Will Smith Rocks the Comedy Boat

"I'm not going to let my kids read. Ain't no future in it, man."

Wrong thing to say in a ballroom full of print journalists, especially if they're TV critics who can help make or break your new show.

Unless you're Will Smith. Will Smith had us at (his version of) hello.

"Yeaah . . . Yeaah!" Maybe the biggest movie star on the planet was pumping his fist and whoopin' it up as he emerged onstage at the start of UPN's presentation of its fall schedule. People from every network address the press here over the course of three weeks, and almost all look as pained as if the world's hair mousse supply had suddenly dried up.

Whereas Smith, co-creator and executive producer with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, of "All of Us," gleefully proclaimed working on a sitcom to be "the purest, most natural form of human silly." So why will the one-time Fresh Prince of Bel Air only be working behind the scenes when this one airs Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m.?

'`They pay me too much money to make movies,'' crowed Smith, whose "Bad Boys II" was the No. 1 film last weekend. "My manager would poke one of my eyes out!"

The sitcom is "very loosely" based on the couple's experiences creating a blended family that includes Smith's son by his first marriage. Real life events will creep into scripts, such as when kids' clothes fail to make the proper handoff between ex-spouses and "there's a big blowout argument about this little Sean John jean suit, you know?" Smith sighed, rolling his eyes.

The couple, who'll likely guest star, cast good friend Duane Martin as the male lead.

"Nepotism at its best," Martin chuckled, while Smith hunched forward with an all-business look on his face.

"The one thing we always said is, `Look, we're in Hollywood, we've got to do like white people do,' '' Smith said. "Give each other jobs!"

But seriously, Pinkett Smith was asked, how do you get someone to play your husband, of all people?

"Well, it was very easy, because I wasn't thinking about casting somebody like Will," she said. "That's impossible."

"No offense," Smith smirked at Martin.

"What are you trying to say?" Martin demanded.

"I'm just a lot of Negro, man," Smith declared from his seat, to uproarious laughs. "I'm a lot of Negro!"