.
But of course, we don’t know if a word of this is true. And from the snippets of the blog quoted here, Cronin does seem to think the gay “twist” makes it especially salacious and nasty. But I think she’d be doing roughly the same thing if the alleged extramarital shenanigans were boy-girl.
mydude
There is nothing here to be shocked about; it’s quite known to people who care that Will and his wife have had a long arrangement, as does Channing Tatum and yes, even John Travolta. Duane and Will are friends with benefits…shocker.
It’s only a ‘scandal’ because of the lengths certain actors go to cover up who they are and what they are.
dwes09
@kwjordy:
You seem not to understand that Queerty is not making the allegations, nor passing them on as fact, but criticizing another on-line publication for doing so. You should be criticizing Radar On-line, or at least reading more of the article in Queerty than the title!
beachcomberT
Queerty basically borrows (steals) Radar’s gossip story, trashes it and then pretends to be a friend of Will Smith. Pot calling kettle.
Stephen Mole
Not altogether sure what the story is here. Will Smith and his wife have an open relationship – this is not a secret.
Billy Budd
It seems all celebrities in the scientology pantheon are gay. Will Smith, John Travolta, Tom Cruise. They go to such lengths to prove they are straight. IMHO they are all a bit insane.
T
I don’t know Melissa Cronin personally, but I suspect she is a product of old school tabloid journalism, where the name of the game is salacious headlines, and lots of adjectives and adverbs.
Speaking of evolution, the “adapt or die” theory — inaccurately attributed to Charles Darwin — would seem to apply here. If Cronin is to survive much longer in the cut-throat business of tabloid blogging, she’ll need to adjust her writing to reflect the cultural norms. Otherwise, she’ll find her career in the toilet along with the usual poo.
It’s hard to be a homophobe and survive in Cronin’s business, so I suspect it is merely a generational thing, and she hasn’t yet “adjusted” to the relatively fast evolution of LGBTQ acceptance within our culture. She could easily have sensationalized the story without stooping to rhetoric that reflects negatively on the community.
Sansacro
Personally, I don’t care about the freakin Smiths. But all the peeps here who claim, oh so confidently, to “know” the truth about Smith and his relationship are pathetic. What is your proof Smith is gay or in an open relationship? “It is quite well known” ain’t proof. Unless someone here slept with him, you don’t know sh*#t.
He BGB
I thought $cientology,cured these people of the humiliating and scandalous disease of homosexuality. Sarcasm since one can’t read sarcasm. Scratch a $cientoligist, find a queer underneath. Or something like that to paraphrase Mrs. Parker. I have no respect for any of those celebrities like Revolta, Cruise, Will Smith. I have never paid for one of their movies either at the theatre, rental or streaming. Refuse to put money in their pockets when they are such weasels.
Tobi
@Billy Budd It’s because Hubbard’s writings are now viewed as scripture by the “Church”, for example:
Such people [ 1.1 which includes homosexuals ] should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized; for here is the level of the contagion of immorality, and the destruction of ethics; here is the fodder which secret police organizations use for their filthy operations. One of the most effective measures of security that a nation threatened by war could take would be rounding up and placing in a cantonment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected with government, the military, or essential industry; since here are people who, regardless of any record of their family’s loyalty, are potential traitors, the very mode of operation of their insanity being betrayal. In this level is the slime of society, the sex criminals, the political subversives, the people whose apparently rational activities are yet but the devious writhings of secret hate.
MaxH
In all fairness, assuming she is correct with her claims, the terms she used weren’t inappropriate. Whether he were cheating on his wife or had an arrangement with her, it would be a cover up and it would most certainly be a scandal. Being gay doesn’t excuse you from media scrutiny.
Ken A.
I do not know if Will Smith is homophobic, his son is transgendered unless those are just tabloidal rumors. I have not really researched or have any interest.
I do think that Miss Cronin or whoever she is is trying to be like Perez Hilton. Trying to impress, only to look like an idiot.
