Stephen A. Smith is incredibly well-known in the world of sports, he stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about his career as a sports journalist and his new movie.
Smith has kids, and despite his massive fame, his kids hate what he does. He admitted that his daughters can be territorial, so they don't quite understand why people come up all the time asking for autographs and photos. As far as security goes, Smith shared he does often have security with him when he goes to events because of the massive crowds. But he doesn't like to live his life being fearful of a lot of things, so sometimes ESPN will assign security detail to him, and he will make them fall back so they aren't right next to him. He added that he doesn't believe he conjures up feelings for people to really want to hurt him. Regardless, if trouble does come his way, he's normally ready for it.
Over the years, Smith shared he has lost friendships with at least 2 or 3 athletes over his criticism of their games. Though, he doesn't consider athletes his friends until they have retired. The way he sees it, he has a job to do. He establishes professional relationships with athletes because his obligation is to his viewing and listening audiences and that obligation is not to be friendly. However, he won't be disrespectful or engage in personal attacks. Smith added that how these athletes are performing in a public forum and that's something that is able to be critiqued. When it comes to his energy level, Smith said he loves sports, watching sports, and talking about them so it's easy to have the high energy. He never gets tired of doing what he does because he has a passion for it. However, he added he doesn't want to be limited to just sports, he has other aspirations than just doing what he does now.
One of those aspirations was to be part of an animated movie so his two daughters could hear him in an animation. Now, Smith is one of the voices in the new animated movie Rumble. Smith isn't playing himself in the movie, however he is playing a sports announcer. He critiques monster wrestling and it did make it a lot easier for him to do something he's familiar with, though it wasn't 100% easy. The hard part about voicing instead of acting in a role is that Smith had to conjure up all of the experiences of a real movie, rather than being in a room, recording a voice.