In 2016, Smith played Deadshot in the supervillain team-up action film "Suicide Squad". Smith's participation in the film meant choosing it over a role in "", which he said would be like "clinging and clawing backwards." Later that year, Smith starred in director David Frankel's drama "Collateral Beauty", playing a New York advertising executive who succumbs to a deep depression after a personal tragedy. Weeks after signing Smith onto the film, his father was diagnosed with cancer, from which he died in 2016. As part of his role required him to read about religion and the afterlife, he was brought closer to the elder Smith, calling the experience "a beautiful way to prepare for a movie and an even more majestic way to say goodbye to my father."