For the record. Slapping someone for an unwanted kiss doesn’t make one homophobic. It means stay out of my personal space unless invited.
spanprof
Leave Will Smith alone. If he wants three ways with his wife or without, that’s for them to decide. We don’t have to be the peeper jerking off outside his bedroom window. He has taught his children well and if I’m not mistaken, did a “No H8” ad. He could even do a bi-sexual role–he’d skyrocket in Hollywood and in our esteem.
Billy Budd
Hey, in the beginning of his career, Will Smith played a gay character in a movie. He played a crazy guy who used to impersonate the son of Sidney Poitier and lure millionaires. He had sex with a straight guy in the movie and the guy thought it was awesome.
Pete
When he was filming Six Degrees of Separation (the gay grifter), he made a big stink and got out of kissing Michael Anthony Hall
Curtispsf
About Scientology: they get celebrities to “confess” they are gay and then promptly blackmail their careers. Travolta, Cruise and now, Will Smith. I, for one, don’t care if he has a “best friends with benefits” arrangement with giraffes and penguins; he’s entitled to his privacy so long as he’s not causing direct harm to the LGBTQ community, and please….save the PC bullshit that by staying closeted he’s doing “indirect” harm to the community. He hasn’t endorsed the Westboro Baptist Church and he’s not out there making homophobic statements.
This style of journalism reminds me of the times of Hedda Hopper in the 50s who went on a witch hunt against “communists” in the entertainment industry during the McCarthy years. Many people lost their jobs and some lost their lives as a result of such drivel. And Queerty’s indirect “can YOU believe what this sleazoid trashy tabloid journalism bitch is doing by trying to out Will Smith” smacks of hypocrisy. Get a grip.
Mandrake
It’s been well rumored that Will Smith and Tom Cruise had a thing going for years. I am not in the least surprised.
robtosh
What are you Americans all about. I have worshipped WA since I first saw him. Who for fecklng cares if he wishes to sleep with his friend. If he wants there is a bed in Kent, UK. A BESITIFUL MAN???
rimboerinnetje
WTF cares about Will Smith.
You people are acting as if he is part of your wannabe society.
He is no god damn part of your private lives. When he is on TV, he gets paid.
He is not your goddarn neighbor.
You people need to check yourselves, y’all are mentally ill.
Why do many homo men always need to discuss other people that have nothing to do with them
Crazy ass shit.
rimboerinnetje
And stop preying on his children as well, goddarn pedhophiles!
JamJewel
If Queerty and RadarOnLine keeps this up, they might find themselves with a Nick Dentonesque crusade to shut them down. Don’t forget that all those male Scientologists who always seem to be gay-adjacent are VERY VERY RICH.
JamJewel
BTW: Queerty and RadarOnLine are no different than Breitbart News: they fling bullshit to the internet and make money from our clicks which is why they have our email address and send us their headlines. Just like ‘legitimate’ media.
philipcfromnyc
@Curtispsf — You write “save the PC bullshit that by staying closeted he’s doing “indirect” harm to the community.”
Actually, if Smith is indeed gay, then by staying in the closet, he is indeed doing indirect harm to the gay and lesbian community — this is not “PC bullshit” but a plain statement of cold fact. Any wealthy and famous gay man who remains in the closet reinforces the notion that being gay is in some way shameful, dirty, and to be kept secret from the world.
People have a right to privacy. They do NOT have a right to secrecy.
However, Cronin writes a thoroughly disgusting column. Last year, the US Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage nationwide (in handing down Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S.Ct. 2584 (2015)). Back in 2010, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (also known as “lie and hide”) regulations and their underlying statutes were repealed by Congress. The most recent Gallup poll shows that a solid 61% of Americans support same sex marriage, with only 29% opposed (and 10% undecided). For the first time ever, a majority (53%) of Americans aged 65 and older now support same sex marriage, whereas almost 80% of Americans aged between 18 and 29 now support same sex marriage.
Almost 80% of Americans believe that it should be illegal to discriminate against gay Americans in employment, access to housing, and services at places of public accommodations (e.g., restaurants, hotels, etc.). Twenty two states have enacted statewide measures prohibiting such discrimination, and the US government requires all vendors and contractors which do business with the federal government to have such non-discrimination measures in place.
