For the past ten weeks, Kevin Smith’s 21-year-old daughter has found the center of the spotlight as one of the stars of the show Cruel Summer on Freeform. Harley Quinn Smith is really making a name for herself after getting her start on the sets of her father’s famed films, like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl, before starting first grade. It’s safe to say Harley Quinn has one of the coolest dads ever, but as she admits, at one time, there was a funny drawback.
Harley Quinn Smith clearly has a different kind of dad than most of us do. Kevin Smith is a beloved filmmaker and pop culture icon, and she grew up in between it all. During a paired interview just in time for Father’s Day, they talked about it:
Harley Quinn Smith: It's not really kosher to have your dad make a film with the word 'porno' in it, so it was complicated for a while until I got older. But as a kid, my friends will come over to my house and be like, 'Why does your house smell so weird?' and I'd be like, 'it's like a candle,' and it would just be, like, so much weed. So, I was pretty embarrassed for a while but then, once I got older, then I was like, 'Oh, you're cool, I guess.'Kevin Smith: Once she became a stoner, it was all OK.
There’s a telling glimpse of what it was like in the Smith household. As Kevin Smith told E! News, he and his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, had their daughter when they were quite young, making them opt out of being too grown up of parents with Harley Quinn Smith. (Smith was 28 when she was born).
There were some growing pains, especially with Harley Quinn being the daughter of the man behind Zack and Miri Make A Porno when she was nine years old. And it sounds like there was a lot of weed around, but she grew up a daddy’s girl and now she’s taking on the business in her own way. Harley Quinn Smith also said this:
Somebody asked me about being an only child the other day and I was like, 'Well honestly, my dad really took the place of being my sibling’. He played video games with me, took me to arcades to get enough tickets to win a bubblegum dispensary machine. We would just always do fun stuff together and we still do so. He's just like my friend, my pal.
Now that’s adorable. Kevin Smith is really supportive of his daughter’s pursuits in Hollywood following getting her on his own movie sets, including as a lead in Yoga Hosers and as Milly in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Now they are apparently writing a TV show after previously doing a podcast together about veganism called “Vegan Abattoir.”
Harley Quinn Smith’s biggest role yet has been in Cruel Summer as Mallory Higgins, a high school girl living in the ‘90s who is caught in the middle of two teen girls who become public enemies following a kidnapping case. The Freeform series broke a serious record and became the network’s biggest multi-platform premiere, and has been renewed for a second season following the shocking Season 1 finale last week. We can't wait to see what else this duo cooks up next.