In other words, most heterosexual Americans have come to their senses regarding their fellow gay Americans.
In the face of this, any revelations that Smith is gay can only be termed “scandalous” to the extent that Smith has gone to great lengths to hide his alleged homosexuality. Any such revelations that Smith is gay can only be termed “humiliating” to the extent that Smith has gone to great lengths to hide his alleged homosexuality. The same applies to the notion that such revelations would be “explosive.”
Cronin needs to get out of the 1980s and move forward to this decade!
PHILIP
Marky
rimboerinnetje, you suck dick so stop being such a hypocrite, you ex-straight “man” converted by a swinging dick one time when you drank too much. I’m sorry you’re into dick. There’s NOTHING wrong with it, trust me…. well.. unless it’s a tiny dick.
philipcfromnyc
@Tobi — Thank you for providing us with some insight into the attitudes of the Scientologists towards gay men and lesbians. Clearly, these are very disturbed and dangerous people, if they actually live by the code which you have explicated. Given the level of hatred expressed by this code, I am reminded of Shakespeare’s famous line: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
We all know that Tom Cruise and John Travolta are widely believed to be gay — and in deep denial. I was unaware that Will Smith is yet another example of a human being who has been so grotesquely harmed by this “religion” that he is also deeply homophobic (yet also allegedly homosexual).
PHILIP
philipcfromnyc
@rimboerinnetje — If you hate gay persons so much, what are you doing reading articles published by Queerty and commenting on them?
I have news for you — I am openly gay, and I ENJOY gay sex! Yes — I actually ENJOY gay sex! It is actually a great deal of fun — if you are gay!
Get over yourself. If you are in fact homosexual, then come out of the closet. You will find yourself welcomed, despite your current rhetoric.
PHILIP
SnakeyJ
I don’t see anything wrong with the article. It’s not saying being gay is humiliating, it’s saying that Will Smith would find it humiliating to be outed. He’s the homophobe, and I do believe the rumours. He needs to retire, he ruined Suicide Squad.
JerseyMike
Who gives a flying fcuk? if he is gay its his business. if he comes out or not its still his business. We all took our journey when we were ready. how does him coming out affect our lives? all I am ready in these comments is messy $i$$y gossip.
Brian
Women tend to be very homophobic when they see evidence of male homosexual desires coming from men who are attracted to women. Women see it as a threat to girl power.
My message to women is this: you are guilty of a double standard. Go away, girls. Male homosexual desire is the new male power.
Brian
By the way, men are entitled to swing both ways in their sexual feelings. These men don’t need to answer to women and they don’t need to answer to the gay community.
They are their own men. Women with double standards should especially note this. It’s the new male power.
dean089
Hey, now everyone is talking about this Cronin person so it’s like Donald Trump says, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Ksb1978
It’s called being bisexual( because you know, it’s a thing ). He can be attracted to both men and women, be married to a woman and have a male lover on the side. Bisexual.
Brian
Ksb1978,
“Bisexuality” does not mean that one is “married to a woman and has a male lover on the side”. This scenario is either cheating or an open relationship, but it is NOT the definition of bisexuality.
“Bisexual” is quite an awkward word as it is imprecise and inaccurate when used to describe people who swing both ways. The problematic part of it is the first syllable “bi” – it suggests equal distribution, which is often NOT the case.
MacAdvisor
MyDude wrote: “There is nothing here to be shocked about; it’s quite known to people who care that Will and his wife have had a long arrangement, as does Channing Tatum.”
I Channing Tatum has an arrangement, I want in on that deal.
robho3
I’ve heard the rumor for years of will
Smith being gay and I just don’t get that vibe from him and even if I did it’s really no ones business what he does with his personal life
Brian
@robho3: Will Smith has never identified as gay. And why would he want to? It’s not compulsory to identify as gay.
However, that doesn’t mean that he cannot have sexual attractions to men. Sexual attraction is automatic and beyond control.
Will Smith is perfectly entitled to be sexually attracted to men and women. If his attraction to men is something he wishes to hide, blame the Hollywood system. Hollywood is a liberal institution based on marketing to women who demand that their male screen idols be totally heterosexual.
Blame women too.
Sammy2
@Brian: ahhhhh a quaint piece of basic misogyny – haven’t seen that in a while.
Brian
@Sammy2: Well, if you don’t want to concede that women fear the power of male-male sexuality, that’s your problem. Keep believing in the “open-mindedness” of women if you wish – you’re kidding yourself.
Mike
“The moment will come soon enough when you need a Gawker, and you’ll be furious that you no longer have one.”
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
@kwjordy: bye!
Me2
So… just because Duane Martin doesn’t want all of the the private contents on his laptop to be made public, just to verify one financial transaction, must mean that he’s trying to hide a secret gay relationship between himself and Will Smith? Okay, got it! No one in their right mind expects credible journalism from sources as trashy as RadarOnline; so to say that this Melissa Cronin character is REACHING, is an understatement. However, the real shocker here is the amount of gossip mongering freaks who actually believe this crap.
strawbaby79
All of this just begs the question, Do I really give a shit whether Will Smith is or is not a gay man?!?!?! HELL NO I don’t give a shit!!! All this free publicity is going all around the world and feeds all the homophobic people like Will Smith at the expense of the LGBT community which also begs the question of is Will Smith really all that much of a homophobic person?!?! I mean really everybody, just get a grip and get on with it! But then again, we all wouldn’t have anything to bitch about and there wouldn’t be the need for websites like Queerty Oh well, this just goes on and on doesn’t it?
dennisrutten52
ok
robho3
@Brian: thank you so much for clearing
that up for me you sooooo smart. Blab blab blab
mdbuck67
Maybe Cronin could get a job at Nick Denton’s sleazy enterprise?
GayEGO
Whether or not Will Smith is gay should not be an issue and I for one hope that Will Smith will speak his mind to squash this unnecessary hoopla.
Mikey
Not really sure why you’re feigning indignance, Queerty. This is the exact same shit you do to people. Celebrate Nick Denton, but slam this Melissa nobody? You’re becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Curtispsf
@philipcfromnyc: Actually, dude there is NOTHING in the law that says individuals do not have a right to secrecy. Your sanctimonious “tear down the closet doors it’s harming the gay community’ is just a bunch of self righteous fascist BS. If this were the McCarthy years and Smith was a communist would you support an inquiry into Smith’s politics forcing him to testify under oath that he was or was not a communist? I rather suspect not. If so, then you are nothing more than a “gay fascist”.
I have been out since I was 19 but I never saw a paragraph in the “Homosexual Bible and/or Guide” which requires someone who is not yet out to publicly identify as gay. To quote Harvey Milk “Come out, come out wherever you are” but that choice, absent a persona ethos causing direct harm to the LGBTQ community, should be made in that person’s time. Now if Will Smith were espousing hatred towards the LGBTQ community, then by all means smash the closet door open, but he’s not. Consequently, he has NO obligation to you or to the gay community to identify as gay until or unless he is ready.
grethomory
this is a crock. RadarOnline? okay, lol
ErikO
@Ksb1978: Yes there are bisexual men; but if a man is gay and married to a woman then that’s not going to change the fact that he’s gay. Elton John was this way in the 70s when he was married to a woman.
Daggerman
…being a closet case in Hollywood is very far from being original. The more of a straight man you act you need to be more careful because when you do get outed, the price will be extremely high…
Daggerman
…what is so baffling is why do people believe or PRETEND to be disgusted, that if a man has had sex with another man he’s immediately a degenerate or labeled something worse?? I mean, why is it that if a man and woman have sex the image is so acceptable..???? We human beings are so incredibly green, we have definitely so far to go…
Blackceo
Melissa…girl bye. People have been trying to bring down Will Smith for a while over these gay rumors. They’ve tried to bring down he and Jada’s marriage. It hasn’t worked. They are one of the most powerful celebrity couples in Hollywood and some people just hate to see them thrive.
michaelmt1009
Honestly its May 2017 who cares who he sleeps with or vacations with. This is decades old “national enquirer style news that doesn’t concern anyone with a brain.